Recovery of Deleted Photos

[Immajin]

I am using Lightroom 1.4.

Amazing program but I have an ENORMOUS problem.

I deleted a folder of photos after doing all the corrections but efore saving it to a catalogue.

Though I saved my original selections to a catalogue partway through the job, I did not save to catalogue, the file that had all the final image adjustments and I mistakenly deleted the whole collection from my lightroom directory.

Thus - all my final corrections also were deleted.

Does anyone know how to recover deleted work? If you can help me, I would GREATLY appreciate it as it will save me TWO DAYS of work to redo the file.

Thanks

Asher

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Oh dear Asher, sorry to hear you're having trouble!

Can we just clarify the wording slightly...? When you say 'I did not save to catalogue', do you mean Save to Metadata (ctrl-s) or Export as Catalog?

Lightroom stores all of your adjustments in a catalog as you go along - but are you saying that you deleted them from the catalog that you were working on at the time?

Sorry if I'm not understanding correctly.

 

[Immajin]

You question is good.
I did not export to a catalogue.
I selected the photos I wanted from the entire shoot.
I then exported them to their own directory (folder) OUTSIDE of Lightroom.
I then imported my selections directry into LR and began doing the corrections.

A week after I completed the project, I started cleaning up my LR.
I deleted the folder within which the tweaked photos were located.

Is there any chance of retrieving them?

Many thanks.

Asher
[email protected]

 

[Brad Snyder]

You question is good.
I did not export to a catalogue.
I selected the photos I wanted from the entire shoot.
When you say selected, had the photos been imported to LR at this point?
Or did you do your selection outside of LR? What file format are the originals?

I then exported them to their own directory (folder) OUTSIDE of Lightroom.
[COLOR=#''''ff]What file format did you export? When you say outside of LR, do you mean you chose a separate folder location or something?[/COLOR]

I then imported my selections directry into LR and began doing the corrections.
[COLOR=#''''ff]Again, what format were the files in? [/COLOR]

A week after I completed the project, I started cleaning up my LR.
I deleted the folder within which the tweaked photos were located.

[COLOR=#''''ff]From what you say, the 'tweaked' photos exist only in the LR catalog. Unless you're referring to the source files which were imported.[/COLOR]

Is there any chance of retrieving them?

[COLOR=#''''ff]Possibly, a great deal depends on the answers to the above questions.
Particularly upon what file types you were using at each stage.
Are you able to see the corrected files in LR?
Some of the problem we're having in figuring out what you did, is that some of your language is ambivalent with respect to LR's methods. For instance can you describe each step of the way, what you did, in a little more detail.[/COLOR]

LR uses a very specific terminology for certain functions, and in many cases apparent synonyms mean completely different things technically. This frequently causes confusion in just such conversations as this. Hence, all the nit-picky little questions.

 

[Immajin]

Hello Brad and thank you for replying to my request for help.
I will explain more clearly to you and the others who have responded to my appeal.

I shoot NIKON D3'' in RAW format.
Nikon's RAW compression is called .NEF

1. I imported all of the images from my CF cards intop my computer into a folder (directory) that I called TX-3.
2. I then dragged TX-3 directory into LR in order to begin importing the images. I tagged the directory with appropriate keywords and pressed import.
3. Once all were imported, I reviewed ALL the images and selected the best ones by clicking on "Quick Selection" for the images I wanted.
4. Once I had selected all of the images (they were all now in "Quick Selection", I saved them to a new catalogue on my computer.
5. I then went to the selected images and renamed the folder they were in "Final Selections Tweaked" and imported them into LR.
6. I then cropped all the images to 13X18, did the enhancements I saw fit.
7. I then created a Slideshow of the Tweaked images and (but never saved the slideshow) and called my customer to view his images bofore I would print them.
8. My customer loved my work, and I became busy on another project.
9. When I returned to LR a few days later, I removed some of the folders that I no longer needed and unfortunately I mistakenly deleted the Tweaked folder.
1'. At no time did I actually save the images after I had tweaked. I had only a directory called "tweaked". This, I explaioned above.

Is there any way to recover the work I did but that I deleted?

I hope I am cleared now.

Asher

 

[Brad Snyder]

Asher, I'm still not completely clear. Have you lost the NEF files too, or just the adjustments you made in LR?

Hello Brad and thank you for replying to my request for help.
I will explain more clearly to you and the others who have responded to my appeal.

I shoot NIKON D3'' in RAW format.
Nikon's RAW compression is called .NEF

1. I imported all of the images from my CF cards intop my computer into a folder (directory) that I called TX-3.
2. I then dragged TX-3 directory into LR in order to begin importing the images. I tagged the directory with appropriate keywords and pressed import.
3. Once all were imported, I reviewed ALL the images and selected the best ones by clicking on "Quick Selection" for the images I wanted.
4. Once I had selected all of the images (they were all now in "Quick Selection", I saved them to a new catalogue on my computer.
5. I then went to the selected images and renamed the folder they were in "Final Selections Tweaked" and imported them into LR.
6. I then cropped all the images to 13X18, did the enhancements I saw fit.
7. I then created a Slideshow of the Tweaked images and (but never saved the slideshow) and called my customer to view his images bofore I would print them.
8. My customer loved my work, and I became busy on another project. [COLOR=#''''ff][/COLOR]
9. When I returned to LR a few days later, I removed some of the folders that I no longer needed and unfortunately I mistakenly deleted the Tweaked folder.
How you did this is the key, I think. I'm still not entirely clear about 4 & 5 above, but we'll let that go for now. When you deleted the Tweaked folder, did you do that in LR? By right clicking the folder in the Folder Browser Left Hand Browser, and selecting Delete ... ?
1'. At no time did I actually save the images after I had tweaked. I had only a directory called "tweaked". This, I explaioned above.

Is there any way to recover the work I did but that I deleted?

I hope I am cleared now.

Asher

If I understand what you did, you deleted the Tweaked folder in LR. In this case, it's likely that your NEF files are still on disk in the tweaked folder (and possibly still in the TX-3 folder), but that the work you did in LR is lost. The exception would be if you had enabled writing XMP sidecar files in the catalog settings menu or saved the metadata with ctrl-S. If that were the case, you could simply reimport the NEF/XMP pairs and be up and running.

Next Step:
If you allowed LR to make the automatic backups at start-up time, you can navigate to the backup location, using Finder/Explorer, search for the CatalogName.lrcat file (substitute the name of your catalog) and double-click on it. The catalog should open. If your work appears intact there, report back here, and we'll help you get the NEFs sync'd back-up.

 

[Immajin]

Hi Brad,

Thank you again for your replies.
I am relentless and Saturday night, sat down ot my computer, resolved not to get up until I somehow figured something out.
I searched my computer for all the catalogue directories from LR and plugged them back into the program.
I eventually hit on the right one, even though in that catalogue directory, the many folders inside were empty, but there was on CAD DB file of several megabytes that I imagine talked back to LR and did the restoration of my images.
I cannot tell you how thrilled I am.

What I will now do is learn the preferences of the program better and set LR to do regular backups so that if, (the BIG if), I ever repeat this mistake (not very likely) of if something else occurs, I will NEVER be back in the position of having to find my work.

Again, many thanks for your time and efforts.

Asher
IMMAJIN

 

[Victoria Bampton]

That's great to hear Asher!

One suggestion - in preferences, turn on 'automatically write to xmp'. That way, should you ever delete files from Lightroom again, but not from disc, most of your adjustments will also be safely stored in sidecar xmp files.