Sidecar file not being read after restoring accidentally deleted files

[Erika27101782tjh3]

Hi Community,

I'm desperately hoping someone here can help after spending 2 hours on a chat with Adobe support and getting nowhere. What happened is that I inadvertently deleted an entire folder of ~300 photos from disk through Lightroom CC. I restored the files from my trash can along with their corresponding XMP files. All files are now back in the original location. I re-synched the folder to bring back the deleted files. However, none of my edits have been restored, causing me hours of lost work. My understanding is that my edits would be contained in the XMP sidecar files but I can't seem to figure out how to access it. Any assistance from the community would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

[johnrellis]

First, let's verify that the .xmp sidecars really do correspond to the raws and contain the edits. Upload one of the problem raws and its .xmp sidecar to Wetransfer, Dropbox, Google Drive or similar free service and post the sharing link here.

[Erika27101782tjh3]

I placed one sample set on Google Drive at:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KR03dv_rfVmCbqlhwCo85-gHmtL0oFpe/view?usp=drive_link

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bv3lXzC6BEMGjqwbmXmbW-FcFo4kuNJf/view?usp=drive_link

This should have both cropping and exposure correction applied.

[Erika27101782tjh3]

Also confirmed that I do have the metadata setting set to "Automatically write changes to XMP"

[johnrellis · Accepted solution]

"This should have both cropping and exposure correction applied."

The .xmp sidecar doesn't contain any crop settings, and all the develop settings are at their default values (e.g. Exposure is 0).  You can edit the .xmp file in a text editor and look at the contents yourself. The develop settings typically start with "crs:", e.g. 

   crs:WhiteBalance="As Shot"
   crs:Temperature="5150"
   crs:Tint="+16"
   crs:Exposure2012="0.00"
   crs:Contrast2012="0"

There's one important clue in the .xmp:

   xmp:MetadataDate="2025-04-02T13:47:43-07:00"

That indicates the .xmp was last written into by LR today at 1:47 PM PDT.  Did the deletion accident occur before then? If so, I'm wondering if through some sequence of events you did or confusion on LR's part, LR decided that the settings for the photo in the catalog (with the default settings) were newer than the .xmp file and wrote them out as the result of Automatically Write Settings Into XMP.  

Do you have backups of the deleted folder from which you could recover the original .xmp files at the time of the accident?

[Erika27101782tjh3]

The accidental deletion occurred right around that timestamp (13:47). And all the XMP files had the same timestamp in the Recycle bin. I restored them from the Recycle bin to the original folder, but that was the only copy I had. The edits were all done that day in that session so no prior day backups would be of use. It sounds like I have to redo my work, which is a bummer. I have now learned that LR does not make it easy to determine how many files you are deleting. I thought I had just one selected and ended up deleting the entire folder. I'll need to be a lot more careful next time. I appreciate your guidance, johnrellis!

[johnrellis]

That's too bad. Normally, when you accidentally delete a photo from disk (something I still do about once a year even though I use the Reject / Delete Rejected Photos workflow), the  recycle bin and the .xmp file saves your rear end. That's one of the advantages of Automatically Write Changes Into XMP. 

[johnrellis]

"The edits were all done that day in that session so no prior day backups would be of use."

You might consider using Time Machine with hourly backups. With a reasonably fast external drive (not a pocket drive), it works pretty well for me.

[Erika27101782tjh3]

You know, I actually do have Time Machine running hourly backups to a Time Capsule (I must be the only person who still has one of those dinosaurs!) But somehow, on the day in question, it only has one at like 4 am, and the next one is the following day!