images deleted from sub-folder

Report · Mar 05, 2024

I was going through old photos in Lightroom from 2015..... My directories run Year-Country-Places in Country... I noticed that about 25 of my 30 Thailand place folders were empty ("0"). The 5 folders that had all their images were right were they were supposed to be in the "Thailand Folder"(both in Windows Explorer and Lightroom Classic 6.0. After searching every harddrive and backup I couldn't find them. Then I noticed that the "2015" folder had a lot more images than if you added up the number of images in the sub-folders.

I opened the "2015" folder and all the missing photos were there. Somehow they were removed from the "Thailand" subfolders but remained in the "2015" folder(The folders with the images still with them are spaced randomly throught the whole "Thailand" directory and the empty files remained so there is no way I could have inadvertantly deleted the files in 25 random folders-and I think that would have deleted them in the "2015" folder also

So here's the problem. How to I get the 3500 images back into their original folders without going 1 by or in small groups.

I found some old backups from 2018 which hopefully will have all the "2015" photos in their correct "Thailand" folders.

I'm thinking that if I open or restore the 2018 I'll have my images in the right folder(but I'm going to be missing 5 years of images) and then I can choose the folders with the missing images in them and then export those photos in a catalog(or export the catalog and folders without the photos?).

I've never really had to restore a catalog(and this is actually a partial catalog) before, so I'm not sure exactly what the steps are... I don't want to restore the old catalog from the backups because it's incomplete and missing 5 years... I really just want to open it up without interferring with my present catalog and move the 20 complete folders to my present catalog....which will hopefully find the images in the "2015" folder and make my "Thailand" folder complete again...

Anyone have some step by step or general suggestions on how to do this?

thanks,
David

Report · Mar 05, 2024

Do the photos in question have enough pertinent keywords that you could use to filter on as to then move them in bulk? (or see sentence 3 below)

Do the photos in question all have a relative capture date (and perhaps time) that separate them from other photos, as to sort on that then move in bulk? (or see the following sentence)

In the above situations, consider creating some smart collections, based on keywords and./or metadata like capture date.

Did you ever place the photos in question in a separate collection, does that collection exist?

Report · Mar 05, 2024

Good suggestions! Keywords won't work because I put them in the place folder already so I didn't use place as a keyword(although I will add it since I go to Thailand and Greece every year so my places are duplicating and I'm going to want to search for places in multiple years now) so keywords will be everything under the sun.... but I think that date will help narrow it down... and if I do it by date I'll have the added benefit of re-living the trip day by day! 😉 thanks....

Report · Mar 05, 2024

I'll work on it tomorrow but it sure makes me wonder how lightroom can move a series of photos from different folders back into the main directory unless it's a Windows problem because I have had complete folders absolutely disappear(and never found) from Windows when they were there the night before....

and while we're talking about weird little idiosyncracies- I have to mention that the default Adobe profile photo here is a really bad choice. I would never use a skeleton as my profile photo.... I have to find one that's a little more representative of me....