missing photos

[johnm60113565]

Today I streamlined my storing of photos to make it easier to find photos and to import then into LrC. What I did was to rename a folder called 'Flowers Masters'  to just 'Masters' to hold all my RAW photo files and other unedited photos that were associated with both flowers and plants. I copied all other raw and unedited photos into the 'Masters' folder. I did all of this in the Win 10 OS. I went into LrC and I renamed a collection from 'Flowers' to 'Plants & Flowers', I then deleted a collection called plants. 

As I had added five new photos to the 'Masters' directory I did an import these into LrC, they showed up ok but so did all the other photos. I delected everything expect the five new photos and imported only them. Did all the editing and added the photos to the collection and it increased the collection by five. All was good, but when I looked I noticed that the other photos had a small boe saying the photo was missing. So I did what I considered logical and imported all the photos that were now In the renamed 'Masters' folder and everything seem to go ok but the photos are stillmarked as missing.

I tied using the 'Find all missing Photos' option and it seemed to find them, but theses are also marked as missing. Tried to find a individual missing photo via it's filename with 'find nearby files" selected but it fails with the message "Already in Catalog" 'Filename is associated with another photo in the catalog, each file can only be associated with one photo'

How do I Get LrC to find all the photos in the "Masters" folder they are now in. I have checked and they are all there But when I import the from this "Masters" folder LrC says they are missing?

Sorry for the long post but I thought I had LrC's catalog and importing worked out. 

[johnm60113565]

Out of frustration I deleted everything from my collections. I restarted LrC and tried importing the photos again. this time it found the folder but said all the photos had al ready been imported. For some reason LrC does not know this nor does it know where they are. Fortunately the photos that it said have already been imported showed up in the previous import list so I copied them into a new collection and now LrC finds them. I spent most of the day adding back all the keywords and now it seems to be ok but browisnf the list of photos seem to be very slow. Optimizing the catalog seem to help a bit. It seems this problem of missing photos is not uncommon. This is the last time I will try to find missing photos that are not missing and I will probably delete any collections that I have created as without keywords collections are a waste of time. I use LrC to edit photos and I don't the the hassle of having to spend more trying to get LrC to find photos than enditing them. I will just go back to using Camera Raw as it does not have the same problems that seem to be common place with LrC.

Rant over.

[dj_paige]

Importing is never a solution to missing files. The newly imported photos are considered by Lightroom Classic to be brand new photos it has never seen before with no edits and no user provided metadata. And now you have two copies of the same photo, which leads to confusion as they will have different edits and different user provided metadata.

The solution would have been to un-rename the folder, now the photos are no longer missing, and if you really really really wanted to rename the folder from "Flowers Masters" to "Masters", do it inside of Lightroom Classic, which causes the photos not to go missing. But, there's even a better method, and that is to stop playing with folder names and folder locations and do all of your organizing with Lightroom CLassic tool such as keywords and other metadata (titles, captions, GPS locations, etc.) And then you get a more powerful organization, and you never have a photo go missing.

I strongly suggest you spend some time learning about how the Lightroom Classic catalog works. It is not a file browser like Windows Explorer or Mac Finder, and people who think it does work like a file browser will find themselves running into trouble, as you did. Your favorite internet search engine will find lots of tutorials on how the Lightroom Classic catalog works.

[johnm60113565]

I tried all the options to recover missing files and none of them worked. I did try renaming the folder back to the original name, but the LrC said the photos in the folder were still missing. The missing photos did show the keywords I used, but when searching for photos using keywords LrC found nothing.

As far as I can see I do not have two copies of the photos, not on my hard disk anyway, maybe in the catalog there is two but I can not find any evidence of that. I have backups of all my photos so I have never lost one, it is Lightroom that thinks that they are lost. 

I have watched may tutorials on lightroom and the catalog but I have never seen or heard on any of them, that doing it outside of lightroom would cause such a problem. I have read books on Lightroom and again none of these mention that, in fact the last one I read said if a photo is missing to just import it again.

After deleting all the collections that the photos were in and importing them again I was able to add them back into a collection and then Lightroom could see them. During the import it said the photos were already imported even though Lightroom could not see them.

I acknowledge that the problem was caused by me, changing names, files and locations using the computer OS, but this is the first time I have heard that Lightroom must be used to manipulate the file system. I am aware the links in the catalog were lost/broken when I made the changes outside of Lightroom, but I feel that there should be the option somewhere to let the catalog know of the new location. The option to find a missing photo or find all missing photos did not work as even though it found the photos in the renamed folder, it said these photos were still missing. 

I keep my files organized in named directories and it is easier to uses the OS for finding these as the photos in these folders have been already edited and exported to them. I place all new photos in one folder along with previous photos and I only import from this folder and nowhere else.

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my question.

[dj_paige]

"I am aware the links in the catalog were lost/broken when I made the changes outside of Lightroom, but I feel that there should be the option somewhere to let the catalog know of the new location."

There is an option. It's called Find Missing Folder, it's very simple to use. See these instructions with screen captures: http://www.computer-darkroom.com/lr2_find_folder/find-folder.htm

[johnm60113565]

Yes, I read through and tried everything listed before I posted, but it could find the folder but it said every photo inside was missing.

It is interesting to note that this comment was made in that link, "The approach that I recommend is to copy then reorganise your photo folders into their new location using the tools provided by the operating system."

There are a lot of tutorials on what can be dome with Lightroom but it would be nice to see a tutorial of what someone should not do when using Lightroom.

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

It is interesting to note that this comment was made in that link, "The approach that I recommend is to copy then reorganise your photo folders into their new location using the tools provided by the operating system."

Yes, the author is giving an alternative when you want to MOVE your photos to somewhere else. The choices are: move withing Lightroom Classic, or move using your operating system. If you learn how to do it properly, either choice should work, but as the author points out in Tip3 and Tip4, moving photos via Lightroom Classic has risks (due to a bug?), and so he recommends moving photos using your operating system.

As I said earlier, the best solution (in my opinion) is to organize via keywords and other metadata and not by moving photos or folders from here to there. Then you can never have a missing photo or missing folder. The only time you would move photos, the exception to my rule, is when you have to move photos/folders to a new disk or to a new computer, then you should move them, and I recommend the method of moving using your operating system and then re-linking in Lightroom Classic.

[johnm60113565]

I was using a single folder as the point where all photos that were imported into Lightroom would reside.

If I edited a photo that I wanted to use elsewhere, I would export it to a different format (.jpg) in a different location but leave the original in the folder that is used to import folders from. The original photos were never renamed or moved anywhere. The mistake I made was I changed to name of that folder and Lightroom could no longer see it as the source of the links the catalog had created. Renaming th folder did not help. Importing all the photos again did not work as Lightroom found the but said they were missing even when checking the location of the missing photos showed the correct path to the renamed folder. The only way I could get it back was to remove all the missing photos from the collections, the optimize the catalog, restart Lightroom and them import them all again. It said all photos had already been imported but showed the were not missing and had lost their keywords. I then went and added the keywords back to them and added them back the existing empty collections and everything was back to normal, so the problem is all sorted out now.

I have learnt from this and will know better next time.  I am relatively new to Lightroom and even though I have every tutorial and youtube video I can find, it is the little things like this that they seem to ignore.

Thanks for you help with my problem which I know is totally my own fault. Making mistakes is the best teacher.

[Just Shoot Me]

Sorry to say but most if not all of the frustrations you are going through is because you don't fully understand what LrC is, how and what the catalog file is and how to properly work with LrC.

I suggest you take some time and review the links below.

How Lightroom catalogs work

Lightroom Classic tutorials | Learn how to use Lightroom Classic

[johnm60113565]

I do understand what LrC is, and I thought I understood the catalog system. I also admit the problem was my fault and not Lightroom.

Thanks for the links. I have previously been through all those links and have learnt a lot from them. Of all the tutorials, videos and books I have read, I have not encountered any that has stated the dangers of renaming a folder outside of Lightroom. Yes, they say how to do in Lightroom but I was reorganising my photo files using the OS and the only thing that should have impacted on Lightroom was one folder, which I renamed. I realised the problem when I started LrC. The problem I had was trying to get LrC to see the renamed folder and restablish the links in the catalog. I eventually got this all done and I am now aware of the danger associated with manipulating files/folders outside of Lightroom.

Thanks for your response and the links.