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Missing photos in Lightroom catalog

New Here ,
Oct 17, 2020 Oct 17, 2020

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I have just upgraded my PC and I copied the photos & catalog back to the HDD from my backup.

 

Unfortunately although I have opened the right catalog - and gone to the last backup from before I upgraded - Lightroom is under the impression that over 10,000 photos are missing from the catalog.  I have checked the path to the photo folder hierarchy is correct, it's an internal HDD so no problems with it not being online, and if I get LR Synchronize to show the missing photos they have their meta data intact.  However if I import from my phone it wants to reimport photos with a '-2' suffix to the file name.

 

There are also no warning indications in the grid, and 'Show in explorer' comes up with the right folder.  It's not all the photos either - it's 10,000-ish out of 34,000, and not all the photos in a given photo are 'missing' from the catalog.

 

Obviously a lot of work has gone into the meta data, I can't afford to lose that.

 

Suggestions?  This is LR 6.0 on W10x64.  Screen shot of the Synchronize popup is attached.

 

I have no idea how to fix this, 

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New Here ,
Oct 17, 2020 Oct 17, 2020

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BTW I see a similar question suggests using 'Library -> Find missing photos'.  It only finds 2!

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Community Expert ,
Oct 17, 2020 Oct 17, 2020

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The missing photos collection is a static collection. It does not automatically update itself. If running that menu only shows two missing photos, then that is what you have: only two missing photos.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga

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New Here ,
Oct 17, 2020 Oct 17, 2020

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That is not how it's behaving.  If I import photos from my phone then any that are in the folders get re-imported appending '-2' to the name.  Or have I lost a setting somewhere along the way?  I forgot to take a copy of the settings. 

 

On my camera I usually delete all the photos after importing, not so with the phone.

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Community Expert ,
Oct 18, 2020 Oct 18, 2020

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"That is not how it's behaving.  If I import photos from my phone then any that are in the folders get re-imported appending '-2' to the name."

 

That has nothing to do with 'missing' photos. The system adds '-2' to the name of a file, if another file with the same name already exists in that location. Don't re-import photos!

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga

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New Here ,
Oct 19, 2020 Oct 19, 2020

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Yes, and it strikes me I have two manifestations of the same thing.  Firstly the catalog 'thinks' it has lots of missing photos if I synchronise when it doesn't, and secondly despite using the 'don't import duplicates' checkbox it still marks everything from the phone to be imported, including those already in the catalog.

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Community Expert ,
Oct 19, 2020 Oct 19, 2020

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You may have a problem known as the 'Capitalisation Problem'. Basically, what happens is that you have two different folders, one called ‘XXXX’ and the other one called ‘xxxx’. In other words, the names are the same, except for the capitalisation. Because MacOS and Windows are case-insensitive, your OS sees those two folders as one and the same folder and so it deals with this without you even being aware of it. You will only see one version in Windows Explorer / Macintosh Finder. But Lightroom is case-sensitive, so Lightroom does see two different folders. That is why it may think that the photos are missing (because Lightroom might expect them to be in 'the other folder'), but when you start importing the system sees duplicates being added to the same folder and so it adds '-2' to the name. Can you post a screenshot of your folder panel?

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga

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New Here ,
Oct 19, 2020 Oct 19, 2020

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See attached screen shots.  I have been through the 'folder location' stuff without it helping.

 

Hierarchy1.PNGHierarchy2.PNG

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Community Expert ,
Oct 19, 2020 Oct 19, 2020

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That's only a small portion of the panel. What is the name of the folder you imported the images into where you got files with '-2' in their name?

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga

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New Here ,
Oct 20, 2020 Oct 20, 2020

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They are imported into folders created by Lightroom names yyyy-mmm-dd.  I take something several days a week so there are a lot of folders hence not showing the entire hierarchy.

 

The last folder named in the hierarchy correctly contains 2 photos taken on 2020-10-10/

 

Hierarchy3.PNG

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Community Expert ,
Oct 20, 2020 Oct 20, 2020

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Please provide more relevant information. I can see that this folder contains two photos, you do not have to tell me that. But is this a problem folder? Does this mean that this folder actually contains one and the same photo twice, where Lightroom added '-2' to the file name of the copy?

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga

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New Here ,
Oct 21, 2020 Oct 21, 2020

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OK I have imported from the phone again.  Here is the folder in explorer, you can see the three photos with the '-2' suffix:

 

Hierarchy4.PNG

Lightroom suggests I have 4 photos in the folder, not 8, and is only showing the three with the suffix, and the last one - IMG_20201015_131245.jpg.  If I synchronize the folder it says there are 4 missing photos which in a way is correct, as there are 4 photos in the folder not in the catalog, but they should have been there.  I must have not checked the first one - IMG_20201015_100110.jpg.

Hierarchy5.PNG

 

I did have 'New Photos' checked at the top of the import.

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Community Expert ,
Oct 21, 2020 Oct 21, 2020

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I think you misunderstand the import process. If you import pictures from your phone, then they get copied to your hard drive and added to the catalog. Existing images on that hard drive that are not yet added to the catalog will not be added by importing from the iPhone again, however. That is what 'Synchronize Folder' is meant to do. Each time you import the same pictures from the iPhone again, they will be renamed by the system because you cannot have two files with the same name inside the same folder. That is where those '-2' names come from. So bottom line: stop importing pictures twice!

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga

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New Here ,
Oct 22, 2020 Oct 22, 2020

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Before I rebuilt the PC the import process would NOT, repeat NOT re-import photos from the phone that were already on hard disk & in it's catalogue.  Now it does even with 'New Photos' rather than 'All Photos' checked.   And don't we all have iPhones.

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Community Expert ,
Oct 22, 2020 Oct 22, 2020

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As you use a very old version of Lightroom, I suggest this might be an incompatibility between Lightroom and your latest OS version that will never be fixed.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga

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New Here ,
Oct 22, 2020 Oct 22, 2020

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The operating system was the same before & after the hardware upgrade (upto-date W10 x64), and it worked just fine before the upgrade.  

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New Here ,
Oct 31, 2020 Oct 31, 2020

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OK ideas from the Community have dried up.  I found it behaved correctly with a photo taken this morning so I've made sure all others on the phone are actually imported, and deleted all photos on the phone.  Hopefully it will be OK now.  Not an issue with the D-SLR as I usually delete everything from the memory card after importing.

 

Bizarre, annoying, and has taken time I could have better used elsewhere, but fixed in a cludgy sort of way.

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