Problem with Albums

[MichaelEvans713]

Lightroom Version

4.1

Operating System

1. macOS 11.0 Big Sur

I run Lightroom on several devices, including an iMac, a MacBook and an iPad. I have been trying to load all of my photos into albums and use the "Not in Any Album" filter to identify any orphan photos. This functionality has stopped working on the iMac, but still works on the MacBook.

I do have a synched copy of Lightroom Classic installed on the iMac, but I very rarely look at this at all nowadays.

Can anyone tell me how to restore this functionality?

Michael

 

[Jim Wilde]

What exactly happens when you try to use that filter on the iMac?

 

[MichaelEvans713]

On the iMac, if I run the filter on a group of photos, say all those taken in 2015 and ask to be shown all those that are not in any album, then it does not return any. Running the same query on the MacBook may return several thousand. The album structures on both machines look identical.

If I select a photo from the iMac which has not shown up in the "Not in any Album" filter and then look at information then no albums are shown.

 

[Jim Wilde]

Does the same thing happen if you run the command against the All Photos set, rather than a specific year subset? And is the All Photos total the same on both the iMac and the MacBook?

 

[MichaelEvans713]

I have just tried this. Both computers are showing 77,310 total photos.

When I run the filter for 'Not in any album' the totals returned are:

iMac - 1,846 photos
Macbook - 38,511 photos

I think the MacBook is correct.

 

[Jim Wilde]

Well, it certainly sounds like something is wrong on the iMac. You could perhaps try resetting the preferences file on the iMac (press and hold Shift+Alt/Opt when launching the Lightroom app), then see if that changes anything (also make sure you set the preferences back the way you had them).
If resetting the prefs doesn't fix the issue, if that was happening on one of my systems I'd reluctantly conclude that the local library on that system needs to be reset. Basically, deleting the local library will cause it to be recreated automatically from the master cloud catalog, so all you lose is the time it takes for all the thumbnails/proxies and catalog file to re-download. But before doing that you need to consider what your preferences are set to, particularly on the Local Storage tab, i.e. do you have either of the local storage options (smart previews or originals) enabled? If the smart previews option is checked, the length of time to re-populate the local library will take quite a bit longer as there'd be 77k smart previews to download (somewhere between 75GB and 150GB). If you have the "store a local copy of all originals" also checked, I'd assume that these are not stored in the local library but are instead stored on a separate drive.....in which case they'll not need to be re-downloaded provided the location in the Preferences>Local Storage tab is still set to the external drive (resetting the prefs earlier would have changed that back to the default location, so make sure it's changed back!

However, before doing that deletion it might be worth hanging on to see if any other user has a better idea about what might be wrong and how to fix it. I know that @Victoria Bampton is a heavy Lightroom user, so she may have seen this problem in the past.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

If resetting the prefs doesn't fix the issue, if that was happening on one of my systems I'd reluctantly conclude that the local library on that system needs to be reset. Basically, deleting the local library will cause it to be recreated automatically from the master cloud catalog

Yes, I'm leaning the same way. Silly one first though... sync isn't paused, is it? And is the iMac definitely on 4.1?

 

[MichaelEvans713]

Hi guys and sorry for the slight delay in getting back to you.

First of all I can confirm that the iMac is on 4.1.

I have now gone through all of the steps recommended by Jim and the problem persists. I have also lodged a support call with Adobe and am awaiting feedback from them. In essence they suggested exactly the same steps as Jim and took control of the machine to execute them.

So still none the wiser and any other suggestions gratefully received.

 

[MichaelEvans713]

Sync is definitely active. I have just watched a photo loaded elsewhere appear.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Let us know what Adobe says, and if they can't fix it, we'll try helping you reset the local cache.

 

[MichaelEvans713]

OK, Adobe have just sent me a link to set up a session, so I will let you know how it goes/