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Library module Missing photos in collections

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jonl

New Member
Joined
May 10, 2013
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Location
Perth, Western Australia
Lightroom Experience
Power User
Lightroom Version
Operating System: Windows 10 - Business Edition
Lightroom Classic version 7.1

I have a collection that I've had since 2012, in that collection are 20 sub collections.
I went to look into these today because I needed certain images and all but 6 subcollections are empty they have a count of 0 next to them.
I know the photos are on the drive, all settings, ratings, etc are gone.
Is there a way to retrieve this information?
Is there a file in LR that contains the information regarding collections?
Attached is a snip of the structure.
 

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  • LR-Collection.JPG
    LR-Collection.JPG
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A collection is only a virtual storage place, so the question is if these photos are still in the catalog. If they are, you can simply add them back. Ratings and edits are something else. These are stored in the catalog, so if the photos are in the catalog but lost all of that too, then the most likely explanation is that you removed the photos from the catalog at some point (thereby removing them from the collections and removing all their settings too) and then reimported them at a later stage. Reimporting the images does add them back to the catalog, but does not restore ratings and edits and does not add them back to any collection.

Do you have catalog backups? That's your only hope.
 
Well said about catalog backups. Then backup the entire file system at least once a day. If on a Mac, use TM writing to a dedicated drive.
 
ll photos are still in the original folder and they were never moved, I've seen this on quite a few collections. The photos just disappear from collection and the settings are gone when i go to the folder and reselect them.
 
ll photos are still in the original folder and they were never moved, I've seen this on quite a few collections. The photos just disappear from collection and the settings are gone when i go to the folder and reselect them.
I have never seen that and have never heard about it anywhere. The only explanation I have is the one I already gave you: somehow they were removed from the catalog and reimported again. Do you ever use 'Synchronize Folder'?
 
You might want to check the consistency between your catalog and image folders. Go to your top image folder (ie, /Pictures) and import it. You should see Lr slowing showing all the thumbnails for all the images in the folder and subfolders. Eventually Lr will gray out the thumbnails for images in the folders that it has in the catalog. Any remaining images that are not in the catalog can then be either be imported or deleted (if they are images you previously removed from the catalog but did not delete from the file system). Doing that can achieve consistency between the catalog database and the file system image folders. Ideally both should have the same contents.
 
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