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Malthouse Photography
Malthouse Photography
Known Participant
July 14, 2023
Answered

Identifying corrupt images

  • July 14, 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 4081 views

I'm using PC with Win11 and Lightroom Classic 12.4.

Most of my images are well looked after and just fine. I've got backups all over the place and all happy.

There are a small number of family images in my catalogue which, over the years, have been bunged from one drive to another and not looked after quite as well. I've noticed that one or two of them are corrupt in various ways - either the RAW file shows an exclamation mark which, when clicked, says "Lightroom has encountered problems reading this photo. You will not be able to make adjustments to the photo." (These are mostly CR2 files). And a few others are corrupt in that you can see a bit of the file in Loupe view but a lot more of it is clearly damaged in the view.

None of these images merits "recovery". 

I've run "find missing files" and there are none missing.

I've not run "Validate DNG files" as they are not DNG files but are CR2 files.

Is there any way to quickly identify "damaged" files so that I may simply delete them from the catalog and from the hard drive?

If not I'll go through manually as there are under 800 to look at in total.

I know similar threads exist on this subject which are for older LR versions. Some say corrupt sectors on the drive, some blame LR versions. I honestly don't worry which. I wouldn't be surprised if it was old hard drives had corruption and I've copied files over - I've not looked at these old family images in some years so I won't miss them if they go: there are enough others that are OK to keep a sense of what is there. I just want to get rid of the damaged files so they don't affect my catalog in future.

    Correct answer johnrellis

    You can quickly identify possibly corrupt files by filtering for Metadata Status: Unknown. That will include missing files and videos as well.  See here for details:

    https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/besch%C3%A4digte-dateien-im-lightroom-katalog-finden/m-p/13844280#M324711

    3 replies

    D
    DSal2020
    Participant
    February 1, 2025

    Corrupted images are very hard to detect and remove. I am using Duplicate Image Finder and luckily it can detect and list those automaticaly. Take a look at this article: https://www.mindgems.com/article/find-and-remove-corrupted-image-files/

    Please note that you have to use the SIMILARITY mode in order for the images to be loaded and inspected for corruptions.

    Give it a try - they have a free demo and the tool is ridiculously cheap for what it has to offer.

     

    C.Cella
    C.Cella
    Inspiring
    July 15, 2023

    You can use the "Validator" Plug-in to check for corruption in the future.

     

    Validator on Adobe Exchange.

     

    LrC occasionally can't read files but it doesn't mean they are corrupted.

     

    .

    C.Cella
    C.Cella
    Inspiring
    July 15, 2023

    @johnrellis

    Due to a bug LrC doesn't detect metada status changes UNLESS the photo(s) is/are displayed.

     

    Months ago I have edited a photo in ACR.

    I never, ever displayed that photo in LrC and at today the "Metadata has been changed" smart collection I set didn't find that photo.

     

    In my experience only your "Any Filter" can actually find photos with modified metadata without displaying them first.

     

    .

    dj_paige
    dj_paige
    Legend
    July 14, 2023

    I've noticed that one or two of them are corrupt in various ways - either the RAW file shows an exclamation mark which, when clicked, says "Lightroom has encountered problems reading this photo. You will not be able to make adjustments to the photo." (These are mostly CR2 files). And a few others are corrupt in that you can see a bit of the file in Loupe view but a lot more of it is clearly damaged in the view.

     

    There is a recent "bug" (at least I think it is a bug) where files will show that exclamation point icon in a circle and it says "Lightroom has encountered problems reading this photo..." and if you re-start Lightroom Classic, the exclamation point icon goes away and the photo can be used.

     

    When you talk about Loupe view, is that the Develop Module loupe view or the Library Module loupe view? If Library Module, this could be a corrupted preview file rather than a corrupted original. Try selecting the photo and then Library->Previews->Build 1:1 previews. If Develop Module, then the original is corrupted, and you should restore it from backups.

     

    Is there any way to quickly identify "damaged" files so that I may simply delete them from the catalog and from the hard drive?

     

    I suppose that depends on what you mean by "quickly". I would say NO, you have to look through the photos and find them visually.

    johnrellis
    johnrellisCorrect answer
    Legend
    July 15, 2023

    You can quickly identify possibly corrupt files by filtering for Metadata Status: Unknown. That will include missing files and videos as well.  See here for details:

    https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/besch%C3%A4digte-dateien-im-lightroom-katalog-finden/m-p/13844280#M324711

      Malthouse Photography
      Malthouse PhotographyAuthor
      Known Participant
      July 15, 2023

      @johnrellis When I posted a few minutes ago there were no "unknown" files. But several were "has been changed" so I selected them all and synchronised metadata... now the "unknown" ones are popping up as it tries to update them. As they do I'm selecting and deleting from disk. I think that's therefore the solution for me.

      Thank you. That will save me some time in culling the images.

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