Identifying corrupt images

[Malthouse Photography]

I'm using PC with Win11 and Lightroom Classic 12.4.

Most of my images are well looked after and just fine. I've got backups all over the place and all happy.

There are a small number of family images in my catalogue which, over the years, have been bunged from one drive to another and not looked after quite as well. I've noticed that one or two of them are corrupt in various ways - either the RAW file shows an exclamation mark which, when clicked, says "Lightroom has encountered problems reading this photo. You will not be able to make adjustments to the photo." (These are mostly CR2 files). And a few others are corrupt in that you can see a bit of the file in Loupe view but a lot more of it is clearly damaged in the view.

None of these images merits "recovery". 

I've run "find missing files" and there are none missing.

I've not run "Validate DNG files" as they are not DNG files but are CR2 files.

Is there any way to quickly identify "damaged" files so that I may simply delete them from the catalog and from the hard drive?

If not I'll go through manually as there are under 800 to look at in total.

I know similar threads exist on this subject which are for older LR versions. Some say corrupt sectors on the drive, some blame LR versions. I honestly don't worry which. I wouldn't be surprised if it was old hard drives had corruption and I've copied files over - I've not looked at these old family images in some years so I won't miss them if they go: there are enough others that are OK to keep a sense of what is there. I just want to get rid of the damaged files so they don't affect my catalog in future.

[dj_paige]

I've noticed that one or two of them are corrupt in various ways - either the RAW file shows an exclamation mark which, when clicked, says "Lightroom has encountered problems reading this photo. You will not be able to make adjustments to the photo." (These are mostly CR2 files). And a few others are corrupt in that you can see a bit of the file in Loupe view but a lot more of it is clearly damaged in the view.

There is a recent "bug" (at least I think it is a bug) where files will show that exclamation point icon in a circle and it says "Lightroom has encountered problems reading this photo..." and if you re-start Lightroom Classic, the exclamation point icon goes away and the photo can be used.

When you talk about Loupe view, is that the Develop Module loupe view or the Library Module loupe view? If Library Module, this could be a corrupted preview file rather than a corrupted original. Try selecting the photo and then Library->Previews->Build 1:1 previews. If Develop Module, then the original is corrupted, and you should restore it from backups.

Is there any way to quickly identify "damaged" files so that I may simply delete them from the catalog and from the hard drive?

I suppose that depends on what you mean by "quickly". I would say NO, you have to look through the photos and find them visually.

[johnrellis · Accepted solution]

You can quickly identify possibly corrupt files by filtering for Metadata Status: Unknown. That will include missing files and videos as well.  See here for details:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/besch%C3%A4digte-dateien-im-lightroom-k...

[Malthouse Photography]

@johnrellis When I posted a few minutes ago there were no "unknown" files. But several were "has been changed" so I selected them all and synchronised metadata... now the "unknown" ones are popping up as it tries to update them. As they do I'm selecting and deleting from disk. I think that's therefore the solution for me.

Thank you. That will save me some time in culling the images.

[johnrellis]

"But several were "has been changed" so I selected them all and synchronised metadata... now the "unknown" ones are popping up as it tries to update them."

Good. I should have mentioned that LR updates the metadata status slowly, in background.  Doing things like Library > Find All Missing Photos or Synchronize Folder > Scan For Metadata Update / Show Import Dialog Before Importing can accelerate that updating process.

[PJMixer]

I just hit a problem last night with what looks like a few corrupted files.  They appear in LR with distorted horizontal or vertical sections and some have the exclamation mark.  What's concerning is that it's not just in LR, the file on disk is corrupt as well.  There is a chance my external RAID drive had a blip which is also a bigger worry.  I've follow your advice to determine the extent of the problem.

[Malthouse Photography]

@dj_paige thank you. I meant in Loupe view not develop view for showing corruption. However, testing when I go to develop module the corruption remains. And for those showing the exclamation mark when I go into develop it says "The file cannot be opened by Lightroom." I wasn't aware of that bug - I know I hit similar some years ago and that turned out to be a bad cable in my setup so I figured it was probably on my system and not a software issue this time too. I think these are genuinely damaged files therefore.

@johnrellis Thanks for that tip. It was useful to see a bunch of files which were out of sync if nothing else! However it didn't pick up any 'unknown' status in my instance.

Having quit and re-started Lightroom Classic on my desktop PC the exclamation marks remain. There aren't many and I need to cull through those images: they are literally digital slide dupes of my parent's old slides with me and my siblings etc in them so I'll just cull those out at the same time.

Thanks both for your help.

[C.Cella]

You can use the "Validator" Plug-in to check for corruption in the future.

Validator on Adobe Exchange.

LrC occasionally can't read files but it doesn't mean they are corrupted.

.

[C.Cella]

@johnrellis

Due to a bug LrC doesn't detect metada status changes UNLESS the photo(s) is/are displayed.

Months ago I have edited a photo in ACR.

I never, ever displayed that photo in LrC and at today the "Metadata has been changed" smart collection I set didn't find that photo.

In my experience only your "Any Filter" can actually find photos with modified metadata without displaying them first.

.

[Malthouse Photography]

Thanks. Wasn't aware of that one.

[DSal2020]

Corrupted images are very hard to detect and remove. I am using Duplicate Image Finder and luckily it can detect and list those automaticaly. Take a look at this article: https://www.mindgems.com/article/find-and-remove-corrupted-image-files/

Please note that you have to use the SIMILARITY mode in order for the images to be loaded and inspected for corruptions.

Give it a try - they have a free demo and the tool is ridiculously cheap for what it has to offer.