Is there a way to recover a photo after "Delete from Disk"?

[jmorg65]

I keep seeing information online in various sources, including Adobe, about recovering deleted photos such as the info here:

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-cc/using/restore-deleted-photos.html#view_deleted_photos

It starts by telling the user to "Select Photos" but I have no idea where that is 🙂

I tend to think of user error to begin with and assume there is something I'm missing.

The above Adobe page doesn't seem to indicate, but can someone help clarify if the ability to actually recover deleted photos applies to photos after "Delete from Disk" vs "Remove from Lightroom"?

If so, how?

Thanks.

[DdeGannes]

I you have selected "Delete from disk" check in the Trash/ Bin. If they have been deleted there you will fave to recover from a back up source.

[jmorg65]

Thanks.

[Conrad_C · Accepted solution]

This question is posted in the Lightroom Classic community, but the Adobe help link there is for cloud Lightroom which works differently. Because cloud Lightroom stores images on cloud servers, it’s possible to hold “deleted” images (images marked as deleted) on those servers for 30 days before they’re actually permanently deleted. That’s how cloud Lightroom can have a “Deleted” album. But even in cloud Lightroom, after it’s permanently deleted, that’s it, it’s gone forever.

The directions in that link don’t apply to Lightroom Classic, where file availability doesn’t depend on the cloud at all because Lightroom Classic stores originals locally, on your computer. With Lightroom Classic, if a file itself is actually deleted from the OS file system (Delete from Disk), not just removed from that one catalog (Remove from Lightroom), including emptying the Trash (Mac) or Recycle Bin (Windows),  then there is nothing Lightroom Classic can do to bring it back because the OS itself has deleted the file.

That means the deleted file has to be restored at the OS level. Your post is labeled macOS, so, if the volume storing your photos is backed up using any Mac backup software, such as Apple Time Machine, the way to get back that photo is to restore it from any backup that it’s on, such as the last backup before the file was deleted.

You could then import the restored photo back into the catalog. However, it would be starting over; it wouldn’t have the edits, metadata, history, etc. that it had before, because Lightroom Classic deleted that from the catalog at the same time Lightroom Classic asked the OS to delete the file. If it’s important to restore that metadata, that could be possible from a backup of the catalog.

[jmorg65]

Conrad, the intro paragraph at the link I provided specifically states "Photos deleted and synced from Lightroom Classic can be accessed in the same place."

I think that language would lead most readers to believe that the processes described on the page should, indeed, apply to Lightroom Classic, in addition to the exclusively web-based versions.

[Rob_Cullen]

@jmorg65 Can I join the conversation?  The important part of that link statement you provided is "and synced from Lightroom-Classic". ie. for images you are seeing in Lightroom-Desktop, Lightroom-Mobile, or Lightroom-Web, that you have placed in a Lr-Classic collection that sync to the Lr Cloud.

That link is a 'Lightroom-ecosystem' page, not applicable to Lightroom-Classic at all, but I do agree- could be very confusing- and I had to read it several times!.

Here is a link more appropriate for Lightroom-Classic:

https://jkost.com/blog/2024/06/removing-and-deleting-photographs-in-lightroom-classic.html

[Conrad_C]

Yes, that language could be worded better. Actually, I’m a little puzzled by that one sentence and I’m trying to figure out what it really means, because the only thing Lightroom Classic syncs up to the cloud are Smart Previews, never originals. So I don’t understand how that paragraph can say or even imply that “photos deleted and synced from Lightroom Classic can be accessed in the same place” online because an original of a photo initially cataloged by Lightroom Classic is never going to be up there. What will be up there, and deletable from the cloud client apps, are originals of photos imported into any Lightroom cloud client.

Also, only one Lightroom Classic catalog can be synced to the Lightroom cloud, so if a photo was deleted from a catalog that is not synced, then that deleted photo is definitely not going to be listed in the cloud.

It seems like the sentence in question should probably be removed, but it would be good to know from Adobe whether there’s something we’re overlooking here...

[jmorg65]

And I do have LrC syncing collections to Lightroom (so my family can see selected photos) and Lightroom Mobile (so I can view and edit on my mobile devices) where any changes to photos sync'd to those cloud-based apps are all sync'd back to my LrC catalog.

Well, at the risk of hijacking my own thread... if I select "Remove from Lightroom" instead of "Delete from Disk" then what happens? The photo disappears from view in the LrC catalog, but is NOT removed from the catalog itself? Delete from Disk sends it all to the Trash Bin, so what about the other option? And would things "Removed from Lightroom" potentially be more easily recoverable? I'm not sure how often I'd use this option but I am curious.

[Conrad_C]

... if I select "Remove from Lightroom" instead of "Delete from Disk" then what happens? The photo disappears from view in the LrC catalog, but is NOT removed from the catalog itself? Delete from Disk sends it all to the Trash Bin, so what about the other option? And would things "Removed from Lightroom" potentially be more easily recoverable?

By @jmorg65

I sort of explained it in my previous reply, but it might have gotten too mixed up in the other explanations. To boil it down for this specific question, comparing Delete from Disk and Remove from Lightroom, I threw this table together and maybe it will help:

Button	Instance of the photo in the currently open catalog	Instance of the photo in the Lightroom cloud	Actual photo file in the OS file system
Remove from Lightroom	Deleted (“un-cataloged”), along with the image edits, organization, and annotation metadata that were stored with that photo’s record in the current catalog.	Deleted, because the photo’s record in the synced catalog was deleted, so that deletion was synced up to the cloud.	Unchanged. Image file is still in the same folder on the desktop.
Delete from Disk	Same as above.	Same as above.	Moved to Trash (macOS) or Recycle Bin (Windows). File is still easy to recover, until that bin is emptied.

The text in the dialog box tries to explain the same thing as in the table above:

This photo will be removed from your Lightroom Catalog and any synced Lightroom Clients. Select "Delete from Disk" to also move the selected photos on your computer to the Finder's trash.

Another way to understand the difference: Because Remove from Lightroom deletes the photo only from the currently open catalog and not from real storage, that button does not remove the photo from other catalogs that might also list it. On the other hand, because Delete from Disk deletes the photo from actual storage, that photo becomes “missing” in any other catalogs that also list that photo file.

---

@jmorg65 wrote:

And would things "Removed from Lightroom" potentially be more easily recoverable?

---

Because Remove from Lightroom does not delete the photo file from storage, the file itself doesn’t have to be recovered because it was never deleted. The only thing removed was the record of that photo in the currently open catalog’s database, so the only thing that would need to be recovered is the record of that photo in that specific catalog.

[DdeGannes]

Good info. The only thing I wish to add and stress, the LrC Catalog file is a data based file and it does not contain the original imported file or a copy of the image file.. It only contains data relative to the import and all the work to do with the image file.