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pacman110
pacman110
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LR4 Import won't import all files from a folder

May 14, 2012 12:04 PM

Have just installed Windows LR4 trial, told it to Import files from my photo collection in a folder + subfolders on a network attached storage (NAS) unit. Windows Explorer tells me that there are 10,308 files in 408 folders in the main folder, totalling 38.8gb but on scanning the folder prior to import LR4 tells me that there are only 9,612 photos.

 

My photo collection folder contains only photos and no other file types.

 

Why is there this discrepancy ? I've searched around to see whether there is some hidden filter that is excluding certain photo files but cannot find anything of that nature.

1077 Views   7 Replies   Latest reply: pacman110, May 15, 2012 10:09 AM
 
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  • jim01403
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    1. jim01403,
    May 14, 2012 12:21 PM   in reply to pacman110
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    There may be some images files (such as PNG) which Lightroom doesn't recognise. If you regularly open the folders with a photo viewer app (such as Windows Picture Viewer, or Picasa, or Zoombrowser) there'll likely be small files created by that viewer and stored in the folder (e.g. thumbs.db, picasa.ini)....these will be counted by Widows Explorer, but not be Lightroom.

     
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  • pacman110
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    2. pacman110,
    May 14, 2012 1:05 PM   in reply to jim01403
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    Thanks for this.

     

    I've been through the subfolders one by one and came across a few such files but nowhere near the ca. 600 file discrepancy that I have.

     

    Many of the files had been processed in PSE9 and I'm wondering whether a photo and its edited versions in a PSE Version Set are somehow counted as one photo by LR4.

     
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  • jim01403
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    3. jim01403,
    May 14, 2012 1:28 PM   in reply to pacman110
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    Many of the files had been processed in PSE9 and I'm wondering whether a photo and its edited versions in a PSE Version Set are somehow counted as one photo by LR4.

     

    Depends on whether the setting in Preferences to "Treat JPEG files next to raw files as separate photos" is checked or unchecked. If it's unchecked then yes a Raw + Jpeg 'pair' (same file name, just different file extension) would be counted as one file. I think this also applies to a Tiff+Jpeg 'pair'.

     
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  • pacman110
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    4. pacman110,
    May 15, 2012 3:11 AM   in reply to jim01403
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    Thanks for this additional tip. That raised the number of imported files from 9,612 to 9,688 but still doesn't get me anywhere near the 10,308 files reported by Windows Explorer (i.e. around 6% of the files on the disk are "missing" in the Catalog). Curiously, PSE9 Organizer, which uses the same dataset, only reports 9,330 photos.

     

    This is very frustrating. It shouldn't have been beyond the wit of the Adobe developers to create an Import log which lists the files which have not been included in the Catalog, giving the reason for the import failure in each case. PSE9, for example, does this if files cannot be found or are duplicates.

     

    Here I am, eager to try out Lightroom 4, and I can't even get past this first step of importing my photos.

     
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  • pacman110
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    5. pacman110,
    May 15, 2012 9:22 AM   in reply to jim01403
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    Thanks again for this lead. After initially getting nowhere with it it, and after investing a lot of time, it turned out that I was getting nowhere because Windows Explorer wasn't revealing all the files in the Photo folder of my network drive (despite my going through all the settings to Reveal Hidden Files, etc). When, in the search for the "missing" 600+ files that LR didn't find, I trawled the Photo folder with WinDirStat instead of Windows Explorer it revealed 167 files with the suffix .xmp and 369 files with the suffix.db (plus a smaller number of .bmp .jpeg, .pia, etc.). I don't know what the .db files are (possibly debris from previous photo indexing software) but presume that LR doesn't need them.. The .xmp files, I see, are an Adobe format and I don't know (yet; I'm reading the manual) whether LR uses them.

     

    Again, thanks for your help.

     
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  • ssprengel
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    6. ssprengel,
    May 15, 2012 9:34 AM   in reply to pacman110
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    XMP files are where Lightroom and Photoshop’s Camera RAW plug-in can store the metadata including adjustments you make for each photo beyond the default settings.  You can set LR to automatically write settings into these files or not, and you can manually write settings to these files from within LR.

     
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  • pacman110
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    7. pacman110,
    May 15, 2012 10:09 AM   in reply to ssprengel
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    Thanks very much for this. So each XMP file corresponds to one photo, i.e. for example, a file named birthdayparty.cr2 and another named birthdayparty.xmp and LR is able to automatically pair them, right  ?

     
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