how to restore deleted folders in Lightroom classic

Report · Oct 23, 2023

Hey guys, i hope you can all help me!

i recently had a clear out of all finished albums i was working on in lightroom. simply deleting each folder, all original images are backed up, and all folders had been fully edited, exported and delivered to client, no brainer i thought. well it turns ot i had accidentally exported one of the collections (now deleted), in lower quality. fyi , we are talking about weddings albums so pretty important! eek.

i had my metadata settings to automatically save as i edit, but possibly because of an update , or some other reason, it had turned off. in this scenario, i would normally import the original files again with the xmp file attached, then simply export again in high quality.

is there any way i can recover the deleted folder from lightroom with all of their corresponding edits? is there a way of finding out for sure if the metadate on the original files is attached or not (the xmp sidecar files dont seem to be in the album) or do i need to re edit the whole collection from scratch? the latter being emergency scenario as atm i just dont have the time and energy for that as wedding season is coming to an end and their collection was 1000 images deep .

PLEASE HELP!

p.s i am using lightroom classic. not cc cloud based

Report · Oct 23, 2023

Surely you made backups of your LrC catalog file. You need to find the backup made before you deleted these folders, and open that backup and your edits will be in there.

In the long run, deleting your work and photos from LrC is a poor practice. Better to leave the photos in LrC rather than delete them from LrC, even if you think you are done with them; and then you won't be haunted by this possibility.

Report · Nov 14, 2023

thank you for taking the time to reply paige, i did not make a back up including this folder, i skipped and skipped and skipped, now i am kicking myself of course, and have learnt the hard way not to do that again. i have the files, but only 100 images out of 900 metadata was saved for some reason, i should have been able to just simply upload and export again in higher quality as the metadata is normally saved alongside the orginal file, i just thought there may be a magic trick to get the edited images back somehow.

thanks xxx

Report · Nov 14, 2023

I see you have a Mac. Are you running Time Machine? If so, you should be able to restore your catalog from a point in time before you deleted the folder. And any PSD or TIFF files that didn't get more edits in LrC will be ready to export again.