Hello!
(First off: LR Classic CC 7.3.1, running on Mac OSX Sierra 10.12, a 27" iMac.)
I have a very specific issue that sometimes happens when importing some images. It's hard to describe, so bear with me here. I mean, really, bear with me, it's a trip and I've never experienced something like this before over hundreds of thousands of photos, but this glitch happened to me FOUR times this week!!
It's important to note before I explain, the only things in the workflow that have changed from last year to this year is that I have a new computer this year, and therefore, a new version of Lightroom as well. This didn't happen with the old version we used which I believe was Lightroom 5. It doesn't even happen every time, which is even more baffling. Same cards, same cameras. Here we go.
I manage a photography department and we use a combination of (1) Canon 6D, (1) Canon 6D Mark II, and (3) Canon 60D. My workflow is that I will get a card from one of my photographers, import those photos, edit, rename the photos so they are sorted with our month/date codes and file numbers, and then print them.
Now, here's the glitch itself: So after receiving, importing, editing, renaming and printing photos from card A (from say, the 6D Mark 1), LR automatically ejects the card. I have then put the card B in from the 6D Mark 2. When the glitch happens, it imports duplicate files from the first card, which is no longer even in the computer, and turns some of the photos the wrong orientation. I believe this camera has been the culprit of the glitch every time but I haven't verified this yet (EDIT: Just verified that it happened with photos from a 60D as well), its randomly reproduced. It imports these 'duplicates' in the Catalog (which is typically not possible at all), but if you delete the duplicate from the Catalog, it also deletes the actual, original file from the Catalog, which is obviously not okay, because then I have to re-import the file and re-edit something that's already been printed and finalized. Or, if you delete the duplicate from disk, it obviously deletes the original file too--the two instances of the file in LR point back to the same file in Finder. It's importing these INSTEAD of importing photos on Card B which came from the 6D Mark II, AND importing some photos correctly from said card.
Another thing that is interesting to note is that we have 4 memory cards, and some of them are hovering around the same image numbers, like IMG_6854, there's a few of them that are very close in number and do overlap. So I wonder if that has anything to do with it at all, but I don't know. It is all very bizarre. The cards are formatted daily, sometimes a couple times in a day. I have also tried making new folders for each card like Canon101 Canon102 etc, that did not stop this from happening.
It also shows that those glitched/duplicate files were shot with the 6D Mark II (they were not), and on any photos where the orientation is incorrect, there is a button that you can click which says "The metadata has been changed by both Lightroom and another application". The photos import with the re-named filename already on the file, and it does not import what was supposed to be the original target file. It's really just so absurd and it's an organizational nightmare. What I have been doing is marking the duplicates as rejected and keeping them on file, because there is no good way to delete them without having to re-edit photos that I've already finalized and sent to my printer.
Adobe support claimed it can't be Lightroom or "the glitch would happen every time", and they said its likely a card issue, but it's happened to more than one card and has never happened in the past, using the same cameras. As I said, all that has changed is the version of LR and the fact that we're on a new machine.
Anyone with any insight, please advise!! I am going crazy trying to solve this problem. I have some screengrabs below which pretty clearly show the final result of what's happened after I re-sort out all the glitched imports. You'll notice some duplicates, some turned the wrong direction, some not. The photos that are imported as glitches are marked Blue, and photos that are "actual photos on file" are marked red.
2
Replies
AdChoices