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Messed up......double the images ....only one catalog.......somewhere I added images but where?

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RStyle

Member
Premium Classic Member
Joined
Oct 25, 2012
Messages
43
Location
Florida
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version Number
Lightroom Classic V11-V12
Operating System
  1. macOS 12 Monterey
(Numbers of images approximate from what I remember)
1) I had a total of 11 k images. Decided to separate my wildlife images from family and trip images.
2) Imported 160 images from a recent wildlife trip and edited many
3) Added an external drive to the folders and dragged many folders from MacHD to External HD. When I stopped not completely done) I had about 4k images on External and 7k on
MacHD
4) Next time I went to open Lightroom, it told me it could not locate the catalog did I want to open default. I went to File-Open recent, had me upgrade to V12 and it opened an old
catalog with less than 11/2 the images
5) Opened and loaded last Backup. When I tried to open it had the "Catalog not found". Searched and found that there may be a lock folder in the Pictures folder of the Mac. Threw
it in the trash. Restarted Lightroom. It opened fine but had to upgrade to V12. The Catalog from backup, as expected did not have the last 160 images imported and did not show
the External Drive and had 11K images

Now the problem

1) I renamed the catalog to My Catalog so there would not be confusion with prior recent or backup catalogs
2) I imported again the 160 images to be edited again later.
3) I added the External Drive to the Folders (now I have McintoshHD and External Pro Drive)
4) None of the images in the External Drive appeared so I selected import and ADD (instead of Copy)to the External Pro Drive in lightroom from the external (THIS may have been
a critical mistake!!)
5) All folders with their images from the connected external loaded to External Pro in Lightroom and all the images are visible BUT
6) Now Lightroom shows a total of 22K images ( instead of 11K) with the External Pro showing 8K images (instead of 4K).
7) I opened the connected external drive outside of Lightroom and it shows the original 4k images.
8) Somehow I doubled the images on the MacHD and the External Pro drive but no idea how or where are the extra images.....................almost as if there is another Catalog but
nothing in recent catalogs or in most recent IRCAT.s that I still have on Pictures Mac folder
 
Point (4) in your 'Now the problem' is an issue. From your description of the steps, either you've got them recorded in Lightroom on two separate drives 9with half of them showing as missing) or you've hit the Capitalization issue.

Can you post a screenshot showing the Folders Panel so we can better understand what's going on?
 
Point (4) in your 'Now the problem' is an issue. From your description of the steps, either you've got them recorded in Lightroom on two separate drives 9with half of them showing as missing) or you've hit the Capitalization issue.

Can you post a screenshot showing the Folders Panel so we can better understand what's going on?
Thank you very much for your response. I am away traveling for a week but will do this when I get back. Not sure what Capitalization is?
Thanks!
 
Thank you very much for your response. I am away traveling for a week but will do this when I get back. Not sure what Capitalization is?
Thanks!
Ohh………I know what you mean. Capitalization of Keywords or Folders!. I thought it was some kind of setting!!
 
Not yet. Fearful of doing anything. Going to see if I can attach some screenshots. All photographs - 18,253.
In Main iMac Drive 15, 031 images
When I connect External Drive it shows 9,929
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By the way. I apologize for not thanking you for following up. I went on a trip and when I came back was not in the mood to deal with this and had not looked at it.
That External Drive Import of over 5K images in 2016 is unusual in that it has many unedited images that I had edited before but this may be unrelated to the main issue.
I looked for duplicated images on the main drive and there were only 200 which were TIFFS I had made with Topaz Denoise. I have not done this for the External Drive
 
Don't worry, we'll figure this out.

Now first thing I spot, is the catalog you're using (HJR Main Catalog.lrcat) looks like it might still be buried in a backup folder. That's not a problem in itself, but it's one we'll want to address before you next clean out your backup catalogs, as you could accidentally throw your main catalog away in the process. So we'll look at moving that back to the Pictures/Lightroom folder at some point.

But for now, let's just clarify, where are all of the photos now? Are they still split across MacHD and the external drive? Or all on one or the other?

And I'm guessing the External drive isn't currently plugged in at the time of taking those screenshots, or you've renamed it?

And final question for now, had you done any editing to the photos on the external drive?

Oh, sorry, one more... do you have a catalog backup from when all of the photos were on the MacHD, where all 11k were in the right place?

Once we've figured out that much, we should be able to find a way forward.
 
I appreciate very much your patient dealing with this. I probably have done a lot of things that I should not have done and now fearful of doing anything that will be a bigger disaster
The images currently are split between MacHD and the External Drive
I added the External Drive and moved images into it in the last catalog I had created
The External Drive was not connected when I sent you the last image. You are correct. Just wanted to show you what was on it. May have done
a few edits on those images after transferring to External Drive. Not many. The images in the folders had been edited before in the past and I just transferred the folders to the External Drive. I suspect I made a mistake when the images did not appear in the External Drive and I clicked "ADD"
Included is everything I have saved in my computer. Some of the Ircat catalogs appeared when I upgraded a catalog
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I had imported several times many images of birds in my usual catalog. Next time I opened Lightroom, the bird pictures and the external drive did not appear.
So...I opened Lightroom from a recent backup that had all the bird images and hooked up the External Drive and "ADD" all the images from the External Drive into Lightroom. Called it " HJR Main Catalog" and that was when the 18K+ images appeared on the total.

I noticed I had al those IRCAT's but was afraid to throw them in the trash (except for the HJR Main Catalog).
I was tempted to delete everything except the HJR Main Catalog and start culling and deleting duplicates from the catalog
Manual intensive labor but.................
 
Yeah, it is a little bit messy. It was importing the photos again that caused the chaos, so that's one to remember to avoid next time.

Without worrying too much about where the photos are stored at this stage, as we can fix that, the simplest solution at this point is to find the most recent catalog that has circa 11k photos and all of your edits.

In your get info screens, I can see you've added dates to the end of -lrcat? What did you find in those catalogs? What's the most recent one that has around 11k? Don't worry that some of the photos will be marked as missing, we can fix that once we've got the right one.
 
HJR 1 11-22 3pm.pngHJR Main Catalog.png
The entire mess was made in the afternoonon the same date 11-22. Some of the old catalogs are v12-2, V12-4 etc.
The Catalog on the left was HJR 1 11-22 at 3pm. It did not have any of my bird images and the External SSD says 299 images

The Catalog on the right HJR Main Catalog is the one from a backup that has all the bird images. I panicked when I saw the bird images and External Ssd missing from the catalog I had originally opened so I went to a recent backup
To this Catalog I ADDed (instead of Copy) the images from the External Drive which ended up as just over 9k listed under External SSD images
( but the drive only has close to 5k images)

The HJR Main Catalog, the one I am currently using, has all my images but for some reason the total number of images is many thousands more than what I have. It states previous import as 5,147. I wonder if those are the images from the External Drive which I ADDED instead of copied

I wonder if I should start deleting old catalogs to clean things up
 
Screen Shot 2022-12-23 at 11.04.22 PM.png

These are all from 11-22 as I was updating the V12 catalog and could not find my bird images or the External SSD.
Finally, I just opened a backup which I named HJR Main Catalog. It had all my bird images and I "ADDed" the External Drive images.......but
ended up with abnormal total count of images on MacHD and External SSD
 
Sorry for disappearing for a bit, it's rare that I get a week off without work!

Great description and screenshots. I think we've got 2 options:

1. We use HJR 1 11-22, fix the missing folders, and then use Import from Another Catalog to transfer just the bird images from HJR Main Catalog.

2. We use HJR Main Catalog, remove all of the unedited photos (e.g. we use a smart collection that looks for photos on the external drive that haven't got titles, captions, Develop edits, keywords etc.), reconnect all of the the missing photos then do a final import to mop up any photos that got removed even though they were in the right place.

Option 1 is the cleaner option, if you're comfortable that Birds folders are probably the only thing missing from that 11-22 3pm catalog. No other editing since then? Do you remember importing any other photos, other than the 9K from the external drive?
 
1) Please do not apologize. It is amazing the time you spend helping others with their Lightroom issues and the incredible knowledge you have.
In addition........everyone should have time off during the Holidays.

2) I will try option number 1

3) Can I then safely delete all IrCat and IrData prior to HJR 1 11-22? I have backups as shown in Screenshot

4) Last question and will leave you alone for a well deserved rest you need from me. Included in the Catalog are 1303 images from Photos Library/Private. When I open them they all appear greyed out a question mark and are not found or located by usual ways. I never imported any images from Photos and I am ready to delete them from the Catalog. ( Screenshot included) I have a totally separate Photos folder in my computer.

Thank you immensely for your help. I wish I had a knowledgeable person in my small town that I can use when I get in trouble!! I will report soon how everything went!


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3) Can I then safely delete all IrCat and IrData prior to HJR 1 11-22? I have backups as shown in Screenshot
Yes, if you're happy to won't need them. If in doubt, delete the various lrdata preview and zip up the rest to throw away later. That would clear them out of the way and out of the confusion.

4) Last question and will leave you alone for a well deserved rest you need from me. Included in the Catalog are 1303 images from Photos Library/Private. When I open them they all appear greyed out a question mark and are not found or located by usual ways. I never imported any images from Photos and I am ready to delete them from the Catalog. ( Screenshot included) I have a totally separate Photos folder in my computer.
View attachment 20081

That looks like ones that were marked as Private/Hidden in the macOS Photos app and then somehow got imported into LR. If you're sure you don't want to hunt them down, then yes, it's fine to remove them from the catalog.
 
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