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Participant
May 25, 2025
Question

Issue with Grayed-Out Files Appearing After Importing Photos

  • May 25, 2025
  • 4 replies
  • 490 views

In the last few photo imports to my Lightroom catalog, I've noticed that every few photos, a grayed-out file appears in the grid view. These files don’t correspond to any actual images—they don’t show up in Finder, and they aren’t recognized as missing by Lightroom. It's as if Lightroom is generating placeholder files with no data.

 

 

When I try to interact with these files (delete, edit, locate, etc.), nothing happens. Lightroom doesn’t respond to any commands related to them. The real issue comes up during the culling process: if any of these gray files are selected when I attempt to delete unflagged/rejected images, Lightroom throws an error and prevents the operation. I’m forced to manually deselect each gray file before I can proceed.

 

 

Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a known fix or workaround to remove these phantom files and prevent them from showing up in future imports?

4 replies

Claire H.
Community Manager
Community Manager
June 25, 2025

Hi @Mrsemcampbell, Are you still experiencing this issue in LrC? Let us know if any of the solutions listed in this thread worked for you or if you need further assistance. Thanks! ^CH

Per Berntsen
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 25, 2025

One reply in the thread I linked to seems to indicate that this is an issue with disk permissons, and possibly not LrC permissions. I'm not a Mac user –  @johnrellis might be able to give you better assistance.

 

Thnk you so much. Repaired the permissions on both drives and that worked a treat. Thanks again.


By @trevors59492957
johnrellis
Genius
May 26, 2025

I think this is another occurrence of "zombie thumbnails". Adobe reported fixing a bug with similar symptoms back in LR 9. See if this workaround helps:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-blank-thumbnails-showing-up-in-all-photographs-only/idc-p/12780526#M32694

Participant
May 25, 2025

I actually tried updating the permissions on my Mac yesterday in hopes it would work, and even after giving full disk access to Lightroom, the problem is still unresolved, and I cannot delete the files. 

Per Berntsen
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 25, 2025