Catalog missing information after upgrade to Lightroom Classic

Report · Dec 07, 2017

Hi

I recently upgraded to the new Lightroom Classic.

I've realised that not all of the information in my previous catalog has come across to the new catalog and I was looking for advice on how to fix this.

My two issues are:

1. the catalog now longer shows the photos I'd archived on an external hard drive. I had moved those photos to that drive within Lightroom so all the photos used to show up within my catalog. My first thought was simply to import them all back in but then none of my edits would show.

2. I noticed yesterday that some of the photos I've edited no longer have the edits that I've made. I noticed this in a couple of folders and haven't had the heart to go through all of them to see whats missing.

Unless I can find a solution I'm looking at having to re-edit thousands of photos and that doesn't feel like it should be a result of the upgrade so I'm hoping someone has some advice.

Thanks
Andrea

Report · Dec 07, 2017

My first guess is that you upgraded the wrong catalog file.

Use your operating system's search feature to search for all files whose name ends with .LRCAT. If you find one that has a date and time before you first launched Lightroom Classic CC, that's probably the one you want.

Report · Dec 07, 2017

Hi.

Thanks for your reply.

I checked and I only have the original catalog and the upgraded catalog.

Looking at those files I can see that the original catalog has a larger file size which shouldn't be the case if the catalog upgraded correctly.

Is it possible that the upgrade didn't work the way it should have?

Report · Dec 07, 2017

AndreaJor72 wrote
Looking at those files I can see that the original catalog has a larger file size which shouldn't be the case if the catalog upgraded correctly.

I don't know why you say this, as it is not true.

Is it possible that the upgrade didn't work the way it should have?

Well, I guess that depends on what is in the original catalog file. So you need to launch your previous version of Lightroom, and open the original catalog file and see if the missing information and missing photos are in there.

Also, do you have a recent backup of your catalog file?

Report · Dec 07, 2017

Hi.

Oh I just thought that if I'm now missing information it would make sense that the catalog was a smaller size now.

I can't open my original catalog file. When I try it tells me that this catalog has been upgraded. It gives me the option to open my new catalog or to upgrade the older catalog again.

The original catalog had everything in it - both photos on my laptop and on my external hard drive. I used it nearly every day with no issues.

Report · Dec 07, 2017

We must mean something different by the words "original" catalog. I mean the catalog file used by the previous version of Lightroom, not the upgraded version. You have to open the previous version of Lightroom, you cannot do this by opening Lightroom Classic CC.

Also, the catalog in Lightroom Classic CC can be smaller even if no photos and no information is missing.

Report · Dec 07, 2017

To expand a little on what Paige said, the LR Classic catalogue is always smaller than the one it was upgraded from because the new version of the catalogue has portions that have been compressed.

Report · Jan 24, 2018

Is there any way to know just how much smaller to expect? I updated my Llightroom 5 catalog and it was much smaller than the catalog originally was. From 1,185,108 kb to 637,728kb ! I too suspected maybe a problem but with 82,500 files to check on I decided to ask.

Kelli

Report · Jan 25, 2018

That seems about right to me. As I recall my upgraded catalogue was about half the size of the original.

Hal

Report · Dec 07, 2017

We're on the same page re original catalog. I meant the catalog that I used in the previous version of Lightroom. I had been trying to open it with Lightroom Classic CC which is why I got the message that I did.

I figured out how to open the previous version of Lightroom and looked at the catalog there. I think I'm seeing where the external hard drive issue is - it used to be my G drive and now it's my D drive for some reason (I had to wipe my laptop a couple of times recently so it's possible that is what caused the change of drive name) so the files weren't showing up. I'll be able to fix that by doing a missing photo search.

By looking in my original catalog I found that the edits hadn't saved to a particular folder (which I hadn't noticed at the time) so that's why the upgraded catalog doesn't have those changes.

Thanks for taking the time to chat me through this - I hadn't realised I could still open the old version of lightroom so it was helpful to be able to go back and see what was in that catalog.