UNADJUSTEDNONRAW

[Janne Wallin]

Operating System: MacOS 10.13
Exact Lightroom Version (Help menu > System Info): LR Classic 2015.12 and LR CC 1.0 (20170919-1412-ccb76bd)
It seems that at least 2200 of my original photos from 2017 seem to be lost and replaced by thumbnails called UNADJUSTEDNONRAW_THUMB_ (etc). I certainly did not rename them! In Lightroom Classic they appear in pairs where one is a thumbnail of the original that seem to be lost, and one appears to be a thumbnail of a thumbnail. In Lightroom CC (new version) I can only see the thumbnail of a thumbnail version. WHAT’S GOING ON? Where are the originals??? I cannot find them on my external hard drive where I usually store them and I cannot view the originals in either of the two LR versions.
Please advice.
Best,
Janne

 

[Johan Elzenga]

That doesn't sound like Lightroom did that. Have you been experimenting with other raw-software?

 

[Janne Wallin]

After starting to upload my pictures to the cloud through LT CC (cloud), I saw a read triangle on the Adobe Creative Cloud icon in the app bar on top of the screen. When I clicked on it I was directed to Resources and Files. When I click on Files there was a very long list of folders with a text on each one say something like the synchronization had failed. There was a button named 'reset' which I clicked on believing it would reset the pictures not yet synchronized. Is this the core of the problem? Is there any hope of retrieving the originals from somewhere up in the cloud?

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Possibly. You say you 'uploaded your pictures to the cloud'. How did you do that? Did you use 'Migrate Lightroom Catalog' from Lightroom CC? If so, your original files should still be on your local disk(s), because Lightroom CC makes a copy of the original images during migration. Do you have a recent backup copy of your Lightroom Classic catalog?

 

[Janne Wallin]

Whoops! I find too many catalogues including backups spread all over the place in different folders. I'll hold Laura Shue's hand and use her spring cleaning-video to go through my catalogue collection.

 

[Janne Wallin]

When I started the LR CC cloud version I clicked the + sign in the left panel to synchronize my originals from an external disc. Bottom line: I definitely haven't renamed hundreds of originals to UNADJUSTEDNONRAW_thumb_ ....etc.' Not to mention photos renamed to "aDfAvds%Tziww38nl….etc…._thumb_3ca.jpg" And I have not asked LR to make hundreds of 'facetile' photos, some kind of face recognition thumbs, it seems. If I search for 'facetile' on Adobe Support page it comes up with nothing! One more thing, According to LR Classic I have 58153 photos in the most recent catalogue. If I open a backup catalogue from before 17-10-19 when I started the new LR CC cloud version, I have 49401 photos. (Accordning to LR CC cloud version catalogue I have some 25000 photos but that is because I stopped the import synchronization process when I noticed the LR trolls ravages.) Do I need to add that I am extremely frustrated.

 

[Jim Wilde]

When you originally clicked on "Add Photos" (the "+" sign), did you just select a single top-level folder (if so, which one), or did you add one folder at a time?

When you open the backup catalog, does it report any missing images? Are any of the folders showing the "?" which would indicate that they're missing?

I know you're frustrated, but we need more information about what you're actually seeing in the current LR Classic catalog. Some screenshots would be helpful. Also, again in the current Classic catalog, could you run the Library>Find All Missing Photographs command, and report the number of missing images.

 

[Janne Wallin]

- I added about half a dozen subfolders and some of them including sub subfolders. The count in the top left panel 'Alla foton' (all photos) says 25,638 but the count on each subfolder indicate a summery of some 10,000 photos.
- The backup catalog didn't report any missing images.
- Yes, the backup catalog in LR Classic have seven folders with question marks
- The Library>Find All Missing Photographs command reported 579 missing images, most of which were iPhone pictures but some also Nikon D7200 and Canon Power Shot. They had date marks between 2016-02-21 - 2017-06-17
- I enclose a number of screen shots
- Just let me add that I'm VERY grateful for your commitment and help in trying to sort out where the problem(s) are and what to do about it.
Best regards,
Janne

 

[Janne Wallin]

Screen shots attachments.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

I see a lot of screenshots that unfortunately tell me nothing. They tell me that you have multiple (some possibly older) catalogs and where these catalog(s) are. And that your original images (at least the ones shown) are not renamed. Can you add some screenshots that actually show the problem?

 

[Jim Wilde]

Doing a google search, it seems as all those strange files that you now see are in fact created by the Apple Photos app. So I'm guessing, stressing guessing, that those files are somewhere on your hard drive inside one or more of those half-dozen folders that you added to LRCC, and because they are in fact jpegs LRCC will import them if you simply clicked on the "Add xxxx Photos" button on the main import screen without realising what was going to happen.
Once "imported" into LRCC they are of course automatically uploaded into the cloud, and from there back down into your other connected apps, e.g. LR Classic. Which explains why you see them all in Classic, though I can't see any way that they would/could replace existing image files. Depending on the setting in the Classic>Preferences>Lightroom CC tab, those strange files will have been added to your hard drive either in the default location or in the specified location if you had set one.

I think first you need to deal with those files, getting them out of Classic and the cloud, then concentrate of the "missing files". If I was in your position, I think I would first filter on them in Classic, select them all and Remove>delete from disk. That gets them out of your Lightroom desktop-based file system, AND will remove them from the cloud as well. Then you can start looking into the missing files, but you first need to do that clean-up.

Going forward, assuming you want to resume the task of uploading all your images into LRCC, I think you first have to "sanitise" your image folder system to ensure that you only have in that system the image files that you are interested in, i.e. you need to find a way to stop all those stray files being added.

Before starting any of that though, I'd ask Johan if he has any further suggestions, or perhaps even a better way of dealing with this situation.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Jim and I had the same thought! I was just thinking that perhaps you selected the Apple Photos library as one of the folders to import. Because that is a 'package' (a folder that is treated as a file by the Finder), Lightroom could look inside it and import all the Photos previews and thumbnails (which are jpegs) as new images. They definitely will not have replaced anything in Lightroom however, they can only have been added as new images. So what you need to do is simply delete all of them. I would indeed do this from Lightroom Classic, because that is the fastest way and deletes them from the entire Lightroom ecosystem.

 

[Janne Wallin]

Jim and Johan,
Thank you very much for your insights and your suggestions. I'll follow your advice plus do some clean-up of my catalog(s). If there are remaining issues after that I will let you know and hope that you still have energy to do some follow-up.
Again, thanks a lot!!