Recover Lost Photoshop Files

[juzekcello]

I had 11K photos in 277 folders, 16.8GB, in my Photoshop Elements 2020. Somehow when I was trying unsuccessfully to set up albums of my files, I apparently somehow deleted all the photos! I get the message "No Media Available"!. Is there any way to recover these, or do I need to re-import all my PC files and start over with editing them? I do not have Photoshop cloud backup -- only learned about that this afternoon -- and I had never tried to copy Photoshop images to another location. Stupid!! I do have the original files on my computer, but not a Photoshop version.

[MichelBParis · Accepted solution]

I do have the original files on my computer, but not a Photoshop version.

By @juzekcello

There is nothing like a "Photoshop version", The photo/video files are stored in your computer and the catalog of the organizer only stores links to the location of each file and its properties. So, the message only means that the organizer does not find the photo files where they were before. Most probably that's because there is a filter for searches masking a category of files. A common case is when you no longer have the 'photo' types unchecked in the 'by media' dropdown menu.

Just check that you can open one of the photo files you are seeing on your computer directly in the editor, ignoring the organizer.

On the other hand, you could start a new computer by 'reimporting' all your files in a new catalog;  no duplication of the files would happen, but you would lose a lot of your tagging work.

So, concentrate on removing any 'filter' from your organizer catalog.

Similar discussion:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-elements-discussions/what-filter/m-p/12820584

[juzekcello]

Thanks, Michael. Didn't find your reply until today; I either didn't get an email or didn't see it. Anyway ---

I didn't find a filter, but I saw that I was supposed to Import again. There I found "In Bulk". Wondering what that would do, I right-clicked? or clicked and all the photos began downloading. The cropping and editing I had done seemed to reload properly (I usually saved back to my hard drive). "Names" came over but I'm not sure whether all of captions and notes came over. I did see "Watched Photos" at one point for the first time but lost it; don't know whether that would have made a difference. In any case, I can deal with what I have and I'm MUCH happier than I was before! Thank you so much! [In fact I'm so happy with your help that I may resend an earlier stream to which I didn't get a last answer.]

Lois