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Flatiron71
Participant
September 9, 2024
Question

Imported photos missing after catalog became corrupted and LR created a new one

  • September 9, 2024
  • 1 reply
  • 306 views

Hi everyone. First time posting here. I have LR Classic 13.5.1 on my laptop. I imported about 2000 photos from a shoot a few weeks ago and have been picking my way through editing them. I have opened and closed LR multiple times since the initial import with no problems. The raw files reside on a Synology NAS RAID system at home that I connect to through my wifi router. Last week I had to travel across country so I thought I'd take the time on my long flights to edit some more of the photos on my laptop using the previews. I was able to edit a couple hundred photos on the flight before the battery ran low. Everything was fine until I closed out of LR and then opened it again once I got to the hotel. When I opened it LR said the catalog was corrupted due to missing AI edit info (dont remember the exact details) and it had to create new catalog. When I opened the new catalog I noticed that it only has 1150 photos in it. I started looking into things and found that LR thinks that all photos are still there but I cannot see around 800 photos from the folder where they are supposed to be in LR. I reconnected to the NAS when I got back home - All the RAW files are present on the NAS drive. LR does not show that any photos are missing but still I cannot see/find around 800 of them. I have followed the following steps at least 4x exactly as stated in both the new catalog and the corrupted one (I can still open it).

1. In the Lightroom Library Module, on the left, under Catalog, click on All Photographs
2. Turn off all filters (Ctrl-L once or twice)
3. Turn off all stacking (Photo->Stacking->Expand All Stacks)
4. Search for at least one of these photos by file name using the Lightroom Filter Bar

.

This has not helped and I still cannot find any of the photos in LR using the filenames of any of the ones that are missing.

I have also tried syncing the folder (before reading that should not be done as it creates new copies in LR) and I still cannot pull up the missing photos anywhere. Obviously LR thinks they are somewhere in the catalog but I cannot locate them anywhere in any of the ways I've tried. I would appreciate any help as I would prefer to not start over again from scratch. Thank you you in advance.

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
Community Expert
September 9, 2024

I think you need to post a few screenshots to illustrate the problem, because what you describe what happened cannot be true. Lightroom did not create a new catalog, because if it really did that, then that catalog would be empty. It would not contain 1150 photos, but zero photos. It's unclear what catalog it did open, but it might have been an older catalog.

 

Missing images are images that are in the catalog, but where Lightroom cannot find the original in the location it has cataloged. If an image is not in the catalog at all, then Lightroom won't report it as missing, because it simply does not know that the image exists at all. This too might indicate that Lightroom somehow opened an old catalog.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
F
Flatiron71Author
Participant
September 10, 2024

Thanks for the reply Johan. I'll do my best to explain this further with screenshots.

 

1. Here is the "new" catalog (maybe not the correct term) file that was created after the original became corrupt

 

2. Here is the "old" catalog file that was corrupted. It resides in a folder that LR named Corrupted Catalogs

 

3. Here is a shot of LR showing the number of images in the folder. Notice a discrepancy of 789 files.

 

4. Here is the same folder on the NAS drive with all of the raw files in it

 

5. Here is a shot of LR if I try to import any of the photos from the same folder with All photos selected. All of the 1086 photos are dimmed out because it knows that it imported them previously.

 

6. Here is the same process with New photos selected

 

Let me know if there's something else you'd like to see.

Thanks,

SL

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
Community Expert
September 10, 2024

Right. Lightroom did not create a new catalog, it repaired the existing one. That this creates a new copy is not relevant, the new catalog should be the same as the old one. It's not impossible that the corruption caused a number of imported images not be recorded, so they are unimported again in the repaired catalog. There also could be an easier explanation. I noticed you only look at the 'number of items' in Windows Explorer to check if everything has been imported. That number of items can be misleading however. Windows Explorer will count XMP sidecar files as separate items, for example. And if you do not treat JPEG next to raw as different photos, then that too can cause a mismatch between what Lightroom reports and what you see in Explorer.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
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