Participant

Question

All my work is missing from my collections

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
November 17, 2017
2 replies
3607 views

I don't know WHAT I did, but I just finished editing through 5000 images after like 3 days and I was exporting, when I realized I needed to fix a keyword on some of the photos, so I stopped the export ONLY 20% in, and went in and selected the keyword to see which photos it was on, and then I corrected it, but then I see NONE of the photos in all the collections I created. So I fiddled with the keywords like maybe a filter or something is limiting my view, then I tried undoing, but I may have gone past my undo point. Please HELP ME! Is there a way to Go back to a certain time this evening? Like autosave (like with FCPX)?? I closed the collection and opened another and then came back thinking maybe the filter would be gone (mistake right??). I don't understand WHAT I did, but I'm hoping I didn't remove all the photos from the collections. All the collection folders are still there, they just say 0 next to them. Can I use the lcrat journal or some SQL editor to go back to that action??? Can anyone help??? Please. The edits are all done, it's just the cull essentially that I need to get back to avoid having to go through ALL the photos again to select my favorites.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Just Shoot Me

Legend

A Collection is just that. A Collection of images, A LIST of Images. It is not the real images.

All your edits are saved to the Catalog file (and or to a Sidecar XMP file if you have that option checked in the Catalog Setting dialog window) so all you edits are still there.

Deleting a collection and or removing images from a collection does not remove the image from the LR catalog file or from your hard drive. So all those images are still on your drive and in the LR catalog file.

Same goes for removing a keyword or keywords from an image.

So go to the folder or folders the images are store in. If in multiple folder you can select all those folder individually, if they're not contiguous, by holding down the Ctrl or Command key, Windows/OS X respectively, and all the edits you have done will be there.

C

creativeunlimitedAuthor

Participant

Everything you said is already understand. I have shown the empty collection, and shown that all the photographs are still there in the screenshots above. I know I have not lost all the editing work, or the photos, but merely my selections for the collections. However it was time consuming and I was hoping to be able to rescue them from my mistake. I'm going through it now quicker since all the edits are already done, but I was really hoping somehow to be able to go back and undo deleting them accidentally to save myself all this time. It's still crazy to me that can't be done. Adobe should totally steal that function from FCPX, project is continually backed up while working, so every few minutes. I know Lightroom saves as it goes, but there's no way to restore to a previous point in time without the backups. I'll be more careful and start flagging photos that were culled too to protect myself from myself, but still this would be a great option, the software's own time machine like backup. I can see the history of changes to a google doc and go back to a version from months ago if I wanted. I may not need to go back that far with a photo edit, but going back 5-10 minutes would have saved me hours!

NatureAsArt

Participant

I also have the same problem. Opened up another catalog to work on and when I returned to my day-to-day catalog, all of the images collected in my collections are not linked.

How can I retrieve them? No flags are engaged and expanded all stacks.

I've tried to open four recent backup catalogs and get the error message "LR Cannot use the catalog named 2018 because it is not writable and cannot be opened. Checked file permissions and made sure User was given full permission edit/red, etc.

Theresa J

Community Expert

What type of collection did you create? Is it a smart collection or a regular collection?

How did you cull the images? Did you flag or rate them first, and then add them to the collection?

Did you really have 5000 images in a single collection? You say “all of the collection folders are there but they say 0 next to them”. Were you working in one collection or multiple collections?

Maybe you can share a screen capture so that we can see what you see.

C

creativeunlimitedAuthor

Participant

There is the screenshot. I would add images to my quick collection, and then save those quick collections, in this case for each kid. This was a school photo session at my kid's daycare, so like over 100 kids. I took WAY too many photos, but with some kids squiggling and worming, and this being my first time doing school portraits, it's tough. Anyway, I shot manually and that made the editing rather easy (except for some touchups), and all the photos are still in the catalog, and all the edits and keywording still complete. I keyworded for each kid their last name and the class they're in. I did this for the whole set of photos, not just the ones I saved to each individual collection. I don't KNOW if I hit delete. I feel like it had something to do with changing that keyword, but it looks like I MUST have accidentally hit delete with all the collection images selected. I'm afraid I have to do all those pic selections again, and I'm already so short on time and behind with other projects. It's SUCH a huge disappointment, and it absolutely SUCKS that this software is not continually just autosaving like my FCPX software, so worse case I lose a few minutes work. There are no backup catalogs created. Is there truly way to go back to that moment and undo whatever I did?

C

creativeunlimitedAuthor

Participant

Another screenshot with "All Photographs" selected. This one is filtered, so I could only show my kid. Edits and keywords still there. I think I will be flagging images too from now on, and also saving a backup catalog before exporting, and along the way. Never had a problem before. I don't normally keyword though. Keywording was done for the gallery site so parents could just find their kid. Man, what a pain in the ass.

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