Lightroom Library Filter - Not all metadata being shown

Report · May 06, 2023

Greetings, I'm using the "Library Filter" to filter my images by metadata (default columns enabled) and it's showing all the metadata associated with my library.

2 examples:

I have images in my library from 2017 & 2018 yet those years don't appear in the "Date" column
I have images taken with iPhones and a Nikon DSLR yet those cameras don't appear in the "Camera" column

I have "All Photographs" selected in the Catalog and I've restarted the program a couple times.

Any help would be appreciated!

Report · May 11, 2023

If the Jan backup catalog is working and you don't have to do much work to bring in photos you've added since then, then rolling back is certainly a good option.

After you've restored the backup, you can easily rename it:

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/find-move-rename-catalog/

Setting LR to do periodic backups is a good idea -- make sure the options Test Integrity Before Backup Up and Optimize Catalog After Backing Up are set. But the Test Integrity option doesn't seem to catch some catalog inconsistencies that are the result of application-level programming errors (like your issue).

You're on Mac OS, so you can also rely on Time Machine if you're running it. Try looking for a more recent Time Machine backup that doesn't have the problem.

Report · May 18, 2023

Hi John - sheesh all done! After rolling back and adding images back to the catalog, I went through every year of images and addwed whatever the catalog did not contain.

I seem to always have technical issues with LR and it feels like half the time I'm using it I'm trying to resolve a bug which severly cuts into the time I have to do the projects I intend too. Do you have the same experience? Do you have any "best pratcices" to avoid LR issues? Rather than have 1 catalog with 250k images should I break it down it smaller catalogs? The hesitation with that is I',m often pulling/reviewing images form multiple years and having open/close catalogs whould be a slow and yucky. I welcome any feedback and thank you for your time and efforts. I would not have have been able to resolve my issues without your help.

Regards,

Phil

Report · May 18, 2023

LR is getting a little more creaky with age, I think.

I wouldn't recommend splitting up you catalog. Many, many users have larger catalogs. The underlying database technology, SQLite, is very robust and doesn't run much faster with smaller catalogs. And I think you're just as likely to run into problems with 5 smaller catalogs than one larger one.

Report · May 20, 2023

Hi John,

I'm at my wits end! I renamed the catalog and made a back up. -- All fine. (One caveat, "Photos That Failed to Built a Smart Preview" shows over 2k images but the images in that "folder" all show selected as "Original + Smart Preview". Small problem I guess.)

However, I then imported about 10k iphone images. They imported no issues and made Smart Previews. They showd up as "Previous Import" too. I quit LRC and when I went to open it later, I got a notification my catalog was corrupt and started a repair. Now when I open the app, "Previous Import" only shows 114 images. The images are not in the catalog but there are in the folder that's connected to the catalog. I'm pretty discouraged! What to do?!?

Do I go back to "Import" and "Add" the images back to the catalog? That's not easy...the images covered a number of years so they're spread across lots of folders. I did not do a backup after the import, FYI.

I'd like to find a solution but I don't know if I can confidently move forward with this product. Literally everytime I go to use it, I'm dealing with an issue.

You're help is greatly apprecoiated. TY

Report · May 21, 2023

Hi John, jumping on top of my last message, I was eager to try and solve the issue. Using "Import" and "Add" functions, LRC does identitfy almost all the images that were previously "Copied as DNG" that are not shown in my catalog. So I could commit to this move but my bigger concern/question is:

Why would LRC import 10k images successfully (w Smart Previews) only to later open the app (now showing corupt) and not have the images in my catalog (although the they did get copied and moved to my LR library)?

Thanks again