Lightroom Folder Help

[taxboy]

Looking for some help please - Using Lightroom Classic on Mac Sonoma. I'm not sure what I've done but a large portion of my folder structure has disappeared from LR on my main drive.

I use the following folder structure My Lightroom Pictures --> Year ---> Sub folders for each location. On the main drive the images are all there and accessible but in the main My Lightroom Pictures i.e all of 2023 images are in the one folder without the sub folders.

I do have the correct structure on my backup drive but before I get myself in any deeper trouble what would be the best way to resolve the situation please

 

[Lunkwill Fouk]

Have you accidentally dragged and dropped some of the folders into another one of them? Can be easily done sometimes. You may find the majority of your files tucked away somewhere unexpected.

 

[Harlequin565]

It might help a little if you could share a screenshot of your folder structure as it shows in LR vs your folder structure in whatever the Mac version of explorer is (Finder?)

Have you done anything to the PC? Lightroom update, OS update?

 

[taxboy]

Have you accidentally dragged and dropped some of the folders into another one of them? Can be easily done sometimes. You may find the majority of your files tucked away somewhere unexpected.

I've had a look and tried the search facility but can't find them

 

[taxboy]

It might help a little if you could share a screenshot of your folder structure as it shows in LR vs your folder structure in whatever the Mac version of explorer is (Finder?)

Have you done anything to the PC? Lightroom update, OS update?

Here's what Im seeing now from LR and my main drive

 

[taxboy]

Here's from the back up drive. I have upgraded to the latest version of PS and also updated to Sonoma but couldn't say for certain if they were missing before or after the updates

 

[Harlequin565]

So it looks like Lightroom is seeing no photos in the folders that are greyed out. I'm assuming that's the issue?

If so, I'd pick a folder with the smallest number of images in it that's greyed out. Right click and bring up the context menu and choose "synchronise". A box will appear trelling you it's searching. LR goes to that location and looks for images. With luck it will find the missing photos. You then go through the import process, but make sure you click "Add" when asked and not "Move". That will leave the photos in place in your folder structure and LR should add them back to the catalogue. If that works, go on to do the rest. If it doesn't, let me know what happens, and just double check (I assume you have) that the photos actually exist on the drive.

IANALRG
(I am not a Lightroom Guru)

 

[taxboy]

Thanks for that. Unfortunately that's not the issue. Lightroom can see all the images but all those contained in the 2023 Photos folder marked red on the screenshot and subsequent sub folders are now all in the single My Lightroom folder.

The 2023 folders and sub folders are on my back up drive so I'm looking for the easiest way to recreate this structure on my main drive without manually having to go through via LR and drag and drop the images - if there's an easier way to do this

 

[ecoleman]

Try Right Clicking one of the stray folders and then choose "Add Parent Folder"

 

[Harlequin565]

Ah right. So it's like something has removed the "2023 Photos" folder and put all the contents under "My Lightroom Photos"?

I thought the red was just you blurring something confidential

Either way - that's weird and I've not seen anything like that before. Can only think of what Elliot suggested.

 

[taxboy]

Try Right Clicking one of the stray folders and then choose "Add Parent Folder"

Thanks for that - just to clarify the missing folders are on my backup drive but all the images inside them are already on the main drive in the highest level parent folder and recognised by LR. The back up drive has the correct hierarchy but LR doesn't even though the images are recognised by LR

 

[Brentor]

Please share a screenshot of the sub folders under 2023 photos as shown on your backup drive.

 

[Honey Monster]

Can you create a new 2023 folder and then inside Lightroom drag the 2023 sub-folders into that new folder? I have checked in LR and you can create a new folder from within LR. I am not going to move my folders around, though

 

[taxboy]

Can you cretae a new 2023 folder and then inside Lightroom drag the 2023 sub-folders into that new folder?

I could drag the 2023 folder across but I'm assuming I'd end up with a duplicate image clash.

So far all I can think of is creating new empty folders in LR and then manually dragging the relevant images from the single My Lightroom Photos, which would be a bit tedious

 

[Honey Monster]

I could drag the 2023 folder across but I'm assuming I'd end up with a duplicate image clash.

So far all I can think of is creating new empty folders in LR and then manually dragging the relevant images from the single My Lightroom Photos, which would be a bit tedious

From the screenshot it looks like there are only 8 folders with 2023 in the title. I would create a blank folder "2023" from within LR and then drag each of those 8 folders into the newly created empty folder (assuming you have everything backed up first)

 

[taxboy]

From the screenshot it looks like there are only 8 folders with 2023 in the title. I would create a blank folder "2023" from within LR and then drag each of those 8 folders into the newly created empty folder (assuming you have everything backed up first)

Won't I get a duplicate image warning as I assumed you can only have one version of an image in LR ?

 

[Harlequin565]

To my ignorant eyes, it looks like the cat is messed up if it's not reflecting reality inside the "Folders" tree.

LR had an upgrade recently which necessitated a catalogue rebuild. It was a while ago (12/10) though. Do you still have the old cat? You could try opening that and see if the issue is still there. It shouldn't damage your existing catalogue but it might want to do a rebuild. This will rename it to v13-1 if there's already an existing catalogue by that name, but shouldn't damage anything.

My folder has 2 catalogues in it...

Whenever LR does an update that requires a catalogue rebuild, it "archives" the old one and leaves it in the same location.

It won't fix your problem but if the old cat boots up OK and finds all your images, I'd say the catalogue has gone a bit buzzywark. If the old cat still works, you'll need to re-add images taken since 12th October but should be good.

Hope that makes sense.

 

[Honey Monster]

Won't I get a duplicate image warning as I assumed you can only have one version of an image in LR ?

I don't think so, as you will be moving the folders, not copying them. If you drag the folder, you will get a warning stating that you are moving the folders on the disk and this cannot be undone. You can cancel at this stage.

 

[Brentor]

From the screenshot it looks like there are only 8 folders with 2023 in the title. I would create a blank folder "2023" from within LR and then drag each of those 8 folders into the newly created empty folder (assuming you have everything backed up first)

This is what I would suggest.

 

[taxboy]

Now I've had some time I've managed to bring the images into LR using add from the archive disk. However I can't see any of the edits i.e. I've just got the imported RAW files from my archive disk. The edits are still there in the single My Lightroom Photos folder. Is it going to be a question of dragging the edited files manually into their respective file of is there a quicker way of doing this please

 

[taxboy]

Just in case it helps anyone else. I've sorted the issue. I went back to an earlier catalogue and reinstalled that - fortunately I haven't done much editing lately - this then recreated my existing file structure and kept the edits.

The learning point is to make regular back ups of the catalogue and not dismiss the option when you close LR

 

[Harlequin565]

fortunately I haven't done much editing lately

If you save the edits back to the orginal file, rather than just having them in the catalogue, you won't suffer that pain again. It also means you can open the image in another copy of lightroom and you will see the edits. I believe the only things that aren't stored with the photo are things like colour labels as they are catalogue specific. Star ratings, keywords and develop settings can all be saved to the original file. If you save your files as raw, they are saved as sidecar xmp files. If you save your files as jpegs or dng, the information is stored in the file itself.

It will obviously affect size on disk, and backups - especially if you blanket do all your images in one go and have a lot, but it's worth doing IMO just for peace of mind. My catalogue is backed up along with my images, but this gives me a belt and braces approach, and also allows me to transfer edits to lightroom on another computer without having to shift the whole catalogue.

You can either do it per photo from the metadata tab


Or you can set it up in the catalogue preferences globally... Check the "Include Develop settings" and "automatically write changes to xmp"

 

[Honey Monster]

Now I've had some time I've managed to bring the images into LR using add from the archive disk. However I can't see any of the edits i.e. I've just got the imported RAW files from my archive disk. The edits are still there in the single My Lightroom Photos folder. Is it going to be a question of dragging the edited files manually into their respective file of is there a quicker way of doing this please

I thought that you already had the images in LR, but that they were not in the right folders.

 

[taxboy]

I thought that you already had the images in LR, but that they were not in the right folders.

That's correct some how all the photos had moved from their original folders, which had disappeared and been put into the parent folder. So say for example the parent folder has 3 sub folders each with 100 images. What I was faced with was the parent folder now containing those 300 images but no sub folders