Previews/files being "replaced" - naming duplication issue?

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
February 9, 2025
2 replies
329 views

I'm running into a problem where Lightroom Classic seems to suddenly randomly populate recent imports with the occasional much older image. The thumbnail will sometimes flash to the correct image when the cursor rolls over or right as it's clicked to go into the single image view. Eventually it stays as the older image. The same thing happens in Lightroom on a mobile device. It seems to be related to duplicate filename issues which I thought Lightroom handled automatically. I'll have a recent import of lets say 30 images and a few of them suddenly appear as images from much older imports. Everything is sorted by Capture time. I had a recent post/question regarding Capture Time but this seems to be more about a filenaming issue.

macOS

dj_paige

Legend

Sounds like a corrupted preview cache. You can try forcing LrC to rebuild the previews. With LrC closed, delete the file (in the same folder as the catalog file) whose name ends with previews.LRDATA. DO NOT DELETE ANYTHING ELSE. When you re-open LrC, the thumbnails may appear initially to be grey or low resolution, and they will be rebuilt (and this is slow for a while).

linviltAuthor

Known Participant

Thanks @dj_paige ! I gave that a try but unfortunately seems to be replicating the same issue.

A

Aleke

Community Manager

Hi @linvilt!

Which version of Lightroom Classic are you using? Is this issue happening with photos taken by a specific camera? And do you happen to have photos with the same name in different folders? Have you rebuilt previews recently?

Thanks a bunch!

Cheers, Alek

*(If you mention me with an @, like @Aleke, I’ll get a notification and can respond faster.)*

linviltAuthor

Known Participant

Hi Aleke!

I'm using 14.1.1 Very likely that I have photos of same name in different folders. I created my own folder structure and I typically don't rename files during import. Which means on some occasions, a camera whose SD card has been reformatted since the previous shoot, might using the same name again on a new image (for example IMG_4778.ARW). Could this be the issue? I assumed that Lightroom had ways to auto-resolve this given the high possibility of occurrence.

linviltAuthor

Known Participant

Lightroom Classic should be smart enough to know that IMG_4778.RAW which was created today and in Folder A is a different photo than IMG_4778.RAW (same name) created yesterday and is in Folder B, and should not get the photos or the previews mixed up. This is built in, you don't have to set some option to turn it on. Nor can you somehow accidentally turn it off.

So to me, this is still a problem with the previews. Please try rebuilding the previews another way: select like 100 images, including the ones you are having this problem with. Go to Library->Previews->Delete 1:1 Previews and then once that finishes Library->Previews->Build 1:1 Previews and let that run. Once it finishes, do you still have the problem with those 100 images?

Thanks for the guidance @dj_paige !! I followed the step but still experiencing the issue. I keep going back and forth on whether this is a preview related issue or a Capture date problem. Here's a short screen recording where I go through the issue in my library.

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