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Biscut
Inspiring
June 4, 2024
Answered

Upgrading catalog with 13-3 loses previews

  • June 4, 2024
  • 3 replies
  • 2516 views

I needed to upgrade the catalog with the new Lightroom Classic update about 10 days ago (now 13.3). However, it seems that the previews were not included. In the same folder, I see the old preview catalog (500 GB) and a new preview catalog (4.5 GB). I'm not sure why the previews were not incorporated into the new catalog.

 

I've done several hours of work in the past week (before I noticed what happened), so I don't want to lose anything by rolling back and upgrading again. Is there a way to absorb the old previews into the new catalog? Or any other ideas besides creating 500 GB of previews all over again from scratch? What's the best way forward?

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Victoria Bampton LR Queen

    Although there's a new preview architecture, the old previews should have been carried over. You may be able to force it by quitting LR, copying the name of the 4.5GB previews, renaming it to something else, then renaming the 500GB one to the 13-3 name you just copied.

     

    If there was an issue with the old previews, this may fail to work, but if there wasn't, you may have all your old previews back. They'll still get replaced in time, so if you've got the originals online, building the previews from scratch may still be a better bet, but this is potentially an option if the originals aren't available. 

    3 replies

    alanjr_uk
    alanjr_uk
    Inspiring
    July 21, 2024

    Just wanted to add I've been hit by this too - only 20k photos in my library thought so pretty small compared to most of you!

     

    Upgraded catalogue to 13.3 and noticed all previews missing. I was travelling at the time so didn't have access to the originals to recreate the previews. Thankfully downgrading to 13.2 resolved the issue but am holding off upgrading to 13.4 or later until we know the bug has been fixed. Do we know if Adobe have acknowledged the issue?

    Victoria Bampton LR Queen
    Community Expert
    Victoria Bampton LR QueenCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
    Community Expert
    June 5, 2024

    Although there's a new preview architecture, the old previews should have been carried over. You may be able to force it by quitting LR, copying the name of the 4.5GB previews, renaming it to something else, then renaming the 500GB one to the 13-3 name you just copied.

     

    If there was an issue with the old previews, this may fail to work, but if there wasn't, you may have all your old previews back. They'll still get replaced in time, so if you've got the originals online, building the previews from scratch may still be a better bet, but this is potentially an option if the originals aren't available. 

    Victoria - The Lightroom Queen
    B
    BiscutAuthor
    Inspiring
    June 13, 2024

    Renaming the catalog to the old one seems to have worked. Though my computer has been so slow lately as to make it difficult to determine if LR is loading a 1:1 preview or creating a new one on demand.

    Thank you all for your help on this issue!

    Ian Lyons
    Community Expert
    Ian LyonsCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    June 4, 2024

    As of 13.3, Library preview generation has a new architecture. The previous previews are not compatible, but will upgrade on-demand or by rebuilding the entire preview database from scratch.

    B
    BiscutAuthor
    Inspiring
    June 4, 2024

    All right, thank you. Somehow I missed that as I updated. Is there a way I can update them, or nothing I can do now? How do I do upgrade on-demand?

    Ian Lyons
    Community Expert
    Ian LyonsCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    June 4, 2024

    You can trash the existing Previews.lrdata and rebuild everything using the 'Build Standard-sized Previews' in Library > Library menu. This could take many hours. As such, it's probably best done overnight.

     

    On demand occurs when you view the images in Library Grid or Loupe view. In this case, you'd prioritise the recent images or those that you're working on.

     

    FWIW, I went for the trashing the lrdata folder and rebuilt everything (140,000 plus images). It took 5-6 hours on my M1 Ultra.

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