Participating Frequently

Question

Why doesn't Lightroom see all the photos in my folder?

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
July 24, 2016
7 replies
20061 views

I am operating a Macbook running El Capitan and Lightroom 6.1.1

All the photos I want are in the folder yet Lightroom steadfastly refuses to recognize them no matter what I do.

I've synchronize the folder.

I've tried importing them but, again, Lightroom grays them out so it can't import them.

WHAT am I doing wrong?

FAQ

This topic has been closed for replies.

M

MaineMan

Participating Frequently

This is common it appears. After you've done the stand Mac troubleshooting: repair permissions, restart. Simply do this.

Open Lightroom. Go Under the FILE dropdown and chose "Optimize Catalog".

This should fix the problem.

All the Best,

Steve

J

Jens Arbogast

Participating Frequently

I am having the same issue on MAC OS X 10.11.6 and LR 2015.6.1

When connecting my external hard drive where 99% of my photos are stored lightroom shows the green dot for the connected hard drive but EVERY single folder on it has the question marc showing that lightroom thinks it is missing.

When relocating a "missing" file lightroom says "the file is associated with another another photo in the catalogue" and the photo it is associated with is the actual "missing" photo I wanted to relocate.

So at one hand LR says something is wrong and at the other one that everything is right.

Any help out there? adobe? how can every update be that buggy?

D

dj_paige

Legend

yebooos wrote:
I am having the same issue on MAC OS X 10.11.6 and LR 2015.6.1
When connecting my external hard drive where 99% of my photos are stored lightroom shows the green dot for the connected hard drive but EVERY single folder on it has the question marc showing that lightroom thinks it is missing.
When relocating a "missing" file lightroom says "the file is associated with another another photo in the catalogue" and the photo it is associated with is the actual "missing" photo I wanted to relocate.
So at one hand LR says something is wrong and at the other one that everything is right.
Any help out there? adobe? how can every update be that buggy?

This is not a bug. This is an unfortunate user error.

Your symptoms indicate that you have (accidentally?) imported the photo twice, and most likely one time you imported using COPY and one time you imported using ADD. If you search for a photo, you will most likely find two copies of the photo in your Lightroom Library, one where you think it ought to be, and one where you don't expect it to be. To search for the photo, click on All Photographs, then turn off any filters (Ctrl-L once or twice) and then sort the photos by file name (View->Sort->File Name) and then scroll up or down until you find the two versions of the same file in your Lightroom library module. Probably one version has edits and user-supplied metadata, and one does not.

The solution is to delete the version that does not have the edits, then reconnect, and you won't get the message "the file is associated with another another photo in the catalogue".

J

Jens Arbogast

Participating Frequently

thank you @dj_paige for your fast reply. I don't think this is a user error. I was working like this for 2 years by now – without any problems so far

I actually found a solution right now: REBOOT. I cannot believe it but everything works well again as if there would haver never been a problem. I am not used to that kind of solutions at an APPLE machine, that is why I did not come up with it immediately.

I have no idea what happened but I just hope that it will never appear again.

D

dj_paige

Legend

jewboy54 wrote:
I am operating a Macbook running El Capitan and Lightroom 6.1.1
All the photos I want are in the folder yet Lightroom steadfastly refuses to recognize them no matter what I do.
I've synchronize the folder.
I've tried importing them but, again, Lightroom grays them out so it can't import them.
WHAT am I doing wrong?

Most likely you (accidentally?) originally imported the photos using the COPY option, and the photos were imported into Lightroom and exist in Lightroom in some other folder (where the COPY placed them). The instructions others have given are what you need to do. Find the photos in Lightroom.

Importing will not solve your problem. Synchronizing the folder will not solve the problem.

Last, Lightroom is not a file browser. It doesn't see or know what files are in your folders. It only knows what files have been imported.

N

NDY MookAuthor

Participating Frequently

OK, yes I believe you're correct about my error.

To compound it further, I removed the original folder, which was in error, and put them where i wanted them using my Mac Finder.

Lightroom sees the folder but refuses to recognize the files. Is there anyway to get these pictures imported to Lightroom and have the program stop ignoring them?

D

dj_paige

Legend

jewboy54 wrote:
Lightroom sees the folder but refuses to recognize the files. Is there anyway to get these pictures imported to Lightroom and have the program stop ignoring them?

As I said, and as others have said, Importing will not solve the problem. It will only make the problem worse. You have to find the copy of the photo that has already been imported into Lightroom by searching within Lightroom. Per Berntsen explained how to do this in reply #2 in this thread.

JP Hess

Inspiring

Is it possible that you are looking at the "previous import" rather than displaying the entire folder? After images are imported Lightroom first displays just those images that were imported at that time. If you right-click on one of those images and choose to go to the folder in library, perhaps that will display the rest of your images.