I imported photos from SD card into Lightroom, placing copies of the photos in folders on my external hard drive and computer. Unfortunately I deleted the photos accidentally in the folder on the PC hard drive. Photos are still showing in Lightroom catalogue and external hard drive. The folder is still in Pictures showing 0. I did a back up of Lightroom after the deletion. duh!! How can I get a copy of all the photos back into the folder on the PC. Have tried importing photos from external hard drive to my folder on PC using Lightroom but Lightroom says they are already in catalogue and they are greyed out.
Good try but must have an efficient computer!! But you gave me an idea and retrieved the files from My Cloud and they are now back in the folder. But Lightroom still shows 0 on the folder. Tried synchronising but still no joy. How can I get Lightroom to see those files please?
Are the images in a folder on the External hard drive. Where does Lightroom "think" the images are located. You indicated that the images are in the catalog but that Lightroom still shows 0 on the folder. I can't sort that out in my mind.
Yes the images are on an external hard drive and since the photos were deleted in the C drive folder, I think Lightroom thinks they are on the external hard drive and looks for them there. Is there any way I can get Lightroom to see the photos in the folder on the C drive?
Please clarify something for me. You say that the images are on an external hard drive. If that is the case, then what images do you want Lightroom to see on the internal hard drive? I'm still not following..
The photos on the external hard drive is my back up. Normally I work on the photos in the C drive through Lightroom. Did have a thought though. Is it possible to copy photos from an external hard drive, via Lightroom, to a new folder on the C drive? If so, how?
Is it possible to copy photos from an external hard drive, via Lightroom, to a new folder on the C drive? If so, how?
If you do it from within Lightroom it's a move, not a copy. It's better to do it with Windows Explorer or Finder (if you're on a Mac). But what do you feel you gain by copying images to the C Drive? All of the adjustments are in the catalog. The images remain unchanged wherever they are located.
Is there any way I can get Lightroom to see the photos in the folder on the C drive?
In your operating system, make a copy of the photos on the external drive, and put the copies in the exact folder on the C drive that Lightroom is looking for them.
Thanks dj but I tried that and Lightroom still shows the folder as 0. Click on the folder and it shows empty but I know it is not on file explorer. Weird.
Did wonder about deleting the folder in Lightroom ..... but not sure
If you click on the folder of interest, do you then see the photos in the Grid? Are the photos shown as missing (with an exclamation mark icon or question mark icon)?
After you copy a folder of photos to the C Drive, in Lightroom right-click on the folder that is on the other hard drive and choose to update the folder location. Then you will be able to point Lightroom to the folder that you have copied to the C Drive. But just a thought regarding your workflow. If you have a backup routine that backs up your images then you already have a backup copy. There isn't really any need to go through this exercise. Again, you aren't making any modifications whatsoever to those images. You aren't editing the images on the C Drive, you are making changes that are being stored in the catalog. The catalog is the only file that is being modified. But, if it makes you feel more secure to copy things around, I guess there's nothing wrong with it. It's an interesting but not very intuitive workflow, in my opinion.
Importing a second time is always the wrong answer.
Your photos are not "in" the Lightroom catalog. Your photos are on the hard drive, like your word processing documents and spreadsheets, and are just referenced by Lightroom using the path and file names.
If you deleted the photos using Explorer, you can try to recover them from the Recycle Bin. If that does not work, you need to copy them from the external drive back to the internal drive.
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