Lost Master Images in LRCC - Can I recover from the remaining thumbnails?

[chips7335]

I inserted the SD card into the iMac and thought I downloaded the pics. I must have used the images on the card, nothing I have ever done before. After working several hours on a selected few I quit Lightroom, removed the SD card and went out on another shoot, reformatting the card. When I came back to finalize the previous pics all I had left were the thumbnails. i searched everywhere, When I download pics they go to an external Thunderbolt drive as the working copies, and they are copied to an external USB 3.0 drive as a copy of the original. It appeared as if I worked on the images when they were on the SD card. I didn't realize I could even do that from the import dialog. I used Lexar's File Rescue app to check the card and found the images taken after the lost shoot, and images from a shoot during the summer, but not the ones I need.

With all of that said, is there any way I can recover something, even a jpg, from the thumbnails?

There was an older thread dealing with this subject but I could not follow it to theanswer when I searched for it, only a reference to a three where printing as a soft proof or something might do it.

Thanks for any help,

Jim

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

First, it sounds like you have imported the photos using ADD and not using COPY. ADD leaves the photos in their original location. I believe that when photos are on a camera card, ADD should not be a possibility, but there are reports in this forum of something like this happening, probably a bug.

the only way I know to recover the thumbnails of the photos is to use this plug-in: http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/preview-extraction

Jeffrey Friedl's Blog » Jeffrey’s “Extract Cached Image Previews” Lightroom Plugin

The recovered thumbnails may be too small for whatever use you have in mind.

This brings us to another topic, the need for backups of your original photos. If you had been making regular backups of all of your photos, as soon as is practical after you import them, you'd not have this emergency situation. A word to the wise ...

[chips7335]

That is what I probably did, use add instead of move. However I do make regular backups. When the photos are downloaded they are placed on a Lacie Big 8 and a Seagate 5TB USB 3.0 drive, The Lacie Big 8 is automatically copied to another Lacie Big 8 soon after as a mirrored image of the first. Once a week the USB 3.0 archive is synced to a second USB 3.0 5TB drive. the problem is that I don't have the SD or CF cards included in any of the backups. I will see if I can change that.

I have a possible solution I worked on while waiting for advice. I opened Lightroom and selected the thumbnails then took them into the print module and enlarged them on the print page. Then I open GRAB from my iMac and made a selection of the image(s) and saved them as TIF. Finally I opened them in On1 and used RESIZE and enlarged them to an appropriate size by 200% increments until they are a bit oversized. I have not finished so don't know how they will look in Lightroom when reimported, but RESIZE upside them from 72ppi to 300 ppi before I began the incremental resize process. They look acceptable so far.

Once done with this I will download Jeffrey's plugin and try it too. I already use several of his products.

Thanks for your prompt response.

Jim

[dj_paige]

chips7335  wrote

That is what I probably did, use add instead of move. However I do make regular backups. When the photos are downloaded they are placed on a Lacie Big 8 and a Seagate 5TB USB 3.0 drive, The Lacie Big 8 is automatically copied to another Lacie Big 8 soon after as a mirrored image of the first. Once a week the USB 3.0 archive is synced to a second USB 3.0 5TB drive. the problem is that I don't have the SD or CF cards included in any of the backups. I will see if I can change that.

Either you have explained yourself poorly, or missed my point. The point is NOT to back up the SD or CF cards. The point is to import the photos using COPY so that you have a copy on your hard disks so that the photos can be backed up by your very admirable backup process.

[chips7335]

Oh I got your point I undoubtedly used add with respect to the SD card. But it was an oversight on my part as it is not the norm. I could not figure out how I did it and you offered a reasonable and probable explanation. I thank you for that and will take care not to do it again.

Jim

[chips7335]

I downloaded Jeffrey's plugin and am glad I now have it. After I figured out how to use it I gave it a shot. It recovered all 53 photos from the cache. Most are f excellent quality and they consist of jpg ad dng files. they are all large enough already for small to medium prints and upsizing will not be a problem and much as it was for the images I recovered using the screen captures. Also much quicker. Thanks for the guidance. I truly appreciate it.

Jim