Missing photos in Library

[JohnChee]

Hi there. I'm new to LrC and just started to import into the Library. I realised the number of photos in some library folders are not the same as that shown in the winder explorer. Any suggestions to correct this? Thanks🙏🏼

[DClark064]

Are the additional files seen in Explorer photos or some other file type?

If they are photos and you want to import them into the LrC catalog, in the LrC Library module, right click the folder and select "Synchronize Folder...".  You will get a dialog box indicating the number of new photos found, and you can select to import them.

[JohnChee]

Hi DClark064. Many thanks your kind response. All the files in the explorer folders are either photos or videos. I've used the "synchronised folder" option but it doesn't work. In fact the dialogue box shows no new photos before I hit the "synchronise" button.

[dj_paige]

Lightroom Classic is not a file browser like Windows Explorer or Mac Finder. LrC does not have to show the same files as Explorer/Finder.

What has most likely happened is that you accidentally imported photos using COPY instead of ADD. Thus, these photos that you see in your operating system but not in the same folder in LrC, are actually somewhere else in LrC (a different folder). You need to find these photos in Lightroom Classic. Please follow all four of these steps in order:

1. In the Lightroom Classic Library Module, on the left, under Catalog, click on All Photographs
2. Turn off all filters (Ctrl-L once or twice)
3. Turn off all stacking (Photo->Stacking->Expand All Stacks)
4. Search for at least one of these photos by file name using the Lightroom Classic Filter Bar

Let us know what you find.

[richardplondon]

There are several reasons why the number of files reported by the file browser, and the number of photos and videos reported by the Catalog, can differ.

• Raw files may be partnered with a metadata sidecar file (XMP file type) alongside: silently, so far as the Catalog sees things
• The camera may have been set to Raw+JPG and then the Catalog is treating this pair as if it was a single file, but the file browser still sees these as two files.
• There are other file types present of a type that Lightroom cannot support - PDFs, text files, whatever.
• There are images present in the folder that you did not want to import into the Catalog, or that you did but have since removed them.

The above examples would tend to make the number reported by the file browser bigger, without increasing the number reported by the Catalog. But conversely,

• Within the Catalog you might have created one or more virtual copies for a given photo, which share in the usage of the same source file (e.g. a camera Raw): creating these will make the Catalog report a larger number of images without changing the actual number of files present on disk.

In my opinion, the purpose of the Catalog is to largely take away the need to even think about - let alone to micromanage - what's going on in the file system. It's a visual way of working that lets you operate very fluidly and freely without any of the constraints that the actual technicalities would otherwise involve. For example: you can add images A and C together to one Collection without B, and you can add images A and B together to another Collection without C, and there is no conflict - and you have not physically duplicated image A, and editing that in one Collection updates it in the other, etc. But if you instead want to explore variant treatments A1, A2, A3 (virtual copies) you can, and you have still not physically duplicated image A. 

[JohnChee]

Many thanks for your kind response. Yes you are absolutely correct that the difference is due to the .xmp files. Where it was only jpegs there was no difference. Thanks again🙏🏼

[DClark064]

You stated that the folder in Explorer contains photos or videos that were not imported into LrC, but when you synchronized LrC did not find anything.  That strongly suggests that the folder in LrC is not the same folder you are looking at in Explorer.  The simplest way to check this is to go to the Library Module, right click the folder, and then select "Show in Explorer".  That will open the folder in Explorer and you can then see if it is the same folder or not.  I will be surprised if it is.

Once you do this check we can follow up to determine how this happened and what to do to correct it.