Lightroom Classic doesn't display all pictures in 2 specific folders

[phil.maly]

Hi to the community

I discovered lately that 2 specific folders don't display all pictures, some are missing.

Typically these 2 folders contain respectively 575 and 121 pictures (confirmed by the Windows File Explorer).

Lightroom classic shows only 460 and 22 respectively.

When I try to synchronize the folder again, the first pop-up window shows that some files must be imported. But then when I hit synchronize, no new photo are display, as if there are already considered part of the catalogue.

Here is an example with the folder with pictures from my trip to London in October 2024:

Please help me recover these photos which were properly imported at first, since I could edit them and even synchronised some on Adobe cloud. That is how I discovered that they were missing on my local catalogue.

For information, these pictures are on a local drive. I'm using Windows 11 24h2 (latest build) and Lightroom Classic latest version (release 14.2)

[dj_paige]

The usual cause of this is that you accidentally imported the photos into the wrong folder. The photos are in folder A in your operating system, but LrC thinks they are in folder Z. So you have to find them in the Library Module. Please search for one of the photos by performing ALL FOUR of these steps in order.

1. Click on All Photographs
2. Turn off filters
3. Expand all stacks (right-click on a photo and select Stacking->Expand All Stacks)
4. Use the filter bar to search for one of these photos by file name

Let us know if you find it.

[phil.maly]

I did what you proposed but without success.

I know that the photos are in the right folder in my operating system and were in the same folder in LrC. The simple proof is that for some I did pano stitching or HRD stitching and the resulting pictures created by LrC were stored in the same forder. WHen I look through WIndows Explorer, I see for example the photo called "202410-WEàLondres-506-Pano.dng" but when I search for this photo in LrC Catalogue following your steps, it says "No photos match the filter".

[dj_paige]

I know that the photos are in the right folder in my operating system and were in the same folder in LrC.

I'm sure that this is true, and it is also irrelevant. LrC thinks the photos are somewhere else. We have to find them.

... but when I search for this photo in LrC Catalogue following your steps, it says "No photos match the filter".

Just so I'm 100% clear on what you are saying, I did request you follow all four steps in order, not just the one step you mentioned. Did you perform all four steps in order?

[phil.maly]

Hi @dj_paige yes I did all 4 steps as indicated.

Doing it again today, I noticed a few things.

- Some stacks, when expanded, do not show the additional pictures part of the stack (most probably because those pictures that are also missing or somewhere else as you say)

- when searching not only for one specific missing picture, the seach counted even less pictures, ie. one of the folder having issues shows that it contains 460 pictures (in the left "Folders" panel instead of the 575 which are in that folder on my HDD. But when I search these pictures by name, ie. 202410-WEàLondres-... (the 3 dots being the incremental digits) using your technique, it only counts 349 pictures.

- Since my pictures are all named the same way (ie. YYYYMM-EventName-...) I simply scrolled through all my photos and can confirm that the visible picture from London, when selected, are 349.

- Since the issue occurs on 2 folders which follow each other in time, I did the same technique on that second folder. In the left panel it indicates 22 pictures when there are 121 on my hard disk. Scrolling through all pictures and selecting those part of that even I was able to select 29 so 7 more that those displayed in the fodler.

- When I right clicked on one of those picture and selected "Show in Explorer", I got the message that original file could not be found, if I wanted to locate it (with the previous path indicated below). Knowing the file is there, I pointed at it, I had a mesage saying ALready in Catalog, the file being associated with another photo in the catalog. Each file can only be asscoiated with one photo.

- When hitting Show in library, I get another error dialog box "An internal error has occured: bad argument #1 to 'ipairs' (table expected, got nil).

After that a subfolder called "downloaded-smart-previews" appeared under the folder I use to synch my smartphone pictures edited with LR Mobile.

It is really difficult to understand and mostly find a solution. I'm worried that my LR catalog is or will get corrupted and the situation to worsen.

Thanks for your help

[dj_paige]

Again, whatever you see in your operating system is irrelevant, as LrC does not have to match what you see in your operating system.

I would like clarification of this statement:

Since my pictures are all named the same way (ie. YYYYMM-EventName-...) I simply scrolled through all my photos and can confirm that the visible picture from London, when selected, are 349.

Is this scrolling through all your photos done after following steps 1–3 that I described above? Or have you switched back to the folder in LrC that you think the photos are in?

Try this procedure in LrC. Steps 1–3 are the same as before, then sort the photos by capture time, and then scroll up or down until you come to the date when the missing photos were taken. Then search manually/visually among the photos taken on this date, scrolling up or down somewhat to find all photos on that date. Do you find the missing photos?

[phil.maly]

That is exactly what I did, ie. go to "All Photographs", follow steps 1 to 3 and scroll through all photos.

Yesterday I used the File Name approach due to my picture naming convention.

Today I did it again with your proposed approach using the Capture Time. Results are the same, 349 pictures from my trip in London which means that many photos simply don't show up.

Isn't there a way to rebuild the link between the pictures in the Catalog and the original files, since LrC knows the original path?

[dj_paige]

If you have followed my latest approach of using steps 1–3 and then sorting by capture time and trying to find the photos, how do you know there are 349 London photos? Did you count them yourself, one by one?

[phil.maly]

I selected all the pictures corresponding to the London trip and LrC made the count.

So we are discussing a lot about how I follow your instructions but how about talking about the real fix?

[phil.maly]

I can also add another interesting information.

My working process with LrC is that once my pictures are selected and edited, I rate some of them. Those starred 3 and above, I move them into a collection that synchs with the Adobe Cloud.

Some pictures that I miss in my local Catalog are present in the Cloud.

[dj_paige]

So, LrC already thinks these photos are already part of the catalog. In your first post in this thread, you said:

When I try to synchronize the folder again, the first pop-up window shows that some files must be imported. But then when I hit synchronize, no new photo are display, as if there are already considered part of the catalogue.

Your interpretation is correct, that's what it means, the photos are already part of the catalog. So the only way I know to fix this is to find the photos in the catalog, then the fix is (probably) easy.

Now in the most recent reply, you said:

I selected all the pictures corresponding to the London trip and LrC made the count.

Not sure I understand this, how did you select all the photos from the London trip from All Photographs? Is it possible the photos were renamed accidentally and so London is not in the file name? It is my belief that these types of problems are usually caused by people importing with accidentally wrong settings, or otherwise making some accidental change, and now the photos are not where they are expected to be and may not even have the expected file names.

Then counting somehow based on file name will not find these photos, if that is what you did. Which is why I said earlier "Then search manually/visually among the photos taken on this date", search visually in LrC (after performing steps 1–3 and sorting by file capture time) among photos taken on this date and see if you can find one of these missing files by the image content and not by the file name. You know what it looks like since you can find and view the photo in your operating system folder.

[phil.maly]

Sorry but either my English is really so bad (my mother tongue is French) or you don't read my information carefully.

The total amount of pictures from London is 575. All of these pictures sit in the same folder in my hard drive and are named "202410-WEàLondres-xxx.DNG or JPG

The corresponding folder in my LrC Catalog indicates 460 (the number shown in the left hand side menu)

When I select this folder, select one photo, expand all stacks and then select all photos, the bottom bar indicates 348 photos out of 460.

WHen I do your first 3 steps from All photos and then select the photos from London, the count is 349. The 1 additional picture is the one that appeared in the subfolder called "downloaded-smart-previews" part of my Mobile LR synch folder.

So the files have not been renamed or moved. The only thing I'm thinking of is a DB corruption that prevents these pictures to be displayed and/or relinked to the original files.

I did a copy on my hard drive of the second folder which has 121 pictures (but only 22 are recognized by LrC). I imported it again and everything is fine.

So either there is a way to fix my issue or I need to reimport a copy of both folders and the contained files and do my working process again (flag, merge, edit, rate....I).

[dj_paige]

WHen I do your first 3 steps from All photos and then select the photos from London

This is not a step in my procedure. Once you have performed Steps 1–3, then you search with the Filter Bar searching for the file name; or by searching visually all photos taken on that date. It doesn't seem as if you have done that. There is no step of "select the photos from London".

So the files have not been renamed or moved.

I do not agree with that conclusion.

[phil.maly]

The results are the same, either searching by name (step 4) or selecting the pictures and using the count.

Never mind, you tried to help and thank you for that but you focus too much on a specific issue loosing sight of the broader issue.

I will most probably delete the folders and pictures from LrC, reimport them and do the editing process again.

[dj_paige]

Going back to your earlier posts, it hits me that the photo you specifically named is a Pano in .dng format. Maybe that is a clue. Are all the missings .dng? Are all the missings Panos? Were the Panos created by Lightroom Classic, or Photoshop, or other?

[phil.maly]

No some missing pictures are Panos created by LrC, but some other pictures are simply the raw files, etc...

Never mind, I'll do the job again on these 2 folders.

[Rob_Cullen]

One comment-

You have your image files synced with OneDrive-  very often problematic!

Lr-Classic cannot access files that are in One-Drive unless a local copy has synced down. Possibly the reasen why LrC does not see all the files you assume are 'local'.

Check that you have all files permanently in a local folder.

Or better still, stop using OneDrive altogether.

[phil.maly]

Hi Rob, I don't use OneDrive but Drive from Synology. All my pictures are stored locally on my HDD but synched/backed up on my Synology.

I'm working like that for about 10 years without any issue. There must be a corruption of my LrC catalog on 2 specific folders (don't know why) that prevents LrC to display all my pics.

[Rob_Cullen]

Sorry, I mis-interpreted the Green Circle icons.