Photos disappearing

[jjoelpilger]

Migrating from Lightroom Classic to Lightroom CC has been nothing short of a cluster. But I'll spare that story...

Now that I'm up and running in Lightroom CC, I'm missing photos. Yesterday I opened my catalog, clicked on an album that had 6 photos in it, and watched as Lightroom connected to the cloud and then 1... 2... 3... 4... 5... photos disappeared BEFORE MY VERY EYES. Now my album – which contained 6 photos previously –  has 1 photo in it.

What gives? Where did the other 5 photos go?

Is this some sort of "sync feature" that I don't understand? It's massively unsettling.

On top of that, when I searched the forums, many of the "answers" sounded like this: "You'll need to go back to your original Lightroom Classic catalog to restore the lost images." What the what?!?! Are you serious? I have over 40,000 images. Which means I have no idea which exact photos in my new Lightroom CC catalog have disappeared. Does Adobe honestly expect us to manually sync our old catalog with our new catalog? Not to mention keep our old catalog around for some indefinite period of time?

Thanks for any help you can offer,

Joel

[jjoelpilger]

It just happened again. I opened my catalog, selected an album with 16 images in it, then BOOM... 8 of the images disappeared one by one...

HELP PLEASE!

[rsph1708]

For someone to help you you need to be more specific. What exactly did you do?

Which catalog are you opening? Did you migrate your Classic catalog into CC? or are you just synching collections from Classic?

Photos don't just disappear unless you deleted them.

[jjoelpilger]

Thanks for replying rsph1708. I'm no neophyte. I'm a professional with 30 years of experience.

I understand your incredulity, but trust me... my photos are disappearing without me deleting them.

Yes, I migrated my catalog from Classic to CC.

Then last night I opened CC, selected an album containing 6 images. Then I noticed CC connect to the cloud and then 1 photo disappeared from my album. Yes, as in, vanished. I thought I must be seeing things. Then another vanished. Then another. Then another.

It was like my photos were being deleted by an invisible hand... until only 1 image remained.

Then today I again opened CC then selected a different album with 16 images. Same thing: 8 images – one by one – vanished. See attached screen grab that I took right after I opened the album... then a screen grab I took after CC connected to the cloud and did its "sync" or whatever you want to call it:

I hope I'm crazy. Please, someone tell me there is a simple answer to this!

[jjoelpilger]

It just happened again. I selected an album that contained 81 images. CC started spinning "Downloading..." (what does this mean since all my files are stored locally?!?) and then the album image count slowly went down... down... down... to ZERO.

Now CC says "This Album is Empty."

[rsph1708 · Accepted solution]

I think I know exactly whats happening; the blue circles next to your albums indicate that your library has not completely

uploaded to the cloud yet after the migration. If you moved these albums out of the folder "migrated" folder before synching is done

these albums will disappear. It looks like this is a bug as it happened to me and others. You have to wait until synching is done before

moving anything around. Luckily your images will still be in your "by date" folders and in the "All Photos" folder.

Once the synching is done you will have to recreate your album hierarchy manually to get everything back.

[jjoelpilger]

You are a lifesaver...

I haven't been able to verify the photos are still in my catalog but your reply totally makes sense.

I have been syncing LR CC for weeks now and it's taking forever. About 5% of my almost 40,000 photos have been uploaded to the cloud after two weeks of intermittent time connected to the internet. At this rate, my photos will be synced by mid-2018... and at that point, I'll be able to finally verify all my photos are intact...  😞

[Scott2257]

Having the same problem with collections that have been in my catalog for years, with very few additions and changes, but the photos have constantly disappleared year after year.  I'm getting tired of Adobe's arrogant attitude toward their loyal customer's problems.  I think its time for me to leave adobe.