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pierret22352875
Participating Frequently
July 19, 2021
Question

Online and local Lightroom Library damaged

  • July 19, 2021
  • 4 replies
  • 9393 views

Hello

All my catalog is lost with Lightroom CC, the one which is showing has no sense... I still have all the images but all folders of the catalog are lost!

Is there a way to retreive my original catalog ?

Thank you

Alexandre

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    4 replies

    CMass
    Community Manager
    CMassCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    July 29, 2021

    Hi @pierret22352875 

     

    I'm sorry you've had such a hard time with your folder structure. @john beardsworth reached out tofor additional  help. We've reviewed the entire thread and the Lightroom engineering team is taking a look on the back end. Once we hear back from them with any feedback or next steps I'll reach out to you via this thread. 

     

    Thank you to all the ACPs that helped. ❤️

    Best, 

    Careeeesa

    CMass
    Community Manager
    CMassCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    July 29, 2021

    Hi @pierret22352875 , 

    The team is requesting your system information and what your setting are for Local Storage.

     

    • System Info: You can find your system preferences by going to Help > System Info while in Lightroom. Save that information into a text file and share it with me via private message. 
    • Local Storage: Capture a screenshot of your Local Storage settings. you can find this under Preferences > Local Storage. 

     

    Thank you! 

    Best, 

    Careeeesa

    M
    Adobe Employee
    matt200702
    Adobe Employee
    July 30, 2021

    And make sure this is for the Windows machine that was used to access the catalog, as that's what seems to have sent the delete album/folder commands.

     

    Matt

    (also Adobe employee)

    john beardsworth
    Community Expert
    john beardsworthCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 20, 2021

    Please post a screenshot so we can tell what is wrong.

     

    Adobe have confused everyone with their names for Lightroom. There is no "Lightroom CC",  the original program that was called "Lightroom" is now "Lightroom Classic" and there is another cloud-dependent program called just "Lightroom".

     

    My guess is that you have installed this last cloudy one, because it has no catalogue.

     

    So post that screenshot so we can see what you are seeing.

     

    P
    pierret22352875Author
    Participating Frequently
    July 22, 2021

    Dear John

    Thank you fort the help

    In short :

    In Lightroom (Cloud version) you can organise albums in to folders and sub-folders. We did this for two years when we migrated from Lightroom Classic to Lightroom 

     

    Now all the structures / organisation / name of folders (even folders) totally disapear. We lost about two years of classification and organisations of the photos :o(

     

    I had a support from two technicians from adobe ( from India i think / The second one was suppose to be advanced but he made me do the same think as the first technician support)

    So i made this twice :

    1/ Delete the package : Lightroom Library.lrlibrary (on Mac os X Big Sur in the User / Pictures folder

    2/ Re Open Lightroom 

    3/ Wait for full online synchronisation (as we have around 350K photos it took a while)

    They said when full synchro would be complete it should get back to normal, but unfortunately it did not at all

     

    Before doing all this i did save a copy of the Lightroom Library.lrlibrary (the one suppose to be corrupted / damaged) before deleting and re-sync online

     

    The point is that the file inside the package : Managed Catalog.mcat. is now with a size of : 4,68 Gb

    The other file (saved localy before re-sync is : 18,65 Gb

     

    So i tried to explain this to the the second technician and asking if there was a way to fix this file ( which is a catalog based on sql lite 3. structure)... He said i did not knew about it.

     

    I think both those two technicians did not have the sufficient knowledge / training / to face that kind of issue... so i am still very disapointed.

     

    I will post two images : one is from Lightroom classis (which we do not use since two years now / where you could see how photos were organised / classified and the other is now with lightroom (either locally or the web version looks the same damaged structure)

    Thank you very much for your help

    Alexandre

     

    john beardsworth
    Community Expert
    john beardsworthCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 22, 2021

    Is Lightroom Classic now irrelevant to you? I assume it is,

     

    Lightroom Library.lrlibrary or anything stored locally is only a local copy of whatever is in the cloud. Assuming anything in Lightroom Library.lrlibrary has been synced, you can delete that file as much as you want and without doing any damage. Next time you open the program, it will start rebuilding from the cloud data.

     

    In other words, the data in Adobe's cloud (which you see in the web browser) is the only data that is available. You can't restore from any kind of backup. So if you no longer see what Cloudy Lightroom calls "folders", you will need to recreate them and drag the albums into them.

     

    I have no idea why you might have lost the folder and sub-folder structure. That should not happen, and I don't think I have seen other reports of it. I am certainly surprised that I see "perspectives" multiple times, and I am going to point out this thread to an Adobe contact.

      Theresa J
      Community Expert
      Theresa JCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      July 20, 2021

      Lightroom doesn't have folders only Albums. Did you by chance convert an old Lightroom catalog to the new Lightroom which is cloud based? 

        P
        pierret22352875Author
        Participating Frequently
        July 22, 2021

        Dear Theresa in Lightroom CC you can organise albumls in to folders and sub-folders. We did this for two years when we migrated from Lightroom Classic to Lightroom CC

         

        Now all the structures / organisation / name of folders (even folders) totally disapear. We lost about two years of classification and organisations of the photos :o(

         

        Have a nice day

        Theresa J
        Community Expert
        Theresa JCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        July 22, 2021

        I understand what your the issue is now from seeing your screen captures. Lightroom does have folders that can be used to organize albums. In Lightroom Classic these are called Collection Sets and folders refer to the file structure on the hard drive. 

        The broken structure of your organization should not have happened. I have not seen this before. I don't know if this would help but if it was me I would disable the local storage option, delete the library package and let Lightroom rebuild itself again. You didn't say for sure if you have local storage turned on, but if you do it would slow down the process and it would create a much larger library package. I'm not sure if this will fix the issue but it may be worth trying. I'm sorry I don't have a better answer.

        LinSims
        Community Expert
        LinSimsCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        July 19, 2021

        Let me move this to the Lightroom forum for you, which is the appropriate forum for your question.

        The Using the Community forum is for help in using the Adobe Support Community forums, not for help with specific programs. Product questions should be posted in the associated product community.

        P
        pierret22352875Author
        Participating Frequently
        July 22, 2021

        thak you

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