Previews not showing

Report · Jul 18, 2023

We are running the latest Lightroom Classic on a Mac. We have one catalog. The other day the app appeared to create a new catalog (and related files) in the Downloads folder on the Mac, and defaulted to that catalog. Weird. We noticed pretty quickly and switched back to the original catalog. Howver, using that original catalog, every time we now open LR the app makes and uses a new Previews file, not the other original file which is still sitting in the same Master folder (which at this point is 440gb in size). Even opening the the app by double-clicking that original Previews file doesn't make the app use it - it just creates a new file (or uses a previously created new file).

Because of this we are missing all previews for all files across 8 hard drives - in the Library all we see are grey rectangles...

Any ideas how to re-connect to the original Previews file? Help!

Report · Jul 18, 2023

If your seeing the wrong previews, then very likely you're still opening the wrong catalog. You should double click on the Catalog (.lrcat) you want to open, not the Previews (.lrdata). You should never double click on Previews (.lrdata) as it will often open the wrong catalog. When this catalog opens it often immediately switches to the import window, which would explain why you see the wrong previews.

Report · Jul 18, 2023

Ian, thanks. Not seeing any previews at all - they are all grey…and this
happens even if we open the desired catalog directly. Btw when we double
click the Previews file and then check the catalog settings in LR it
confirms that the catalog we want is the selected catalog.

Report · Jul 18, 2023

If the correct previews are opening but grey (i.e. many thousands of grey thumbnails), then your Previews.lrdata is probably corrupt. You can trash it or move it out of the Lightroom folder, then restart LrC and build new previews.