Losing Pictures When Downloading From Camera To Lightroom Classic On Mac Mini

It will also help to know which source is selected when you’re editing. For example, in the catalog, are you working in a collection such as Previous Import, or with a folder selected, or another collection or Smart Collection selected, and what is the state of the Library filter bar.

The reason that might be important is that, for example, if I am working in a Library grid view with the filter set to “images with no pick flag” and then I flag a picture as a favorite, it’s going to disappear from that filtered view even though the file itself is still fully a part of the catalog, because the image now has a flag and no longer matches the filter. Setting the filter to “None” will make all images in that source visible again. So that’s one idea as to what’s happening.

Another possibility is that the source is getting switched, so that maybe the pictures weren’t actually lost, but the selected folder or collection changed to a different one.

Please explain your workflow in more detail, because what you write does not seem to make sense. You say "I download my pictures and then establish the catalog name to store the pictures", but pictures are not stored in a catalog. The Lightroom Classic catalog is a database. It holds a reference to the images, the images themselves are stored in a folder on disk. When Lightroom 'downloads' images from your memory card to disk, it already has a catalog open, because Lightroom cannot function without a catalog.

Screen captures, or better yet a video, of the problem would be most helpful.

Also, I assume you mean "Import" and not "Download". Let me know if this is correct.