Transferring between Mac and PC

[Rbgflyer]

Lightroom Version Number

LR 6.14

Operating System

1. Windows 10
2. macOS 10.13 High Sierra

I have LR 6 installed on two Macs and a PC (Surface Pro). Use PC for travel. Copied directories (Lightroom and LightroomMasters) from Mac to external drive, pasted onto PC. Most files, folders and collections appear on PC and function. ALL the pictures transferred (can be viewed directly without Lightroom). However, some of the folders on the PC are dimmed and show no pictures (count = 0). The Mac folder structure is on the left, the PC folder structure is on the right.

Notice that both have 2,102 pictures for Banda (spice islands), but the sub folders on the PC are dimmed. I can see all the Banda pictures by opening the parent folder (Banda), but no pictures in the sub folders on the PC (works fine on the Mac).

Do I have a preferences setting problem? Scratching my head, since I'm fairly new. Outside lightroom all the pictures are physically in the correct directories and totally available, which makes me suspect a LR setting.

Sorry about the newbie question, but would sure like some advice.

Bob

 

[Johan Elzenga]

It looks like that on the PC these pictures are inside the parent folder ('Banda'), not inside the subfolders. Have you checked that in Windows Explorer?

 

[Rbgflyer]

Thanks for the suggestion. Just checked. The pictures are on the PC in the subfolders under Banda. Windows explorer shows no pictures directly in Banda, just lists the subfolders. Then, when I click on CEPHALOPODS, for example, it shows the 14 pictures in that folder. So the physical file structure on the hard drive seems correct.

 

[clee01l]

It may be a permissions issue on the Surface Pro. Check the read/write permissions for those subfolders.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Thanks for the suggestion. Just checked. The pictures are on the PC in the subfolders under Banda. Windows explorer shows no pictures directly in Banda, just lists the subfolders. Then, when I click on CEPHALOPODS, for example, it shows the 14 pictures in that folder. So the physical file structure on the hard drive seems correct.

Do the image show correctly in Lightroom, or do they have the 'missing image' exclamation mark in the upper right corner of the thumbnail? If they have that exclamation mark, then this means that Lightroom expects these images to be in the parent folder. In reality they are not there, but the (sub)folders are where they are supposed to be, so they don't show as missing.

Remember that Lightroom is a catalog application, not a browser. It does not show you the current state of affairs, but the state it remembers from when the images were imported.

 

[Rbgflyer]

The pics show up in the parent folder, no "missing image" mark in the upper right. As I go through them, the Video files show the thumbnail and a message box says "The video file is missing" but all the still photos are available.

If I drill down into the sub folders, the count is 0 and the screen says "no photo selected" since the folder is empty to Lightroom. Someone asked if I had rights to the folders... yes. I'm the administrator. It is baffling. In other areas the subfolder structure is the same and are populated correctly, which seems to rule out a directory hierarchy problem.. Baffling.

I copy the Lightroom directory and the LightroomMasters directory onto an SSD external drive from one MacBookPro. 37,000 pics, about 300GB of data. It copies nicely into another MacBookPro. The SSD drive is formatted ExFat so a Windows pc can read it. Using the same SSD I transfer the same files to a Surface Pro. All seems well, LR recognizes the structure, opens fine, and most of the pics and catalogs are fully populated, works perfectly on the receiving MacBookPro. On the PC, most of the pics work fine. just a few showing the above problem. Not consistent. Very puzzling.

Would like to solve it, convenient to be able to take the LR files on road trips. But, aside from the intellectual challenge, I could live without it. Sure would be nice to know what'a wrong, though.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

I have seen a similar problem here: Photos not showing in library folders | Adobe Community

 

[Rbgflyer]

That seems to be at least part of the problem. My PC directory has a small bullet next to Banda-, suggesting it is not a good file name or it might include an invalid character (like <). That would explain why just that directory is affected. I'll research that thread. Thank you for the info... I'll post whatever I find so maybe others can be helped.

 

[Rbgflyer]

The directory name was the problem. On the Mac it has a space after the name. The PC truncated the trailing space, so the directory names no longer matched, so the catalog relationships were broken. Removed the trailing space and LR saw all the subdirectories and their pics. Thanks for the help.