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Nikolas17650495
Known Participant
June 29, 2022
Question

Invisible photos ? Empty folders?

  • June 29, 2022
  • 1 reply
  • 1125 views

Lightroom Classic v.11.4.1; Windows 11 v.21H2

 

Hi,

 

I’m a longtime lightroom user with no noticeable problem.

 

I recently updated to a new computer (windows 11, I9 12900k, RTX 3060Ti, 32GB DDR5).

And I’ve got some trouble with my “personal catalogue”, is one unique catalogue where I import all my personal pictures from other folders, most of which a classified by date with a few exceptions like smartphones folders, friends’ weddings…

 

For some unknown reason a lot of these folders are listed in my Lightroom files explorer as empty (0 pictures) and some don’t show the correct amount of files.

 

From want I recall, when installing the new computer few months ago, I copied the files on the new hard drive (went from HDD to SSD), opened my Lightroom Catalogue and recreated the link to the correct main personal folder containing every other.

And did not notice anything weird at the time, I guess I would have…

 

Now I have those “empty” folders with no images showing and two strange symptoms:

 

  • If I ask, from Ligthroom, to show the folder in explorer, the folder is shown normally, so the link is ok.
  • If I try to re-import the pictures, they are considered as already a part of the catalogue (displayed in grey) and would not import again.

 

Missing files could be .CR2 (Canon), .ORF (Olympus) with or without matching jpeg and xmp. Or even simple .JPG.

 

Any solution that would not imply to lose my collection, stars, colors, keywords, etc…?

1 reply

dj_paige
dj_paige
Legend
June 29, 2022

Could you clarify something? For one of these folders where the count of files is zero, if you click on that folder in the Lightroom Classic Folder panel, do the photos show?

 

If not, then search for (one of) the photos by filename in the rest of your catalog. Use all four of these steps in Lightroom Classic to perform the search.

  1. Click on All Photographs
  2. Turn off all filters (Ctrl-L once or twice)
  3. Expand all stacks (Photo->Stacking->Expand All Stacks)
  4. in the Lightroom Classic filter bar, search for one of the photos by file name.

 

If you find one of these photos using the above search, see what folder Lightroom Classic thinks it is in. I would guess that it is somewhere else where you didn't expect it to be.

    mtnrunner2
    mtnrunner2
    Participating Frequently
    February 5, 2025

    Thanks, expanding all stacks showed to me why the "All Photgraphs" count was different from the number of selected image thumbnails I was seeing when selecting "all" thumbnails in the Library. After expanding and re-selecting all images, the number was the same. Apparently LR only selects one image per collapsed stack.

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