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frankw82439774
Participating Frequently
April 21, 2017
Answered

Reimporting pictures dropped all my modifications

  • April 21, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 524 views

Hi everybody.

I've been working for days on a set of pictures, when I notced that some of them were actually not imported (but were in my folder on disc).

So I was looking for a way to import them into my current workflow.

Lightroom could not see a part of it (my Fuji X100T raw files, while it could 2 weeks ago).

Some of the pictures were grayed out (could not be reimported), while they were actually not imported yet.

So, I unchecked the checkbox "Dont import doubles", to make them available for import.

Then import them and BAM, all my changes on like 50 pictures, hours of work, everything is gone, my entire catalog is reset ! (And I'm very happy I've created a separated cataolg for this set of pictures ! )

I can't figure out a way to restore all my changes, I'm afraid I've lost hours of work, it's really like it's a brand new catalog, but it sees my Nikon files, and still not my  Fuji's...

Does anybody know what happens ? if I did something wrong or if there is a way to restore my changes ? (kind of a global history of the catalog ?)

Many thanks in advance

Franklin

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer johnrellis

Is there a safe way then to re-import pictures I've deleted from the Catalog ?


Is there a safe way then to re-import pictures I've deleted from the Catalog ?

If you set the option Catalog > Metadata > Automatically Write Changes Into XMP, then LR will write changes to a photo's metadata and develop settings from the catalog back into the photo's metadata on disk (into .xmp sidecars for camera raw files, directly into the files for DNG, JPEG, TIFF, PSD).    If you reimport the photo into the catalog, you'll recover the changes to metadata and develop settings.

Setting this option is not a substitute for frequent catalog backups, since there are many things in a catalog that don't get written to XMP (e.g. stacking, membership in collections, custom folder orders, books, publish service state, etc.).  But it does provide secondary protection against human error such as accidental deletion of a photo, backups that have failed for some reason (a common occurrence, more often due to human error than hardware or software failure), and catalog corruption due to software or hardware failure (a very rare occurrence).

For most users, there is no impact on interactive performance by setting this option. It does have a downside of modifying the photo file itself whenever you make a change to the metadata of a non-raw, so when you do large-scale batch changes to metadata, your photo backup will end up having back up all the changed photo files.

Personally, I keep that option set and I make sure my backups are working correctly.

1 reply

JP Hess
JP Hess
Inspiring
April 21, 2017

Do you have any recent backups that you can restore that have most of the work that was done before you reimported?

F
frankw82439774Author
Participating Frequently
April 21, 2017

Hi JimHess,

I don't know how, but I managed to get them back, the behavior wwas really weird, I don't know what happened, but everything is there, and LR sees my .RAF now, so I'll take a backup, update lightroom and get back to work

dj_paige
dj_paige
Legend
April 21, 2017

For anyone reading along, re-importing your photos will cause Lightroom to treat them as brand new photos that is has never seen before, and your edits will disappear (unless you specifically saved the edits to the file's metadata). Re-importing photos is never a good idea. Don't do it.

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