preserving edits on missing pictures

[guido.coza]

Hi All
I stupidly moved some pictures outside lightroom and the catalog is a mess. Even so I can see pictures in a specific folder in "FINDER" LR seems not to see them as the same I'm looking for.
IF i would go and say "find missing pictures" LR imports the found pictures to its catalog and disrigards previous edits done to the files,right!??
If I say "sync folder" it also discards pictures and does reimport not found or moved ones.
How do I get my catalog up to scratch without loosing edits to pictures done already?
Is there an option to exclude folders when "find all missing pictures" (files on a different mac will be taken of LR and edits lost)

 

[Johan Elzenga]

There is a menu to find all missing pictures, but that only finds them in the catalog. It does not search for them on the disk.

The way to solve this is to go to the folders panel in Lightroom. You will see the missing folders with a question mark and their name in italics. Right-click on such a folder and choose 'Find Missing Folder'. In the dialog that follows you can navigate to the new location of that folder on your disk. Select it to 'reconnect' the folder with the Lightroom catalog. If you do this on a top folder, all the missing subfolders inside that top folder will also be reconnected, so do this at the highest level in the folder hierarchy.

Reconnecting folders this way will preserve all the edits.

 

[guido.coza]

Thanks Johann, That is what I did to a large extent. Sadly it does not show in the folder panel if only a few pics in a folder are missing.
As said over time I must have moved deleted quite a few pics and don't know at all, how up-to-date the catalog is. In the past I used the top most folder( my Pictures) and LR checked all 60k, BUT i lost all edits on re-imports/moved pics.
Do I understand you right I have to go folder by folder (time/event based) and than try to find missing pics manually?

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

The key is to not import again, but to get the image back where Lightroom expects it, either by telling it the right location or moving the found image back where it belongs.

If you remove and re-import the image (absent having written XMP file data) the image's edits go away.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Thanks Johann, That is what I did to a large extent. Sadly it does not show in the folder panel if only a few pics in a folder are missing.
As said over time I must have moved deleted quite a few pics and don't know at all, how up-to-date the catalog is. In the past I used the top most folder( my Pictures) and LR checked all 60k, BUT i lost all edits on re-imports/moved pics.
Do I understand you right I have to go folder by folder (time/event based) and than try to find missing pics manually?

If only a few pics are missing, your only option is to reconnect them one by one. If you know where a missing image is, then you can update its link in a similar way as with a missing folder. Click on the exclamation mark and choose to find it manually.

If you don't know where it is, then your only choice is to remove it from the catalog. But then you can obviously also not import it again.

 

[guido.coza]

thanks Johann,thanks ferguson
One last problem. what if the opposite happens? I have all of a sudden pictures in a folder that should not be there ( Library > sync folder>import new photo) Firstly I do not know which pictures are these( when I say "ok" it is too late and edits are lost) and I do not exactly know in which folder they where before. Why is there not the same dialog box"show missing pics) for the other way around, pics that are there but have not been added yet??
Any work-around???

 

[Johan Elzenga]

When Lightroom says there are new pictures in a folder, you can safely import them via the synchronize folder option. No edits can get lost if you do that. These images are either images you deleted from the catalog earlier (so the edits are already gone), or they may end up as duplicates. In that case you can simply delete them again.

 

[guido.coza]

sorry for being such a pain. I just checked a folder in finder. It has 65 pictures in it. When I check the folder in LR it has 1 pic in. After "sync folder" it imported 3 pics. Even after sync was completed only 4 pics show. I looked for the remaining 61pics in LR and it cant find it. However if I untick "dont import suspected duplicates" the pictures show "greyed" in the import window????
When I look for the pic via file nr the picture shows missing!
I hope I make sense!!!

 

[Johan Elzenga]

If Lightroom doesn't want to import these pictures, it's possibly because they are already imported. Another possibility is that these pictures are raw files from a camera that isn't supported in your version of Lightroom.

 

[guido.coza]

Hi Johan, don't know if it is a bug, but pictures where not in catalog and not from a unknown camera. I did look in 'All pictures" with the file number, and tried 5 different pics, none was showing. Only when I unticked 'dont import suspected duplicates" did they import and show??

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Hi Johan, don't know if it is a bug, but pictures where not in catalog and not from a unknown camera. I did look in 'All pictures" with the file number, and tried 5 different pics, none was showing. Only when I unticked 'dont import suspected duplicates" did they import and show??

Lightroom is intelligent enough to often know that a picture has already been imported even when it has been renamed as well. Good chance that these pictures were indeed imported, but because they were renamed you could not find them manually. The fact that they do import when you uncheck 'Don't import suspected duplicates' confirms that scenario.