• Welcome to the Lightroom Queen Forums! We're a friendly bunch, so please feel free to register and join in the conversation. If you're not familiar with forums, you'll find step by step instructions on how to post your first thread under Help at the bottom of the page. You're also welcome to download our free Lightroom Quick Start eBooks and explore our other FAQ resources.
  • Stop struggling with Lightroom! There's no need to spend hours hunting for the answers to your Lightroom Classic questions. All the information you need is in Adobe Lightroom Classic - The Missing FAQ!

    To help you get started, there's a series of easy tutorials to guide you through a simple workflow. As you grow in confidence, the book switches to a conversational FAQ format, so you can quickly find answers to advanced questions. And better still, the eBooks are updated for every release, so it's always up to date.
  • Dark mode now has a single preference for the whole site! It's a simple toggle switch in the bottom right-hand corner of any page. As it uses a cookie to store your preference, you may need to dismiss the cookie banner before you can see it. Any problems, please let us know!

LR Classic loses visibility of an image in the folder

Status
Not open for further replies.

BackyardSilver

Author of Getting Started in Stock Photography
Joined
Jul 22, 2020
Messages
15
Location
West Virginia
Lightroom Experience
Advanced
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version Number
Lightroom Classic 11.4.1
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
I'm a long time LR Classic user with almost 120,000 images in my catalog and so I am reasonably confident in how to use it. I had developed some images recently and in particular had created a PSD of one of them and a panorama stitch from another. Both appeared as normal in the catalog. I was going through the keywording of my selected images and I think I was deleting an incorrect keyword from a few images by selecting each one in turn, double clicking on the problem word and deleting it. Nothing unusual there. But then I noticed that the PSD file was not showing (it was supposed to be next). I checked with the file manager and the PSD was still in the folder, but nowhere to be seen in LR. (I'm on Windows 10 by the way).
So I did the usual things - check that the sort order was for Capture time, check that there were no filters in place, synchronizing the folder to see if any missing files were found. None of these did anything, but the file was clearly present in the folder. I then noticed that a DNG panorama was also missing from the catalog - same folder, it was present on the disk, but could not be found.
I opened the PSD in Photoshop and saved a copy of it with a new name and I could sync that one into the catalog, but the original refused to be seen.
I restarted LR then restarted my PC, but no change - this PSD and the panoramic DNG just will not import into the catalog even though they were there originally.
I've never seen this behavior before - any ideas?
Steve
 
That is odd. It's possible there's some kind of catalog corruption. What shows in the import dialog when you try to add that folder with the missing PSD and DNG?
 
Nothing shows apart from the normal window that reports that no new files are in the folder. I discovered the stitched panorama which I had previously exported as a jpeg. That was in the folder, and I got it into the catalog by moving the file to a different folder, syncing there and then moving in LR to the correct folder. Of course there are no development steps saved and so I needed to do that from scratch.

It seems like the catalog thinks it’s in the folder, but never shows it. With an issue like this, it’s hard to work out what is missing as that folder on the disc has 2000 images from a cruise. Annoying!

Steve
 
Do you have a copy of the catalog from before you reimported? If so, if you want to send it to me, I'd be interested to take a look and see if I can find the problem.
 
Yes, the lrcat file. Zip it up (or leave it zipped) and use www.wetransfer.com or Dropbox or similar to send it to [email protected]. Better include a link to this thread otherwise I'll wonder why I've got it too!!!
 
The good news or the bad news is I can reproduce it not being visible in the folder, but the file data is still in the catalog, which is why it wouldn't let you import it again. That points to potentially some very minor catalog corruption. I could drop the catalog to a contact at Adobe for them to check it for any other issues, but they're on shutdown this week so I'd need to send it next week (in which case you'll probably want to send me a new copy).
 
Great - it would be worth seeing if there are any catalog issues as I have so many images in there. So could you remind me when it is time to send to Adobe and I'll take a backup and stop doing any more work in Lightroom.

Thanks
Steve
 
I shall do my best! I've snoozed the email to remind you next Tuesday.
 
I'm ready! What do I need to send to you for Adobe to check out? And I assume that I shouldn't make any changes in Lightroom after I send the catalog file?
 
Great. Just the catalog as you did before. Yeah, I wouldn't edit the catalog after sending, but if you need to import new photos, maybe drop them into a clean catalog to make it easy to import into the repaired catalog, assuming it can be repaired.
 
Got it and forwarded on. I'll let you know as soon as I hear back.
 
Rikk's sent the catalog back already (he's quick!!!) but the usual catalog repair script didn't help. We'll carry on bouncing around ideas of how it could have happened, to try to prevent it in future, but you're fine to continue editing.
 
Experiment idea from Rikk:
Will the file (with its original PSD name, not the renamed 2 version) import into a new fresh catalog?
If so, will that catalog import as a catalog ?

We're trying to figure out what might be wrong.
 
Thanks Victoria. The lack of import of this file (and the missing panorama) isn't actually a big issue to me to be honest as I saved the PSD under a new name and imported it, and I redid the panorama. I don't think any more are missing. It is a bit annoying that some combination of keywording steps I took ended up making these files disappear, but unless it becomes a regular thing, it isn't something that I need to fix. I was more concerned that there was some hidden issue in my catalog that would later come back to bite me, but Rikk's test of the catalog sounded like there were no major issues there?

Perhaps we should just put this down to a glitch!

Steve
 
I've been thinking some more about this. Sometimes when adding keywords, I start typing a new keyword and then find that for some reason I hadn't properly highlighted the keyword field and my keystrokes are acting as shortcuts to various functions - so the screen changes to a grid - that sort of thing. It is possible that some combination would cause an image to be deleted from the catalog (although that would have required that image to be selected I guess). Even then, a sync command would reimport the photo into the catalog. So I have persuaded myself that this couldn't have been the reason!
 
And the answer to your question above. I created a new catalog, and imported the files from the folder (actually just the two PSD - the original one that was lost and the copy I made of it. Both of them imported OK into the new catalog. I then tried to import from that test catalog. The import process found two images, but noted that neither of them was new and so did not import anything into my main catalog. So it still thinks that the missing photo is there in its database as you identified before. It just won't show it!
 
Good clue, thanks. It's a fairly serious bug if photos just disappear, so we'd love to get to the bottom of it.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top