Lost original photos, can I still extract from the preview?

[angelae98952044]

My photos were on an external hard drive and that hard drive is now damaged (trying to recover through a data recovery service) but if that doesn't work is there any other way to still access the photos? Seeing them in preview is like a tease. I was editing a wedding and it's so important. Please help!

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

You can access the previews, these are smaller size images, probably not suitable for weddings, but I guess that's really up to you. Use this plug-in: Jeffrey Friedl's Blog » Jeffrey’s “Extract Cached Image Previews” Lightroom Plugin

Get in the habit of making regular and automated backups of all of your photos and catalog file, to a different physical disk than the original. No excuses! It's a lot cheaper than using a data recover service -- faster too.

[angelae98952044]

Hello! I just sent you a private message.

[dj_paige]

Any discussion of this problem should go in this public forum so that everyone can benefit, and not in a private message.

[angelae98952044]

My apologies. So this program worked GREAT for most of the photos, thank you so much for the help. The last 190 photos are still thumbnail size for some reason. I tried to re-extract just those photos but that did not work either. Are you the author of that program? Just looking for additional help because of course with a wedding those photos are the first dance, cake cutting ect... Thanks!

[dj_paige]

No, i am not the author.

The plug-in will extract whatever size thumbnails exists in Lightroom's preview cache. If Lightroom never created a full-size preview, it only has the very small thumbnail, then that's the best the plug-in can do is extract the very small thumbnail, larger sizes don't exist.

[jackiek49935404]

is there a way to make these pictures more like the originals - I was able to extract pictures from previews from files that were lost on my a usb drive.  however, I am pretty sure that I didn't import them originally 1:1.  Is there a way to make them sharper perhaps by changing the size?

[dj_paige]

The size is whatever it is. Enlarging the image will cause it to lose sharpness, not increase sharpness.

[Memoriesbymandy]

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! You literally saved my life!!! I had 1 job that didn't get back up on my other external drive before it crashed and I was able to save the previews to save my life!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!