Known Participant

Answered

Horizontal Colored Lines in LR CC

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
August 19, 2017
5 replies
5579 views

Hello All, this is my first post. I apologize up front if this has been addressed before, but I've not found a thread in my searches that addresses my problem fully and hope someone can help me. I've started seeing horizontal lines of varying colors in my library strip and do not know how to fix the issue. I have an iMac with a Radeon HD 5670 graphics card. It's an older iMAC but it has always just worked, if you know what I mean. Supposedly no updates are needed to my computer. I had no problems with LR CC at all until my HD filled up last month and I got a new external drive to move my catalog to as I couldn't download from my camera anymore. Now that I've somewhat figured out how to move the photos and the catalog, and they are on the new drive and I can download my photos, I've lost the previous date scheme they used to download into (the catalog on the left-hand side when I am in LR CC is an ugly mess), and my catalog strip is randomly corrupting my photos with colored horizontal lines. Although I've been able to import my new photos, I'm afraid to delete the images on the cards since I never know which ones will be viewed normal and which ones will not be. So sadly I've just bought 2 new cards over the past few weeks when my "spare" card has fill up. I can't keep doing this, and how many cards does one really need anyway, LOL.....? I've updated the camera raw file to the newest version per some instructions on a thread I found, but it didn't fix the issue. What is happening is that random photos will get these horizontal colored lines in them that ruins the photo. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the corruption, ones I've viewed with no problems before all of a sudden get these lines on them the next time I go into LR...sometimes even before I've selected them for viewing. I've tried deleting the ones that get messed up and then re-importing from the camera, but then other photos that were viewed just fine get messed up in the Library strip. Can someone help me figure out what's going on? I thought at first it might be the video card itself (and it still might be) but LR is the only application that I see an issue, everything else looks fine. Thanks so much in advance, and please let me know what other information you might need so that I can get back to good.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer JP Hess

The symptoms you are describing are almost always indicative of a hardware problem. But that's as far as I can go in diagnosing where that problem might be. The reason the problem shows up in Lightroom is because Lightroom is the only program that is showing the raw image data. Other programs you are using are most likely only showing the JPEG preview which is part of every raw image. So the problem could be with the card you are using, the cable you are using to transfer the images, the hard drive that is the destination, the computer memory itself, the graphics card, etc. Your challenge is to isolate where that problem is. Lightroom does not change or modify images at all. All adjustments are stored in the catalog. Your master images are always left in their pristine condition as they were downloaded from the camera. So you must isolate where the hardware problem is and get it corrected.

Ann424Author

Known Participant

Thank you again for the replies. I'm thinking this is a hardware problem now too. I did a disk test, both my internal and external HD tested fine. However I was not able to test the video card as I kept getting an error, which from what I've been able to glean from other threads is due to me having updated my Apple OS and needing the original install disk to do the test...which I do not know where it is. So I swapped out the USB's so that my external HD is on a known good one and have not seen the weird colors since doing this. But that's not to say that tomorrow it won't happen. So I'm guessing either there is an issue with the USB ports, or still could be a video card problem. My computer is 7 years old so "outdated" I guess. I can't back up using a second computer, and don't have enough room on my original HD to back up there or copy an original folder to it. Quite leery of deleting anything photo-related from it just in case I can't get it back and something messes up on the new external HD. There's really not much more on the original HD other than photos. But for now I can look at images in LR and for that I am thankful.

Abambo

Community Expert

You absolutly need to do a backup if you do not want loosing data!

ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer

Abambo

Community Expert

I agree with Jim and Page: it's a hardware problem. Just out of the blind, I would guess a hardware display card problem! This would be great, because this would mean, that your images are uneffected.

Why do I think this? Corrupted harddisks are eithe not responding or giving CCR errors. And that would be very bad. On the other hand, computer memory problems would create computer crashes and quite often. But display problems may pass, as they are neither checked, nor cause the system to crash. The display is only visually disturbed.

This said:

What you need to do absolutely and immediately is to backup your current hard disk. Do not format your memory cards. If you did (with quick format...) and did not overwrite yet, you will still probably be able to get back your data in case you need it.

Look at the backup using a second (good) computer to see, if there are problems. If the backup is OK, on the second computer, you can recreate your Lightroom situation and test this. If that is OK, the problem is IMHO int the graphics card or the graphics interface. That's great for your data.

BTW: I never connect my camera to my computer to load my pictures. I use a card reader. It's hell a lot more practical, and good card readers are quite cheap.

ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer

Ann424Author

Known Participant

Ok. Thank you so much @JimHess and @dj..paige. I don't have a card reader - I use the cable directly connected from the camera and import directly from the source. Since I've used several different cards over and over that have caused no issues previously until I moved things to a new drive, I'm wondering if the issue could be related with the new drive? How would I know? Maybe I didn't point LR correctly. It was rough, and although I'm not completely technologically incompetent I began to wonder.... I have a reference manual for LR CC, but my actual experience on how to move photos and the catalog didn't match up with it. The LR catalog has been weird ever since when looking at it on the external HD. I only have the same connection to download the photos (connect USB from camera to iMAC), nothing new there. I've done it this way for almost a year with no issues, just only started to have problems after I hooked up an external HD and pointed everything to it. I might just need to start all over **sigh**. If I wanted to blow it all up and start over without losing my photos, how would I do that? I've got photos across 2 drives - most on the original HD, but some on the new one since the main HD filled up that I wasn't able to load on it. And I've reformatted some of the cards, so can't get them back if something happens. I really do not want to lose any photos....some I've not even been able to view yet since the horizontal color lines started showing up. I'm a little leery there so am not even looking at those photos. And if LR does not actually change or modify images, does that mean that even though I see these weird aberrations in the library, they are not really there in the original images? Can I reformat my camera cards without worrying that the photos I've imported already aren't actually ruined at the source?

JP Hess

Inspiring

I wouldn't recommend that you reformat the cards just yet. I think what I would do is COPY one of the "bad" folders back to the original hard drive. Then open Lightroom and go to that folder in the library and right click on the folder and choose the option to update the folder location. Point Lightroom to the folder on the old hard drive and see what the condition of the images is there. If the images look alright then you'll know that there is something wrong with how you are going to the new hard drive. Perhaps it isn't formatted properly, I don't know. If the images still look bad then I would suggest deleting them or removing them from the catalog and importing them again to the original hard drive from the card and see if that fixes the problem.

dj_paige

Legend

Agreeing with JimHess, this is caused by a hardware malfunction somewhere.

Try importing the photos again using different hardware (different card reader or different USB cable/USB port). If that doesn't seem to help, try taking some photos on a different card. Run diagnostic utilities on your computer's hard disk(s) and memory.

JP HessCorrect answer

Inspiring

The symptoms you are describing are almost always indicative of a hardware problem. But that's as far as I can go in diagnosing where that problem might be. The reason the problem shows up in Lightroom is because Lightroom is the only program that is showing the raw image data. Other programs you are using are most likely only showing the JPEG preview which is part of every raw image. So the problem could be with the card you are using, the cable you are using to transfer the images, the hard drive that is the destination, the computer memory itself, the graphics card, etc. Your challenge is to isolate where that problem is. Lightroom does not change or modify images at all. All adjustments are stored in the catalog. Your master images are always left in their pristine condition as they were downloaded from the camera. So you must isolate where the hardware problem is and get it corrected.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded