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johnj84
Participating Frequently
February 24, 2018
Answered

How to recover deleted photos from Lightroom?

I accidentally deleted photos from lightroom. Unfortunately, I did a delete from disk and don't have a copy of the photos on my computer as well. Is there a way to recover the deleted photos?

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    Just Shoot Me
    Just Shoot MeCorrect answer
    Legend
    February 24, 2018

    Look in the Recycle Bin, Windows, or the Trash, Mac. Restore the images to there original folders and then reimport them into LR.

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    28 replies

    smp1940
    Participant
    October 30, 2018

    I have had a problem with deleted images not going to Trash after upgrading to Mojave. A terrific woman with Adobe fixed it.

    For whatever reason my external drive was not communicating with "Trash" so she opened the drive, added a new folder "unnamed folder" and deleted it to Trash. Voila !! Images from that drive now deleted with Lightroom go to Trash as they should.

    The external drive now talks to Trash - so the problem is not with Lightroom but with Mojave.

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      24Pictures
      24Pictures
      Participant
      May 23, 2019

      So thankful for this "problem."  I am running High Sierra and I followed your instructions, adding a folder to my external drive, trashing it, and voilà, the deleted imaged showed up in the trash can. Amazing!

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      Just Shoot Me
      Just Shoot MeCorrect answer
      Legend
      February 24, 2018

      Look in the Recycle Bin, Windows, or the Trash, Mac. Restore the images to there original folders and then reimport them into LR.

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        johnj84Author
        Participating Frequently
        February 24, 2018

        Thank you! My thrash had all the images, but I have lost all the editing. Is there a way to restore the edits I did on the photos?

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        JP Hess
        JP Hess
        Inspiring
        February 24, 2018

        No. When you delete them from the Lightroom, that removes them from the catalog, and that removes all the editing as well. It will be necessary for you to import the images again and edit them again. The same would have been true even if you had just removed them from Lightroom. Doing so removes the images from the catalog, and that removes all of the edit history for those images.

        UNLESS you have a backup catalog that you can restore that has those images in place. But then, any images that were added after that back up would not be included. And if you do have the backup catalog that you can restore, it would be well if you can restore the images to the same folder they were in before they were deleted.

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