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Cjohnson986
Participant
September 21, 2019
Question

Deleted photos with catalog and emptied recycle bin :(

  • September 21, 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 231 views

Currently trying to put back together my LR catalog on my Mac and having lots of trouble. I was working with multiple HDs and accidently deleted my entire photo catalog with all the photos files and emptied the recycle bin 4000+ photos. After alot of curse words, I restored my backup catalog which got back all my edits of my photos. I know that the photo files themselves are not within LR catalog so I was forced to use 3rd party software to recover the photo files that were deleted from my external hard drive. I now have them back but they are all named differently and in seperate folders i.e. DNG, DNG1, CR2, JPEG, JPEG1. Some are small preview files compared to the larger ones. Anyone have any idea of how to match up the photos back into the catalog so I can see my original edits?

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    1 reply

    Rob_Cullen
    Community Expert
    Rob_CullenCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    September 22, 2019

    "any idea of how to match up the photos back into the catalog"

    Sorry, but Nothing easy. It will only be possible to relink the Library Previews with the recovered files on a one-by-one visual comparison, and that will take ages for 4000 photos.

    At the end of this Blog from Victoria Bampton -

    https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom-photos-missing-fix/

    She states- "every renamed photo must be relinked individually."

    The perfect answer would be that you had Backups of the files with their Filenames and folder structure that match exactly the Lightroom data.

     

    Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.1.1, Photoshop 27.3.1, ACR 18.1.1, Lightroom 9.0, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0.2 .
    C
    Cjohnson986Author
    Participant
    September 25, 2019
    Yeah I figured when I no longer had the folder structure that match the Lightroom data and all the pictures are now in a jumbled mess with no corresponding file names that I am going to just have to re-import them all into a new catalog with no editing and start from scratch. Really bummed but hey at least I still have the images again.
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