The file is associated with another photo in the catalog

[kevinh3063037]

Hi everyone - need a helping hand here.

While processing a bunch of digitized negatives (with a D850 so am working with NEF files) using Negative Lab Pro in LR, I discovered a few that weren't behaving well when converting to positives so I went back and re-imported a few images from the camera.  I put them into a separate folder in LR and just finished up the first.  The conversion worked well, so I exported to the separate folder. 

Wanting to get those corrected files moved into my original file structure, I renamed (using Windows Explorer) the "bad" NEF in the file structure, then, inside LR, moved the "good" image in LR from the separate folder to my original folder.  Checking (again, in Windows Explorer) that the "good" NEF file was there (it is), I clicked on the Folder in LR and noticed that I have the ! in the upper right of the image.  Having learned the hard way, clicked on the ! and got the usual "....could not be used because the original file could not be found.  Would you like to locate it?" message.  Clicking Locate and navigating to the original folder, highlighting the flle and clicking Select results in a "The file XXX is associated with another photo in the catalog" message.

I've spent way too much time trying to find a resolution so am putting this SOS out.

Thanks in advance for all responses.

[Dennis1_F]

one is in "Galapagos", the other is in "2013-06-07-Guayaquil". There is NO real folder called "Galapagos" with images in it, only sub-folders. And the one claiming to be in "Galapagos" is the one that LR says points to anopther image (it's twin in the aforementioned 2013 folder).

PS. "Galapagos" in LR has hundreds of "twins" And some of the images in "Galapagos" do NOT have dupes.

I want to keep the ones in 2013-06-08, because they have captions, but no keywords, whereas the ones in "Galapagos" have keywords, but no captions. Here's a clue I just detected: Some of the images are .NEF files with "twinned" .JPG images, but MOST of hte JPG's have copied the captions. CCould be that I added keywords after creating the JPG's in PS. Can I merge the JPG's? Or must I choose?

[Dennis1_F]

To give you an idea of what I'm seeing, here're 3 screen shots of just ONE image "tripled". The JPG inthe middel DOES exist as a true file, but not the one on the left.

[dj_paige]

So you have indeed imported the photo twice. This is rarely a good idea, as you can see, it causes problems, sometimes major problems. You can copy the desired metadata from one copy to the other, and then decide to keep the one with all the metadata.

I do not download attachments, so please include screen captures in your reply by clicking on the "Insert Photos" icon.

[Dennis1_F]

Here are 3 images of a pair of JPG's and the NEF they came from.

[Dennis1_F]

Sorry for the very long delay. Medical emergency had me offline for a month. Since the "twins" have different metadata, is there a way to MERGE the info from one file with the info from the other, so nothing gets lost?

[dj_paige]

The only way I know to do this is to Sync Metadata in the Library Module. This would have to be done for each pair of "twins".

It may be (or it may not be, I don't know, I never tried) that the Syncomatic plug-in for John Beardsworth does this in bulk.

[EllieNavarroPhoto]

dj_paige is correct in what he wrote ( see below) for the fix. BEFORE following his instructions though, try closing and restarting Lightroom. That was a quicker fix for me and I was relieved not to lose all my ratings with flag, numbers and colors! Good luck 

"You have two copies of this photo in your catalog. That's why when you try to reconnect one of the two cpies, you get the message that it is already associated with another photo in your catalog. So, you have to find both copies (in Lightroom, you can click on "All Photographs" and then search by file name), and then delete from the catalog (but not from the hard disk) the one you no longer want. Then you should be able to reconnect."