Need Serious LR Help - Moved All My Photos, Something Went Screwy

sara505

(I have also posted this over at the LR Forum.)

I moved two years worth of photos via LR3 - I had been wanting to get everything into LR for a while, so I bought a 2Tb expansion drive, watched a Matt Kloskowski video about moving files, thought I followed the directions, but I am seriously screwed up here.

1. I selected the folders on my computer's HD, made a folder on the expansion drive, made that the destination, then selected IMport and chose Move.

2. Where are my RAW files???? all I see are JPGS!

3. Everything's been renamed so I don't recognize anything!

4. A bunch of stuff was left on my computer's drive

5. Even though I moved hundreds of GB off my computer, or so I thought, there's no substantial space freed up on my drive.

Fortunately, I have two backed up copies of everything, but I am seriously confused and upset over this state of affairs.

What happened???
What did I do wrong?

pathfinder

You need to look at your import settings along the top margin of your import page closely I think, Sara.

LR will not change your Raw files to jpgs, so I am not sure what went on there - these were Canon CR2 RAWs?

If they files were renamed, you must have had LR renaming things on import I would suggest.

Importing does not routinely remove the files from the source drive, it merely adds them to the destination drive - but it does depend on how you configure your import panels settings.

sara505

pathfinder wrote: »

You need to look at your import settings along the top margin of your import page closely I think, Sara.

LR will not change your Raw files to jpgs, so I am not sure what went on there - these were Canon CR2 RAWs?

If they files were renamed, you must have had LR renaming things on import I would suggest.

Importing does not routinely remove the files from the source drive, it merely adds them to the destination drive - but it does depend on how you configure your import panels settings.

I chose Move, and I selected two folders in my computer, 2010 and 2011.
All the original folders are left in my computer, but most of the insides are missing.

sara505

Now when I go into my OS, on the left, it shows all my photos, but of course they are not there anymore. They show up as a shaded version.

sara505

And when I hover my mouse over the photo it says "this appears to be a duplicate of a photo that's already in the catalog."
So they're there someplace.
I'm confused, exhausted, and to top it off have been very sick with a bad cold the past couple of days.

Is this fixable?

pathfinder

Try right clicking over your image displayed in the center panel and select Show in Finder. It should give you the address of your image.

If the image is no longer at the address you see in Finder, you should be asked if you want the operating system to find your image. At least that is how I do it on my version in OS X.

Andee

I hope you find your fixes for your LR3 woes. Mine removes itself of my Lap top every time I reinstall within one day or so. I have to keep re-installing it back on my computer every time I want to use it. I only got this version for the noise reduction and have asked the Adobe community as well and none of their tips helped. Best to you in finding your files. I only use it to edit and not storing as many do, but loosing files is a horrible thing. I hope you find them all and feel better soon.

sara505

Thanks, all.

I've been on with an angel from LR Forums who has been helping me sort it out.

Apparently, I bolloxed up my big move by first rearranging all my folders (thinking I'd be smarter than LR ).

What I didn't realize was, most of my photos were already in LR, and all I did was break the path when I rearranged and moved.

So, tomorrow I'll be spending a goodly amount of time reconnecting everything.

Oh well, at least I'll know all about the photos I've taken in the past two years when I'm finished.

What I'm realizing about life is, almost everything is fixable.

Thanks again.

WinsomeWorks

sara505 wrote: »

Thanks, all.

I've been on with an angel from LR Forums who has been helping me sort it out.

Apparently, I bolloxed up my big move by first rearranging all my folders (thinking I'd be smarter than LR ).

What I didn't realize was, most of my photos were already in LR, and all I did was break the path when I rearranged and moved.

So, tomorrow I'll be spending a goodly amount of time reconnecting everything.

Oh well, at least I'll know all about the photos I've taken in the past two years when I'm finished.

What I'm realizing about life is, almost everything is fixable.

Thanks again.

Sara, my LR 3 trial runs out today & I'm about to purchase the real thing. I hadn't imported many photos yet at all, and hadn't exported any edits (didn't really get that part figured out ) but in the next yr. I'm hoping to do a LOT of reorganizing & rearranging, while also learning to use LR more & more, and especially using its huge database capabilities. Is there anything you can tell me ahead about that process of arranging and organizing that will keep LR abreast of changes I make, so that I don't have to go through the reconnection steps you're mentioning? (sorry for my great desire to learn from your "mistakes" or whatever; please forgive me... I'm not a quick study when it comes to these programs!!) I'm already reading so much stuff in various threads about problems with integrating Smug galleries & LR & practically have my mind in tangles enough over that! Ok, thanks for any advice!

sara505

WinsomeWorks wrote: »

Sara, my LR 3 trial runs out today & I'm about to purchase the real thing. I hadn't imported many photos yet at all, and hadn't exported any edits (didn't really get that part figured out ) but in the next yr. I'm hoping to do a LOT of reorganizing & rearranging, while also learning to use LR more & more, and especially using its huge database capabilities. Is there anything you can tell me ahead about that process of arranging and organizing that will keep LR abreast of changes I make, so that I don't have to go through the reconnection steps you're mentioning? (sorry for my great desire to learn from your "mistakes" or whatever; please forgive me... I'm not a quick study when it comes to these programs!!) I'm already reading so much stuff in various threads about problems with integrating Smug galleries & LR & practically have my mind in tangles enough over that! Ok, thanks for any advice!

Hi, Anna Lisa. Now that I've gotten squared away with LR and am able to actually concentrate on using the thing - I can honestly say that I love it. It's an amazingly powerful tool, on so many levels, and yes, I still have much to learn.

I don't know about integrating SM and LR, as I've not tried that. For me, it's simplest to simply Export from LR and access my folder from the SM uploader.

If you are serious about using LR, my only suggestion is that you use LR, and LR alone, for importing, moving, and organizing all your photos, now and from now on. Once everything is in LR's database, it will all get transferred when you upgrade and when you're ready to dig in to the program, all your photos will already be there.

I found it a little confusing at first, which is why I had put it off for so long, but now that I know how to do us LR in this way and understand just what a powerful tool it is, I am very happy.

I also have found the folks over at the LR Forum to be amazingly helpful.

pathfinder

One of the most important tips/facts about using Lightroom, is to have one/ and ONLY one folder to import your files into Lightroom. Lightroom will add the dated subfolders for you. Many of us are used to having different locations for files, and find it hard to change. I am one of them, unfortunately/

If you ever need to move your files you imported for some/ANY reason, move them from within Lightroom and then Lightroom will ALWAYS know where your images have moved to. If you move files outside of Lightroom ( via the operating system, you are hosed. )

The problems folks have is they don't always import to the same folder, and then they move them via the operating system ( rather than from within Lightroom ) and at that point, Lightroom politely says " I no longer know where you put your files, dummy!" and you then have to help Lightroom locate your files. If you find a couple for it, it will figure out that there are more in the same place usually as well.

In the Develop mode, when you right click your main image a dialogue box come up, and one of the options is Show in Finder ( on a Mac ) - I am sure it make the same offer in Windows to find the file in the existing hard drive directories.

If Lightroom says it cannot find your image file ( it displays a low res image from within the catalog, but not a high res image because someone/something changed the address ) if you right click on the image, a dialogue box comes up that offers would you like to find the file? So even if Lightroom is no longer aware of where the image is, it will help you sort through the possibilities to find it.

I have to admit that I have used this help more often than I care to admit.

elgauchogrub

LR3 file storage?
Is LR3 flexible in how it stores files e.g. RAW in one directory and jpg in another? I usually try to upload the jpg's to SmugMug pretty quickly but then I dump the RAW files either to an external drive and/or a set of folders that get backed up to Crash Dump. Is that still possible?

pathfinder wrote: »

One of the most important tips/facts about using Lightroom, is to have one/ and ONLY one folder to import your files into Lightroom. Lightroom will add the dated subfolders for you. Many of us are used to having different locations for files, and find it hard to change. I am one of them, unfortunately/

If you ever need to move your files you imported for some/ANY reason, move them from within Lightroom and then Lightroom will ALWAYS know where your images have moved to. If you move files outside of Lightroom ( via the operating system, you are hosed. )

The problems folks have is they don't always import to the same folder, and then they move them via the operating system ( rather than from within Lightroom ) and at that point, Lightroom politely says " I no longer know where you put your files, dummy!" and you then have to help Lightroom locate your files. If you find a couple for it, it will figure out that there are more in the same place usually as well.

In the Develop mode, when you right click your main image a dialogue box come up, and one of the options is Show in Finder ( on a Mac ) - I am sure it make the same offer in Windows to find the file in the existing hard drive directories.

If Lightroom says it cannot find your image file ( it displays a low res image from within the catalog, but not a high res image because someone/something changed the address ) if you right click on the image, a dialogue box comes up that offers would you like to find the file? So even if Lightroom is no longer aware of where the image is, it will help you sort through the possibilities to find it.

I have to admit that I have used this help more often than I care to admit.