Lightroom 13 deleting any Develop settings

[McKian]

I updated to Lightroom 13.1 but when I clicked on my default catalog it crashed near the end of loading. The entire catalog got corrupt and placed in another folder but they were able to save the catalog.

The issues haven't stopped there though. All of my images won't pop up with a thumbnail unless I click on them which is making it difficult to find specific pictures. The biggest issue is I can see an image that I have developed already but I can't continue to edit them. When I bring it into Develop all of my edits disappear and it reverts back to absolutely to a reset image. 

Obviously I don't want to destroy all my previous edits by using this version of Lightroom. Any help?

[Sean McCormack]

There's a lot to unpack there. First of all, the 12.X catalog isn't touched by the upgrade process. A temporary catalog is created and that is upgraded. The previews are taken though as it's easier to transfer previews. 

You should be able to upgrade the previous catalog again. Your previews may be lost,  but that's a matter of selecting folders and generating them from the Library>Previews>Build Standard Sized Previews menu.. 

You say 'They'.. who is they? 

[McKian]

Sorry, "it" was able to save the catalog or to at least make an update on the second try despite crashing and corrupting the first attempt. It saved the corrupted file for some reason. Just mentioning it in case it mattered not because it is a current problem.

I can build previews, that's not the big issue. The big issue is that it is reverting all my previous edits. I was mentioning the previews because it was another weird aspect of the new Lightroom version.

[Sean McCormack]

It absolutely shouldn't be doing that. 

Roll back to 12 by uninstalling 13. Click the 3 dots beside Lightroom Classic in the Creative Cloud app and choose Other Versions. Choose 12. Install it. Check the Lightroom 12 Catalog. I'd even go to All Photographs and run File>Export As Catalog. You don't need to tick any of the boxes. Open this new catalog. It should be a clean catalog. Exporting ignores unnecessary data in the catalog. 

Now update to 13 again and upgrade the exported catalog. You'll still need to generate previews, but hopefully this will resolve it. 

[McKian]

I did all that and the new catalog worked fine until it encountered an issue, got corrupted and the repair catalog is having the exact same issue where it is deleting old edits. I'm slightly worried that it is hitting a preview file it can't handle which is causing the entire catalog to fall apart. 

Sigh.

[ouiouiphoto]

Previews are just small images. They are not included in the LrC database. So even if you have a bad preview this should not corrupt the LrC database. When you say "until it encountered an issue" What is this issue ? You get an error message ? 

[McKian]

I got the catalog working last night and I set it to make smart previews of the last five months. When I came back to it in the morning it said the usual thing of oh it can't make previews of some of these(usually happens when it hits a video file) and then it said it had an issue and the catalog had become currupted. It said it would try to repair the issue. It created a new catalog while saving the old corrupted file in a "Corrupt catalogs" folder. Unfortunately the new repair catalog is wiping out my old edit when I click on images. 

[Sean McCormack]

You could repeat the process, select the files and the save XMP, then you have settings saved separately to the catalog. 

It's time to escalate to Adobe staff to help with the catalog. 

https://helpx.adobe.com/support/support-new/support-apps.html#phsp 

There's a Contact Us, contact a real person section further down. You'll go through the virtual assistant first, but you should seek an agent from there. 

[Sean McCormack]

I'd just burn the .Previews file and let it rebuild in that case.. did you get a screen shot of the error? 

[McKian]

I mean the new catalog that you told me to make didn't have any previews attached. There wasn't an error code so I didn't bother to screenshot.

[Sean McCormack]

If you're not heavily collection dependent, you could go to All Photographs, select all and Save Metadata. Then start a new Catalog and import everything using Add. I'd import in sections, like by year if you've organised that way. Big imports get bogged down, so lots of smaller ones are better. 

[McKian]

Is that the only solution? No offense but that feels like it is going to take a whole lot of time to do and as far as I can tell we don't know what the actual hangup is. 

[ouiouiphoto]

If your catalog is corrupted, and you cannot restart from an older backup without issues, there are not a lot of options available. The last thing a would try, is creating a new catalog and importing inside the old one.  Sometimes this solution works removing the initial corruption 

[Sean McCormack]

@ouiouiphoto Yep, that's probably the only other alternative. 

@McKian Unless you can get an engineer to look at it, that's about it. 

[McKian]

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Customer Care can perform a catalog repair. 

Your issue can best be resolved by contacting Adobe Customer Care at https://helpx.adobe.com/contact/what-contact-options.html. Scroll to the bottom and click on the “Start Now” live chat link in the lower right of this page. Typing “Agent” into the chat text field will bypass the initial chatbot.

[McKian]

It will repair itself but afterward it doesn't work properly. Do you think the chat will do something different?

[McKian]

I mean, my Lightroom 12 catalog isn't having any issues. It is just my version of 13 that refused to work. 

I'm just not going to follow those instructions because I honestly don't have time to shut down all my work just to hope that these instructions make a difference based on little information. It feels like Adobe released a bad new version of Lightroom and I'm going to hop through days of fixing it to just find out there is no solution. It's like suggestioning to someone to entirely reinstall their computer to fix a bad OS patch. Maybe in a few months I'll have time but this has been entirely unhelpful. 

[ouiouiphoto]

Most of us are not affiliated with Adobe in any way. We just try to help. Now if you V12 is not corrupt, and you have work to do, yes staying in V12 is a good option

[McKian]

I know but I'm also dealing with a lot of deep frustrations do to paying a lot for products that continually break and don't work. I'm not trying to take it out on you but I do feel I have to point out that suggesting intense work arounds may do more harm then good.