Missing Photos Questions

[yleibu]

Lightroom Version

9.4

Operating System

1. macOS 10.13 High Sierra

Hello,



Hello

I’m a LR Classic user running version 9.4 on Mac OS 10.13 High Sierra.
I cannot update LR Classic because my 2010 iMac does not support higher (more recent) OS versions.
I store my photos in LR folders together with the LR catalog and settings on an external disk. My LR Classic catalog contains some 28k photos of which about 8K are listed as missing. These photos are presumably scattered on various places on the iMac’s internal disk.
Since I cannot possibly relink individually 8K photos to LR, my questions are:
-Will the missing photos be found if I reimport the originals from the internal hard disk into Lightroom ?
-Will this import create duplicates? Can this be avoided?
Thank you for any help.

 

[Conrad Chavez]

Since I cannot possibly relink individually 8K photos to LR

One very important thing to try first is to see if large chunks of those photos are missing together. For example, is there an entire folder, or better yet an entire branch of folders marked missing?

If you find many missing photos in the same folder or set of subfolders that are missing, then the next thing to do is follow that folder tree up to the highest parent folder that’s marked with a broken link. Now, if you can relink just that parent folder, there is a pretty good chance that all missing photos in its subfolders will become relinked. In this way you may be able to relink hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of missing photos in one step.

This is worth trying because it isn’t common for eight thousand images to each become unlinked (e.g. moved) individually and independently of other images in the same folders. Chances are, entire folders or subfolder trees got cut off together at some point. If so, that would make it possible to relink those whole subfolder trees at once through their parent folder.

In short, you’ll create too much work for yourself if you start relinking from the bottom up (file by file, eight thousand times). You might get this done much more quickly by first trying to relink the highest parent folder with a broken link. Then work your way down, picking off the (hopefully far fewer) leftover broken links.

 

[PhilBurton]

Why not search out all the photos on the Mac's internal disk, then COPY them to your external drive in just one giant folder. Then do the missing photos process. That would simplify locating missing photos. As you locate photos, then move them into your preferred folder organization. At the end of the day if some photos are still missing, then you can re-import j ust those photos.

Comments anyone?

 

[yleibu]

Thank you all for your prompt teplies and suggestions. I greatly appreciate them.