Lightroom CC catalog error

[mikej4252593]

My Lightroom catalog does not show an individual photo.  The photo still exists in Finder on my Mac, but Lightroom will not let me import it because it says that the photo is already in the catalog. I have done a thorough search of the catalog and it does not exist. Can anyone offer any suggestions as to what might be causing this please?

[dj_paige]

This is caused because the photo has already been imported into LR.

You might also want to be aware that Lightroom is not a file browser, and does not work like Mac Finder or Windows Explorer which will show you every file in a selected folder. Lightroom will only show the photos that it knows about in that folder. In your case, you probably have (accidentally?) imported the photo using the COPY option and so Lightroom shows it in a different folder (the folder you told Lightroom to copy the photo into).

To find the photo, please follow ALL of these steps in order in Lightroom:

1. Expand all stacks (Photo->Stacking->Expand All Stacks)
2. Turn off all filters (Library->Enable Filters once or twice until there is no check mark next to the command)
3. Click on All Photographs under Catalog on the left of the Library module
4. Using the filter bar, search for the photo of interest by file name
5. When you find the photo, right-click on it and select Go To Folder in Library to see what folder Lightroom thinks it is in

[mikej4252593]

Yes, I understand how Lightroom works, but this was an odd one for me.  On a bit more investigation it turns out that somehow the same photo was in 2 different folders.  I'm not sure how it came to be in the second folder, but because the Lightroom catalog was showing the photo in the second folder it would not let me import it from the folder where it belonged.  Now that I have deleted the duplicate all is well.

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

mikej4252593 wrote:

Yes, I understand how Lightroom works, but this was an odd one for me. On a bit more investigation it turns out that somehow the same photo was in 2 different folders. I'm not sure how it came to be in the second folder, but because the Lightroom catalog was showing the photo in the second folder it would not let me import it from the folder where it belonged. Now that I have deleted the duplicate all is well.

Except that this isn't a good strategy in the general case. Deleting the duplicate in the "unwanted" folder is the wrong thing to do if this photo has been edited, or if you have added metadata to it, or if you have included this photo in a collection, web gallery, slideshow or book. In any of these cases, deleting the duplicate and then importing the photo again causes you to lose this work, and the imported photo is treated as a totally new photo by Lightroom and thus it has no edits and no user-supplied metadata and it is not included in collections, books, etc. The better thing to do is to (using your operating system) delete the copy in the "wanted" folder; then in Lightroom moving the photo from the "unwanted" folder to the "wanted" folder, this keeps all of your work intact.

[mikej4252593]

Yes, you are quite correct.  Fortunately, the photo in question had not been edited in any way and so in this instance it didn't matter, but thanks for pointing this out.