Lightroom CC won't import images

[ddawg05]

I just upgraded to lightroom CC from lightroom 5 and it won't import my images.  It shows a preview of them, but when I click import is says "importing images" but it never does and just sits like that.  Any ideas?  Thanks in advance.

[garyr88789914]

Seems to me if you by a product and pay for it ongoing it should work. Offering "work arounds" and "fixes" is just not good enough. I am a proffesional photographer and have never seen such a shabby attitude in 25 years from a software company.

Tech guys may love spending time with these type of things , photographers don't and don't have the time.

Either give us a product that works "out of the box" or withdraw it. This is getting a lot of bad interest in the industry and memories are long.

Do your job adobe.

[suppersppy]

Pretty sure the solution to this problem, if not a permissions issue as some have found to be a solution, is to make sure that you don't have any video files in a folder with your stills or in a subfolder. If there is a video file in the same folder, or a subfolder, as your still images then the import will fail and when you try to quit the program will hang. Move the video file and somewhere else and your import will work just fine and you will be able to exit without issue. I found this worked for me using OSX 10.10.5 and LR 6.3. Nothing I did was able to change it and I was also unable to actually import a video file. If you've got a video file on a card you are trying to import and you use the devices section of the import dialog, so that the video file shows up on the import, then it will fail. If you instead navigate to a folder with no videos using the files section you will be able to import directly from your card.

[Fooby2]

Yup. I had to do the same workaround to get it to import and not hang. Pretty pathetic IMO. I just dump all images/videos to a folder specifically for a particular camera. And why shouldn't I be able to? I don't import from the SD card but obviously this should be an option too. Apparently it isn't if there are any videos. Obviously there should be automatic filtering going on to avoid such a ridiculous situation as failure to import and hanging. At the very least there should be user-settable filters. Adobe devs are becoming increasingly incompetent and support is non-existent. This is already the 3rd rev of this app.

[suppersppy]

Lightroom is supposed to handle video files. It should work without any filtering. Anything less than the ability import and work with video, as designed, is a failure. It's a pretty big failure too so yes, I'd say it's a bit pathetic.

[Fooby2]

I didn't know it was supposed to import videos too. I just read in the Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom® CC and Lightroom® 6.x Help‌ reference: "Work with video in Lightroom -> To import video files into Lightroom, follow the same steps as you would to import photos." OMG! So it is a nasty bug and they haven't fixed it in 3 revisions?!

More irony--in the same chapter there is a link to How to transfer photos from a hard drive folder to Photoshop Lightroom that says:

Do one of the following to open the import window:

• Click the Import button in the lower-left corner of the Library module.
• Import button hung the app.
• From the main menu, choose File > Import Photos And Video.
• File > Import Photos And Video showed grayed out thumbnails but Import button hung the app.
• Drag a folder or individual files from the Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Mac OS) into the Grid view, and then skip Step 2.
• Dragging the video folder hung the app.

I tried all 3 methods to import the segregated videos I had to move to a subfolder with the same results-- hung the app.

More ironic still, the so-called Reference has a link See Import photos from a folder on a hard drive that leads to a page that discusses video file formats for LR 3, 4, and 5 ONLY. So they imply that importing videos is a feature but point to an outdated page. Wow. I don't know what to say…

[suppersppy]

A few clarifications. Mostly unimportant really but it's worth understanding it I think.

• If you are experiencing this bug then you will not be able to import video. Doesn't matter how you try. You can't import video and even the presence of a video file in the same folder, or a subfolder of, your still files will crash the import.
• This bug is new to 6.3. As far as I know it didn't exist in earlier revisions of LR6. One way to handle it would be to roll back to an earlier version of LR6 although I can't say I actually know how to do that (haven't investigated it to be fair).
• Handling video files is a big feature of lightroom so yes, this is a nasty bug. For me, I don't deal with video much so now that I know how to work around this issue I can get by. If someone is say a wedding photographer though and has a lightroom workflow that involves dealing with a mix of stills and video on a regular basis then this could be a huge problem!

[Fooby2]

Well it was worth a try anyway and the fact that this was recommended directly by Adobe makes the bug all the more visible.

I don't know about previous versions because I installed the update immediately before trying the base version. I still kept LR 5 so I could try that just to see.

I didn't know LR could import videos and don't have any immediate need for that feature but it does impact my importing image files from a camera folder and especially from an SD card. I am using the OS X Image Capture app for now but I would like to switch to using LR 6 soon. Until this bug is fixed that will be impossible.

The main point is that there is a bug for such an important function as importing and that, not only was it not caught in testing, if any, but that it was not immediately fixed. This reflects terribly on Adobe developers.         

[suppersppy]

no reason to wait, especially if you aren't dealing with video. If you also have video present on your card you have two ways you can deal with it. If it's in the same folder, or a subfolder, as your still files then move the video out before you do the import. If the video gets saved to a different folder, but not a subfolder, on the card then all you need to do is navigate to the folder in the files section of the import dialog and import from there. The devices section is up above, and is where you'd normally import from with a card, and using that section will cause a crash if there is a video on the card. It's only extra click or so to work around it though.

[Fooby2]

I don't have such options. Everything is just on the card together. The only option is to separate out the videos after uploading everything to hard drive. I often then separate images to folders by category, which is what I got LR for in the first place.

[suppersppy]

So your camera saves both stills and video to the same folder?

[Fooby2]

In the root 'folder' if you can call it that.         

[suppersppy]

yeah, in that case you'd have to move the videos out for it to work.

[Fooby2]

Yup. I just tried importing mixed images and avi videos from an SD card in LR 5 and it did work but it locked up my 8-core Mac Pro for about 10 minutes while it did whatever post-processing it does after the images were copied to HD. I couldn't use the keyboard or mouse during that time. What a bloated, dysfunctional POS! I've had similar problems with Acrobat Pro when doing OCR on large files. Adobe clearly doesn't get or care about resource management. I will stick with using Image Capture. It takes only the time required to copy the images to HD and DOESN'T cripple my system. Then I can move the videos and import the images with LR 6. End of story.

[Fooby2]

It's gotten even worse. In LR 6.3, I just moved all video files in a camera folder to a subfolder and tried to import just the image files. I unchecked all the video files--there is no way to exclude folders--and clicked the Import button. The thumbnails were visible and the progress bar was showing  progress and CPU usage was over 300%! Then when progress was about 75%--Current Import 1100, CPU usage dropped to 100% and no further progress was made. I even cancelled the import and tried to import it again, checking the files that were not imported before, and this time the CPU usage was at ~5% and import was still stuck at 1100. When I tried to Quit, the app was not responding so I had to force quit it. This is a folder with only ~3GB of 1400 JPG files. So it can't even import image files! This to me makes this POS absolutely worthless. I can't even get to square one.

[madm55688984]

‌Dude, as mentioned a couple of days ago, 6.3 has issues with both folders including and excluding videos. Uninstall 6.3, install 6.0 and upgrade no further than 6.1 until this nasty bug is fixed, hopefully in 6.4.

contact Adobe support for installer packages if you don't have them or check the many locations on the internet if you're a more adventurous type for those older versions.

[Fooby2]

Not really. There are several posts about moving video files out of the image directory as a workaround. Where are you seeing excluding videos? As for downgrading, not gonna happen. I upgraded after installing 6 and I have no desire to downgrade. I'll just wait and use LR 5 for now. As for direct downloads, I only do direct downloads from the command line, no sign-in required. Akmai can go download itself in an infinite loop…

[madm55688984]

‌Mate, do a simple search for the word excluding on this page, you'll find another post by me and above that a post of another forum member with the 6.1 downgrade solution, which he got offered by calling Adobe support specialists. I experienced the same issue as you, regardless of folders with or without videos, 6.3 can choke during import. In any event, suit yourself, for me LR6.1 is the most convenient solution that allows me to import everything (photos / videos) without trouble, for you LR5.

[Fooby2]

Thanks but no thanks. I'll just wait.

[suppersppy]

I made it really clear, although I guess not clear enough, that you can't have the image files in a subfolder of the folder you are importing from. They must be in a folder that is not a subfolder of the one you are trying to import from. If your image files are in the root of the card that would mean that you can't have video files anywhere on the card.

[Fooby2]

So I gathered from this last experience. I can wait until the 'fix' if it ever arrives. Meanwhile I am working on installing Bridge CC. It does most of what I want and it's free:

It’s True: Adobe Bridge CC Is Completely Free for Everyone, for Life! | ProDesignTools

[suppersppy]

Bridge does very little of what Lightroom does but if it works for you and it's free then sounds like a plan.

[Fooby2]

Yeah, after installing it I see that it really has no features to speak of. I'll continue to use LR 5 for now.

[suppersppy]

It really will work well to use v6.1. Although I have to say that I don't begrudge you using 5 since I don't really see much difference between 5 and 6.

[Fooby2]

Yeah. I have not even used LR 5 much so I won't notice any differences. My main interest at the moment is the ability to import multiple images as PS layers and to better organize images on HD.

[echostorm]

Same NEW problem for me too, hangs at 45% of an import -- never happened to me before - I think it was with this newest CC update, going to reinstall and see if it fixes anything