P: Fails to import photos and stalls out on macOS 10.15 Catalina

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

When attempting to import photos from my Nikon D850, Lightroom Classic states it is importing photos but status bar is not progressing and no photos are being imported. Restarted system and program along with camera and still has issue. This is all been occurring with macOS Catalina 10.15.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

No corporate IT person would EVER install a ".0" version of an OS on a work computer. I hope that's your "test Mac"? I'm waiting for 10.15.2 or .3, and I was a Mac IT pro for 25 years.

There's no version of Onyx for Catalina yet, otherwise I'd suggest running that when it's available: https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

How are you importing Zach? From the hard drive? Or via a card reader? Or direct from the camera?

[jean-jacquesf85400745]

Could be an issue with the card reader. it happened to me once. i thought there was a problem with lightroom. Figured out that my card reader was damaged and had been pretty slow. It would just keep hanging. Changed it and everything went fine.

[GoldingD]

1 of 2
Venting

Why are so many Adobe customers going all first implementer and upgrading to Catalina v1 

Adobe has publicly recommended we do not do this

Various Tech Reporters have recommended waiting. 

Standard industry (I.T.) practice is never ever install v1 on critical computers

Congrats, you are now an Apple Beta round 2 tester

[GoldingD]

2 of 2
Actual inquiry

1 Photo shoot

Is this particular photo shoot a larger set of photographs to import than normal. Importing 1000 photos takes more time than 200, and the difference may not be linear.

Is this particular photo shoot involving RAW as opposed to in camera JPEG

2. Hard drive space

The hard drive your catalog is on. How much space remains free? Needs to be at least 20%

Did that upgrade eat up lots of start disk space and not free it up after the upgrade?

[GoldingD]

Bonus inquiry. You “restarted the system and program along along with the camera”

Are you connecting the  camera to the computer to import those photos? 

Try a card reader

Would not be at all surprised if Catalina might have issues with an attached device, in that case your camera.

[Jerry Syder]

To be fair, not every person is an IT professional or tech-savvy so it should not be an assumption that people should simply "know better". Also, Adobe should send out a newsletter to all its' customers(they have our emails). They published a post on here and of course, only people that are signed up to this forum(if they have notifications turned on) would have seen it. Adobe's communications skills have always been noted for being really bad. 

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

It ended up just being a slow download. All is fine.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

You're right about Adobe's communication skills, Jerry!  But just like you have to be your own medical doctor in this life (with help from real doctors), you have to either be your own IT guy, or HIRE your own real IT guy to help you occasionally, like most companies.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I have several mac, all runs OS Catalina.
Lightroom on my Imac will not importing my files and having same problem as Zach.
However on my Macbook Pro 2013 i7 it works..

I hope for a update soon to get it work as before, in meantime I import photos on my Macbook, export them as catalogue, then import them from same catalogue. It worked for me... 

[williamw73245995]

Like Zach above, I updated to OS X 10.15 Catalina and it was a major upgrade requiring over 8GB HD space. It is awful. I use LR Classic Desktop (v.8.4.1) on my MacBook Pro and now, I can no longer preview images when the SD card is inserted and you click 'import'. This issue has never occurred. With trial and error, I found alternative ways to click through and managed to preview the image files. But when you change the SD card, the pathway was lost and I could no longer preview anything making importing impossible.

However, on LR (Cloud version) on my MacBook, preview is possible with exactly the same SD card inserted. 

[williamw73245995]

Victoria, I am subscribed to your work. Please take a look at my comment below. Any advice much appreciated. 

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

Can you grab us a screenshot William? I'm particularly interested to know whether the card is selected in the Devices section or the Files section of the Source panel, and whether selecting the other makes a difference for you.

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

Jens, same question applies. How are you importing? From the hard drive? Or via a card reader? Or direct from the camera?

And how far do you get? Can you see the thumbnails in the import dialog? 

[williamw73245995]

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

Useful, thanks. If you open the Untitled volume further down and click on a folder in there, do the thumbnails then show up?

[williamw73245995]

Hi Victoria, I hope you are able to view the screenshot. I clicked 'device' on the left sidebar but none of the image files are viewable. This has never happened in LR Classic (desktop) till I installed OS X 10.15 Catalina. If i click on 'untitled' at the bottom, nothing happens.

[williamw73245995]

Nothing drops from clicking 'untitled'.

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

A long shot, but I wonder if giving the card a name using Finder would make a difference. I'm not updating my mission critical computers to Catalina so I can't check this for myself yet.

It might also be interesting to check with the Apple Image Capture app can see them.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I am importing from SD-card directly in the computer. Also tried copy files to Imac harddrive and then import, same issue though.. I cannot see thumbnails, and progress bar stop directly. Also Lightroom crashes most of the time..

[GoldingD]

William, two observations based on your screenshot.

First up, a slightly dated copy of Lightroom Classic? As you can see Devices in the import screen sources, I am thinking not v8 something. Adobe has gotten away from using devices in the import dialog, on purpose. 

Second up, you are in fact selecting from devices, as the highlighted section imply. Instead, find you images thru Files.

[williamw73245995]

Hi Victoria and David, 

Thank you for your suggestions. For now, I have found another way to preview my RAW files on the inserted SD card in my MacBook Pro. I have to click on the top of the left menu bar FROM 'other' and CHOOSE the folders within the SD card. Then they at least show up under 'untitled' at the bottom of the sidebar. See screenshot. I still have no idea why this is necessary when before OS X Catalina was installed, clicking on DEVICE enabled all images to be previewed and imported if selected. 


 

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

I've updated my laptop to Catalina and verified this issue. Thanks for reporting it, I'll file a full bug report.

[williamw73245995]

Does it mean you also cannot directly preview anything from your SD card when inserted into the MacBook after installing Catalina? I hope Adobe resolves this issue soon, as going round and round eventually being able to preview the unimported files is not really the solution. 

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

If you select it from the Files section of the dialog, as you have in your screenshot above, then you can preview them fine (and in my experience, it's the faster import too). It's only an issue when accessing the card as a "device" instead.