Lightroom converted all my photos to DNG - - How can I covert them back to CR2

[Amanda66]

I'm so frustrated right now. 

I have over 2000 photos in my LR which most have been changed to DNG.

The problem with this is I just moved all my folders to a new harddrive, which would normally not be an issue, but now it is. 

When I go "find" a photo to make sure the group of photos know where the orginal is, it is only accepting it one at a time. 

Why? Because my original photos are CR2 and the photos in LR are DNG (I did not do this, it updated automatically). Each time I connect a photo to the original, I get a pop-up "This photo does not have the same name, are you sure it's the same photo?" -- I have to select each one individually and continue on. 

This is a big PITA and a waste of time. -- I would typically just delete all the photos from LR and start over, but many of these have already been edited, but I don't know which ones have been edited because I can't get into them until I connect them back. 

Am I screwed? Am I going to need to go through each individual photo and connect each one by hand? 

One other fix I thought of was to go to my original files and convert all them to DNG (this is for events not weddings or commercil ) so the format type doesn't matter to me for this as long as I can get these done fast. 

If someone can help me, that would be great. -- BTW: I use a PC

Thank you. 

Amanda 

[GoldingD]

1. Lightroom can Copy as DNG during Import.

2. Lightroom can export as DNG

3. Lightroom will not change to DNG

 And (1)  and (2) only occure if you take action to do so.

So, how dud you originaly import your RAW files from your memeory card?  Did you Copy them, Copy as DNG, or ADD them (having previously copied them outside of  LRC to a hard drive)

If you selected to Copy as DNG, then the RAW files never got copied to the computer as RAW files

If you simply went the Copy route, then where did you copy them to? Unless you deleated them, they should still exist.

If you copied them outside of LRC, to a hard drive, then used the ADD route, same thing, where did you copy them to? Should still be their unless you deleated them.

[GoldingD]

So, perhaps this is a simple missing photo or missing folder ussue, not a phyiscally missong RAW file issue. Missing as in the catalog does not know where it is, not as in actually gone.

see this link:

http://www.computer-darkroom.com/lr2_find_folder/find-folder.htm

You may want to look at part 2.

[Bob Somrak]

David

It is incorrect that  "Lightroom will not change to DNG" but like the other two David mentions you have to specifically tell it to do so.  Lightroom did not do this on its own.  See bottom menu item in clip.

[GoldingD]

By that  I mean a CR2 file is not turned into a DNG file, LRC converst, meaning copies/exports to aa DNG file. LRC doses not destroy a file.

[Bob Somrak]

The Convert Photo to DNG menu item will allow you to delete the RAW file so Lightroom will delete/destroy the original RAW file.

[Just Shoot Me]

LR Will Not and Does Not convert any images to the DNG format without the user requesting it do that.

LR does NOT do that Automatically. Never has and AFAIK never will.

And actually the DNG format is a RAW format and retains all the same data as any other RAW image format.

So somehow You set LR to convert all your images to DNG.

Then you say something about moving images to another hard drive.  But you really don't expand on what exactly you did. and only expound that you need to connect each one individually. 

Not really sure what you did when you moved from one drive to another. But it dsoesn't sound like you did it the right way.

I personally have done that several time over the years I have used LR. Either from replacing the whole computer or just a drive in the computer I have been using. I have never had to Re-Link images on either the new computer or the new drive in an older computer.

Maybe this site might help.

How do I move Lightroom to a new computer? | The Lightroom Queen

[SwampLilly925]

I am having the same issue this person has. Only my photos are shot on a week old iPhone, and the meta shows as RAW when in my iPhotos. But as soon as they import into LR mobile they are DNG. i turned RAW off to see if it was an issue, and I got jpg uploaded to LRM. I did not ask it to do this. It just started doing this the other day. I was shooting AND uploading RAW. no device change, no uploading anywhere else. Only thing I've done is plug it into my windows pc to charge. What's happening to my photos? I'm a photographer. I know how to use Lightroom. I've been on chat with apple support for hours. Can you help me??  

[Rob_Cullen]

I use an iPhone. My Lightroom camera in the iPhone takes raw DNG files.

I do not see a problem with this.

DNG files ARE 'raw' files.