Help!! lost images :(

[kimmylynn80]

I never exported my raw-edited files before I deleted the originals... are they gone for good or is there a way to export them?  I see them all in lightroom still but can't find my originals.... so thinking I deleted them.  Can anyone help save me?!  PLEASE?!

[JP Hess]

What version of Lightroom are you using? What operating system? What do you mean by your "edited originals"? The original files are never changed. All of the changes are stored in the Lightroom catalog. You say that you can see the images in Lightroom. What images do you see? Can you open the folder on your hard drive and see the images? Please explain  a little more completely.

[kimmylynn80]

using lightroom 4.4 -- windows

so if you can see below... i "see" the images... the catalog on left is faded out and ? on all files.  Does this make any more sense?  They very well could be somewhere on a hard drive, I have so many sessions, I just recently tried to delete off hard drives to make more room and even emptied track (for the first time in MONTHS) knowing that I did this session, but realized I don't think I ever exported it  

thanks for any help!

[JP Hess]

If the images are still on the hard drive then you need to right-click on the folders and choose the option to update the folder location if you know where the folder is now located. If all of these folders are within one master folder then all you need to do is update the location of the master folder and everything else will fall into place. You talked of exporting as if it is something that is absolutely essential. I'm not really sure what you are trying to accomplish..

[dj_paige]

If you right-click on the folder with a question mark, you then select Find Missing Folder, not Update Folder Location, which won't be in the dropdown menu. Then you select the folder where the photos are now, if such a folder exists. If the photos have been deleted and you can't find them, then I explained above what to do.

[kimmylynn80]

thanks DJ... folder doesn't exist  

[kimmylynn80]

Jim-  is this what you are referring to? 

[dj_paige]

If I am understanding you properly, you do not have a copy any more of these photos. You have deleted them and there is no backup. Is that correct? If so, then there's nothing you can do in Lightroom about this, the photos cannot be used in Lightroom, even though you can see the thumbnail of these photos in the Library Module. Furthermore, the message "Do you want to combine these folders" won't help, might make things worse, and is in any event the wrong way to go because nothing will help.

Now if you do have a backup copy of these photos, or you can find them in the trash can, then there are things you can do, but the above approach that leads to the message "combine these folders?" is not one of them.

[dj_paige]

Some things to try:

1. Look for the photos in the trash
2. Restore photos from backups (you do have backups, don't you?)
3. If none of those thing work, you could try something called an undelete utility to recover the deleted photos. If you are going to do this, don't do anything on your computer except locate, download, install and run an undelete utility program.