Import from SD Card missing lots of images

[wilsonc28244193]

I've just noticed Lightroom is failing to import all pictures from my SD Card. I am using the mac card reader. LR imports some pictures and simply ignores a huge chunk of them. No error message is displayed. It simply completes and eject the card. I haven't noticed this until now and I simply lost hundreds of photos because I formatted the SD card after importing. If I import twice from the same card the missing images are detected and imported, but now it is too late for the images I've lost.

I can't believe I am paying for such an amateur product like LR. This is ridiculous. Maybe the SD Card is bad or something, but LR should display an error dialog. Time to dump this piece of &^%#@.

[F. McLion]

It may be very useful to give some more details like the exact version of LR you are using as well as maybe the source and type of the images.

[Just Shoot Me]

This has never, I repeat NEVER, happened to me in the 11+ years I have been using LR.

I suggest you get an External Card Reader as there may be problems with the Mac internal reader.

[Todd Shaner]

wilsonc28244193  wrote

I formatted the SD card after importing. If I import twice from the same card the missing images are detected and imported, but now it is too late for the images I've lost.

These are symptoms of a defective memory card or card reader. Best practice is to not reformat any memory card until you've reviewed the images and determined all is well. If the card is more than half full I generally put it on the shelf and put a new card in the camera. If it's less than half full I continue using the card without reformatting it. Either way I never reformat a memory card until I am absolutely sure the image files have been reviewed inside LR and confirmed transferred with no issues.

Memory cards are virtually dirt-cheap compared to 5-10 years ago. Do yourself a favor and buy some more so that you have at least two available for each camera. Then follow the advice given here. Your time and the ability to reshoot the pictures is much more valuable than the cost of an extra memory card!

[Conrad_C]

Do you click the Import button as soon as possible after pictures start appearing in the Import dialog?

Do you get all of images if you wait a few minutes?

The reason I ask is that with cards from one of my cameras, LIghtroom takes a while to display all the images in the Import dialog box. Within a few seconds it might display a few hundred including the first and last images, sorted by Capture Time, so I could be fooled into thinking that they're all there. But if I'm paying attention, I'll notice that many images in the middle are not there yet. And Lightroom fills in the middle images in an order that seems random. I have to wait several minutes until all of the images fill in and the number equals the number in the camera. If I click Import too quickly, before Lightroom finishes filling in all of the images, many images will be missed. So I've learned to wait and verify before clicking Import.

This is with a practically new SD card in an external card reader connected to a current Mac. I don't know if the random display order has to do with the way that particular camera writes to the card, needs more investigation.

[wilsonc28244193]

First of all thank you so much for the quick responses. I am in the Sierra Nevada area with limited internet connection so I am sorry for my late response.

I am 99% sure the issue is related to a defective memory card. It is very unlikely the MBP card reader is defective. My complaining with LR is it is unable to import all the selected pictures. I am a LR user for 10 years and I must say this particular issue never happened until now, but it doesn't mean it does not exist. Also I had several issues related to terrible performance and stability during this period of time so I am not particularly happy with Adobe. Adobe is suffering from the same disease that affected Microsoft in the past and now affects Apple: they have a money printing monopoly and simply became lazy.

My import flow:

1. Open LR

2. Insert the card in the MBP reader

3. Wait until LR opens the import dialog

4. Make sure all photos were selected

5. Click on Import button

6. Wait until the process is completed

So LR knows how many photos should be imported because of step 4. It is very easy to check after step 6 is completed and compare how many pictures were imported with how many were selected to import. This is trivial to implement and the fact that this is not being done amazes me. So I agree this is a hardware issue, but if LR had alerted me about missing pictures in the imported collection I would have tried again and no pictures would be lost. If you run a transactional batch process you must implement some kind of consistency check. To give a simple example: I select 50 pictures to import, LR imports 30 and ejects the card giving no warning at all.

Todd Shaner​ I will start following the workflow you have suggested. Sometimes I double check, but as I had never had a similar issue in a decade I became complacent/lazy to do it every time.

Conrad C​ I always wait until I can see all pictures in the card are being displayed in the import dialog.

Just Shoot Me​ As I mentioned above. I also never had such issue in 10 years. But LR implementation allows this problem to happen. It is rare, but the check is very easy to implement however LR does not.

My setup:

- Canon EOS 6D Mk2

- Shooting RAW+jpg

- SD Card Lexar xcii 64gb

System info

=========================

Lightroom Classic version: 8.1 [ 1200465 ]

License: Creative Cloud

Language setting: en-US

Operating system: Mac OS 10

Version: 10.14.2 [18C54]

Application architecture: x64

Logical processor count: 4

Processor speed: 2.4 GHz

Built-in memory: 8,192.0 MB

Real memory available to Lightroom: 8,192.0 MB

Real memory used by Lightroom: 1,070.6 MB (13.0%)

Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 7,029.8 MB

Memory cache size: 497.2MB

Internal Camera Raw version: 11.1 [ 112 ]

Maximum thread count used by Camera Raw: 3

Camera Raw SIMD optimization: SSE2,AVX,AVX2

Camera Raw virtual memory: 3133MB / 4095MB (76%)

Camera Raw real memory: 3174MB / 8192MB (38%)

Displays: 1) 2560x1600

======================

Thank you

[Todd Shaner]

wilsonc28244193  wrote

My setup:

- Canon EOS 6D Mk2

- Shooting RAW+jpg

- SD Card Lexar xcii 64gb

OK, this may be the issue you are seeing and it has nothing to do with defective memory cards or card readers.

Lightroom Classic: Skipping some raw files on raw+jpeg import | Photoshop Family Customer Community

The post is marked as 'Solved' probably referring to the suggestions from Steve Sprengel here. See if any of this helps:

Lightroom Classic: Skipping some raw files on raw+jpeg import | Photoshop Family Customer Community

[GoldingD]

One should never make an assumption, so I will ask two, what will probably turn out to be dumb questions.

1. Using ing Finder turns out no missing images?

2. And if the answers to (1) is no, did that, no such luck, then this one is especially wrong. In LR preferences, treating JPEG seperate from RAW.