Lost images - relocated images disappeared from catalogue????

[CromCrom]

Hi all,

I'm hoping someone with more experience, or who has come across this user error/phenomena before, will be able to help me here.

What has happened is that some images that were previously in my catalogue do not appear to be there any more (ie I can't find them by scanning through the folder from within Lightroom library module that they previously were in). Any attempt to re-import them back into the catalogue results in Lightroom telling me that they have been previously imported. Not sure what to do.

How did I get here? OK...

I was working away from home and all my images are stored on a NAS at home. The main catalogue is local on my laptop. I had a couple of hours to spare so I decided to download some raw files to work on. I did this and put them in a folder on my local hard drive. I then opened Lightroom and found the folder in library where the images lived. They all, as expected, had ! on them. So, I right-clicked on one of them and selected find missing images. I located the correct raw file in the local directory and hit ok. Instead of the ! disappearing on all the images that I'd downloaded (lightroom is intelligent enough to look in the same folder for other missing images) the actual images ALL disappeared from the lightroom folder.

If these were fresh images then I would just shrug and re-import but they all have significant editing previously done to them which I don't want to lose.

When I returned home I just thought I'd export the images from a recent catalogue backup and then re-import. However, Lightroom is telling me that they've already been imported. Perhaps Lightroom counts images that have been imported and deleted as previously imported. That would be clever but not helpful to me.

Stranger still is the fact that the number of images in the folder was 476. It was also 476 in the backed up catalogue and it is still 476 in the folder even without those images. What gives?

I then assumed that I'd downloaded the wrong images and then told LR to point at those images which were in fact different images so this would mean I'd have 5-6 duplicates in the folder. Out of 476 images, some of which were quick shot series, I couldn't swear that's not the case but I have been back into the folder and looked for the filenames (ordering by capture time) and the ones that should be there are missing.

it's been a tough week so it is probably something really stupid but if someone can help save me from my own stupidity I'd appreciate it!

[cmgap]

You mention that your Main Catalog is local on your laptop. Do you have multiple catalogs? Do you have Lightroom prompt you each time you open the application? Is there a possibility that you opened a different catalog, downloaded your raw files to that catalog? Where was the source for the images? Are you working with Smart Previews?

[CromCrom]

Hi, thank you for replying.

I only have one laptop (along with a bunch of backups) which opens automatically each time. No possibility that I opened up a different catalogue. I have smart previews switched off because I'm short of disk space currently.

Not sure what you mean by 'source for the images'.

[Just Shoot Me]

Check the filter bar that something isn't turned on that is causing some image to not show ip.

[CromCrom]

Not managed to solve this - not as simple as filter bar etc. It's clear it's a one off problem so I will report back with solution when I work it out.

[dj_paige]

What has happened is that some images that were previously in my catalogue do not appear to be there any more (ie I can't find them by scanning through the folder from within Lightroom library module that they previously were in). Any attempt to re-import them back into the catalogue results in Lightroom telling me that they have been previously imported. Not sure what to do.

You are looking in the WRONG folder. The photos are in some other folder. You have accidentally imported the photos into a different folder than the one you are thinking they should be in, probably by importing using COPY instead of ADD.

Please do all of these steps in order:

1. Click on All Photographs
2. Turn off filters (Ctrl-L once or twice)
3. Expand stacks (Photos->Stacking->Expand All Stacks)
4. Use the Filter bar to search for one of these photos by file name.

Now you can see the photo in Lightroom, and you know what folder it is in.