Where are 'Saved locations' in the Map Module stored? Not where i expected!

[therealgingernob]

A week or so ago i had the tiresome task of re-imaging my pc desktop. Did all the usual checks, made sure all required dta was backed up and on the correct disks.

Was doing some work in the Map Module today, only to find ALL (literally years) of handy stored locations had all gone.

I am assuming the logic hear is that for what ever inconceivable reason, some bright spark thought 'where shall we store 'stored locations?' Well we stored everything else in the catalogue, lets put these on the system disk in some bizzare folder that nobody will ever think of checking for'

Yes im miffed. Not just beacause of the loss, but because of the poor logic. Im sure someone is going to pipe up with a jolly good reason why they weren't stored in the catalogue but thats going to do very little to stop me from being miffed.

Am i the only one who did not know this?

rather than searching around, id like a list of everything that is not stored in the catalogue and specifically where they are so i can add them into my backups.

Signed

Grumpy David 😞

[DS256]

Ouch. Sorry to hear what you are going through. I've had to do that before.

I take it you are now on the latest version of Windows and LrC.

Were you able to restore your LrC Catalogue or did you have to restore a backup? If a backup, how far back did you have to go?

When you refer to 'stored locations', are you:

• Referring to the the Track Logs? If so, as far as I know, you have to reload these each time you need them. They are not stored in LrC or at least not in my experience. 'Recent Track Logs' are simply a list  of file locations that you loaded them from.
• Talking about the GPS cooridnates that have been assigned to your pictures? These are saved with the metadata for the photo and can be seen in Library Metadata panel under 'EXIF'. If GPS is missing, I'd expect other EXIF metadata to be missing also.

Can you provide more detail and maybe attached a screen shot of what is missing?

[therealgingernob]

No backups required. as mentioned i ensured all data was in their correct places and ensured (i thought) everything i needed off the system disk.

there really is nothing to be done other than i was hoping someone could identify all llc data that is stored on the system disk, so to aid future backups.

No, nothing to do with those 2 areas you mentioned. 'Saved Locations' are data stored to list geographic data you use regularly. you create them on the left hand panel of the map module. They are only usefully for people who do not have the ability to store GPS data into the photo metadata, or in my case; i have thousands of family photos scanned in and will over time add GPS data to the scanned photos. Hence, the 'saved locations' is excellent as the often used geolocation is saved and just requires a click to add to newly scanned photos.

thanks anyway

[johnrellis · Accepted solution]

This article gives an overview of where LR stores different kinds of stuff:

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom-classic-file-locations/ 

Saved Locations are stored with all the other various LR presets and templates. Storing them in the file system rather than the catalog allows them to be used with multiple catalogs.

Lightroom Queen has an in-depth article about moving/restoring LR to a new computer:

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/how-move-lightroom-to-new-computer/

It's a handy checklist to make sure you don't forget anything.

[therealgingernob]

Hello John

Many thanks. I didn't think to check out Victoria's website. I guess my little whine is that i have no problem with LRC storing on disk, I just think it shouldn't go on the system disk. Of all the reasons that disks get reformatted, the system disk because of general failures in the o/s would seem the most obvious and it completely went out of my head the profile hidden 'AppData'  stored data. I guess just because i was under pressure with the o/s failure also.

Thinking about it now, it was probably Victoria who pointed me there before regarding 'Presets'. Oh well, you live and learn! Its added to my backups now.

Regards

David

[johnrellis]

"i have no problem with LRC storing on disk, I just think it shouldn't go on the system disk."

I think the core issue is that both Microsoft and Apple distinguish "documents", files that users generate directly, from internal files that programs use for storing their state.  "Documents" are supposed to be stored under the Documents folder by default, while internal files go to a folder that is hidden from users (~/Library on Mac, AppData on Windows).  So Adobe's thinking is that LR presets aren't "documents", since users don't directly manipulate them in the same way that you do with, say, Word documents, so they should be stored in Library/AppData.  What makes this particularly confusing is that Library/AppData are hidden from users by default.

One could reasonably argue that presets really should be treated as "documents" and stored in a visible location under Documents or Pictures.  But LR does store a few folders under Documents (for its video components), and other users have complained about that.

[therealgingernob]

Thank you for that. Yes, but it kinda makes it worse when you can sort of understand their logic 🙂 

your original point regarding being available to multi catologues is equally logical and frustratingly valid and something i had never considered.

well hopefully, once i have returned many of my presets, saved locations etc, with the now existing added pickup of the AppData backups in place, this shouldn't be an issue again.

again, many thanks

David

[DS256 · Accepted solution]

Thanks @therealgingernob therealgingernob. I was not aware of the 'Saved Locations feature'.

I tried it and created a 'My House' location. When I right clicked on it after I created it, I saw a 'Show in Explorer' option. When I selected that it showed that it had created 'My House.lrtemplate' the following file in the directory 'C:\Users\paul\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\Locations\My Locations'. Was that one of your backup up directories?

[therealgingernob]

Many thanks. Both you and John pointed me in the right direction to avoid future mistakes.

Regards

David