Photo's offline or missing...

[haneysphotography]

I'm in trouble!
I edited an entire wedding of 8'5 photos in Lightroom and after I began to export the images, while I was waiting for it to finish, I decided to clean out my hard drive a bit. Well, I deleted the originals from the wedding out of my file because I have them burned on DVD's and didn't want them cluttering my computer. Suddenly the export stopped. I understand what I did, the folders I deleted were the originals that I was working off of in lightroom. Once they were deleted, lightroom couldn't complete the export. And yes, like an idiot, I emptied my trash. The wedding still appears in the previous import folder, edited and all, but I can't export them. I can't recover the originals from the trash. Help! Is there anything I can do to refrain from having to start over?

 

[Brad Snyder]

haney's, first, don't panic. Second, welcome to the forums. Third, don't reimport the images trying to solve the problem.

So, the image files are gone from the location to where they were imported with Lr?They're also gone from trash/recycle?

You do have the images on backup media? You're going to have to copy the images from the backup media to the location to the exact folders where Lr expects them to be, with the name Lr expects them to have. That may or may not be complex, depending on how creative you were with the import file/folder structure.

If that's hideously complex, you may be able to short cut around it, by creating a brand new Lr catalog, and duplicating your import process. Close that catalog, and reopen the broken catalog, and it should see the 'new' images where it had expected the old.

Try both these experiments, with just an image or two, don't go off the deep-end with all the images, until you're satisfied you're getting the results you want.

Report/ask back, myself or somebody, will be here to contribute......
Helpful info will be file types, OS, PC type, normal workflow info

If you think you'll be participating frequently, it's helpful to readers and contributors alike, if you build a signature block with pertinent computer and software specs. Camera and personal stuff (maybe a preferred name?) too if you like. Click 'User CP' at top right of forum.