Retrieve removed photos from LrC

[susan_0047]

Ho do I find and retrieve recently removed photos from Lightroom Classic version 13.5.1 on a MacBook Pro (macOS Monterey)? Thank you in advance!

[kglad]

in the future, to find the best place to post your message, use the list here, https://community.adobe.com/

p.s. i don't think the adobe website, and forums in particular, are easy to navigate, so don't spend a lot of time searching that forum list. do your best and we'll move the post (like this one has already been moved) if it helps you get responses.

<"moved from using the community">

[susan_0047]

Thank you!

[dj_paige]

Can you give us more details about what you did? How did you remove the photos? Where were they removed from?

[susan_0047]

In Library mode, when looking at a photo, I right clicked, then clicked
Remove Photo.

[dj_paige]

As @Conrad_C points out elsewhere in this thread, you have two choices, Remove from Lightroom; and Delete from Disk.

Assuming you selected Remove from Lightroom, then you have to find the photos using your operating system (because LrC can't help for these photos), and then re-import them into LrC. You could lose all of your edits and all of your user-provided metadata; you will definitely lose collection membership, virtual copies, edit history, flags and a few other things that I can't remember now. Alternatively, you can restore a recent backup of your catalog file made before you removed these photos.

[Conrad_C]

How did you delete the photos? If you used the Delete key, then the message below should have appeared, and then how you retrieve them depends on which button you clicked.

If you clicked Remove from Lightroom, then the photo’s record (its thumbnail, edits, and metadata) was removed from the open catalog’s database, but the original photo file was not removed from the Mac itself. So the photo was not actually deleted from the Mac (and also wasn’t deleted from any other catalogs that it’s in), and doesn’t need to be “retrieved.” Now, if what you mean is that you need that photo back in the catalog, then it will have to be re-imported. But it will be imported fresh, so any previous edits or metadata you applied won’t come back.

There might be another way that would keep any edits you made. If you use a backup system that updates the backup frequently, such as Apple Time Machine (which can update the backup every hour if left connected), then you might try going into the backup and restoring the catalog from the last time the photos were still in the catalog before being deleted. For example, if you deleted the photos from the catalog 4 hours ago, try restoring the backup of the catalog from 5 hours ago.

If you clicked the second button, Delete From Disk, what that means is that the above happens (it’s removed from that catalog), and, any selected photos were also moved to the Mac Trash. That means, if you haven’t also used the File > Empty Trash command in the Mac Finder desktop, they should still be in the Trash. If they’re still in there, you should be able to open the Trash and drag them back out (or see if the Finder command File > Put Back works on them). After the photos are put back into the correct folder, now you can re-import them into a Lightroom Classic catalog, but previous edits won’t be restored unless you are also able to restore an earlier backup of the catalog when the edits still existed.

The photos are not retrievable in any way if all of the following are true:

The Delete from Disk button was clicked.

Then the Trash was emptied.

There are no backups of the photos or the catalog.

If the photos were fully deleted from the Mac and backups were never made, one last chance is if you recently took the photos, see if they’re still on your camera card or phone. If they are, you can re-import them into the catalog from there.