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Banding of Re-Imported Photos

Explorer ,
Apr 13, 2017 Apr 13, 2017

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Hi all,

I use LR 6.9 on a Macbook Pro Late 2016. I have a LR catalogue with all my photos from 2016 on an external disk drive. For some purposes e.g. to complete a collection topic, I re-import some photos from that catalogue as copies including negatives. When I look at them in LR6.9 everything seems ok. I can edit them in the development module and according to the meta data, the entire RAW dataset seems available such e.g. approx. 6000 x 4000 = 24 Megabytes.

However, every once in a while, suddenly some photos may show banding effects: rainbow type bands, only in dark areas like night sky. That indicates a loss of data / strong compression. This can be embarrassing as when I run the slide show module, all of the sudden, this banding may occur spontaneously on some slides.

The most mind buckling symptom though is: this problem disappears when I connect the external hard drive which contains the catalogue with the original data, but I do not even open this drive, I just plug it into one of the thunderbolt 3 slots. Apparently, the mac os and LR6 together connect to this drive without me selecting it and make the original photo file available, causing the banding to disappear.

This is double strange as the original file should be available on the local disc as it got re-imported as a copy including the negativ and how can a non-selected drive deliver data to fill a gap on the already imported data that set, a gap that should not exist in the first place?

Thanks for paying attention!

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

LEGEND , Apr 13, 2017 Apr 13, 2017

The LR catalog would never reach the 125GBs of space used. you would need to have many millions of images imported to the catalog and more than likely use Smart Previews for all of them for the actual catalog file to use that much disk space.

Not sure you are aware of this but no images are ever really In LR. LR is a Database program and only references your images into the database file, the catalog file, from where they are store on the drives connected to your computer or your network.

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LEGEND ,
Apr 13, 2017 Apr 13, 2017

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Do these images have a ? mark or ! mark next to them when you see the banding?

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Explorer ,
Apr 13, 2017 Apr 13, 2017

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No they don't. That is the confusing part. It only shows the copy symbol which is what you expect and I have full editing capability in the development module. Otherwise it would / should say "can not find the ...".  Also, I did repeat the re-import from the external catalogue to make sure I did everything right especially "including the negativ" but still, the symptom appears randomly but disappears reliably when I plug in the external drive which seems to fix this in real time. Amazing. But I do not want to carry my backup disk along all the time...

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LEGEND ,
Apr 13, 2017 Apr 13, 2017

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However, every once in a while, suddenly some photos may show banding effects: rainbow type bands, only in dark areas like night sky. That indicates a loss of data / strong compression.

The most mind buckling symptom though is: this problem disappears when I connect the external hard drive which contains the catalogue with the original data, but I do not even open this drive, I just plug it into one of the thunderbolt 3 slots

This banding could happen if Lightroom is using Smart Previews, and then when the external drive is plugged in, LR then uses the image rather than the smart preview.

By the way, any workflow that involves re-importing the photos is a very inefficient workflow.

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Explorer ,
Apr 13, 2017 Apr 13, 2017

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Lightroom using Smart Previews indeed is what must be happening, but why only on re-imported slides, not on any of the photos that originate on the local drive and that although the negativ of the reimported slide is available locally?

Do you suggest a more efficient workflow when you want to create a slide show with a topic which crosses two catalogues one of which is on an external drive? That is what "import from an different catalogue" is meant for, isn't it??

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LEGEND ,
Apr 13, 2017 Apr 13, 2017

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Do you suggest a more efficient workflow when you want to create a slide show with a topic which crosses two catalogues one of which is on an external drive? That is what "import from an different catalogue" is meant for, isn't it??

First, you didn't say you were using "import from another catalog" in your original message, your words led me to believe the photos themselves were being imported using File->Import Photos and Videos.

Do I have a suggestion? Yes, use one catalog for ALL of your photos (that's ALL, as in 100%), this eliminates any such need to perform extra work of importing from another catalog to gather photos together for some purpose.

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Explorer ,
Apr 13, 2017 Apr 13, 2017

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Sorry for misleading you. Thought my words would imply that command.

Anyway, the magic of the desired symptom seems to remain in the dark. The consequence is to e.g. not use LR slideshow with photos imported from different catalogues of different drives but rather export from the external catalog to a new storage device like an usb stick and reimport from there. That however is an inefficient workflow indeed and I am not certain that this would reliably circumvent the problem I have.

To your recommendation "use one catalog for ALL photos". Not sure if that is practical and recommendable if you think about a time span of several years of shooting, the associated storage capacity, backup implication etc etc.

Many professional users have several active catalogs coexisting, and often on different computers, each one with a certain topic or client focus, but every once in a while want to bring portions of these catalogs together for some purposes. So I am certainly not alone and my case is a rather common and simple one, so I believe.  Also, the LR architecture is designed to support a seamless exchange of photos between catalogs and even computing devices, or?

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LEGEND ,
Apr 13, 2017 Apr 13, 2017

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I know lots of people in this forum and other forums (including me) who disagree based on personal experience with the following statement:

To your recommendation "use one catalog for ALL photos". Not sure if that is practical and recommendable if you think about a time span of several years of shooting, the associated storage capacity, backup implication etc etc.

Not only is it practical, it is recommendable, desirable, and poses no issues with backups or storage capacity. Again, this is based upon many people's experience, it's not just a theory.

You are right however, that there are many ways to do things, many people use multiple catalogs, for many different reasons.

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Explorer ,
Apr 13, 2017 Apr 13, 2017

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Thanks! I am absolutely open minded on this. But please help me on how you would handle this scenario:

5000 Photos per year, each 24MBytes, for  a period of 5 years resulting in 625 GBytes of storage if you keep everything on one catalog.

And maybe there are an additional 300 GBytes for exporting a portion of the LR RAWs as JPEGs for all kinds of purposes.

Plus all the storage you need to support everything else on your engine?

Where and how do you keep these 1-2 TBytes while maintaining the performance levels of that single LR catalog as well as of other apps and the overall system?

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LEGEND ,
Apr 13, 2017 Apr 13, 2017

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5000 Photos per year, each 24MBytes, for  a period of 5 years resulting in 625 GBytes of storage if you keep everything on one catalog.

The catalog itself isn't 625 GBytes, it might be 2 or 3 GBytes. If you split this into five catalogs, or if you keep them in one catalog, you have the same amount of data to store and to back-up.

And maybe there are an additional 300 GBytes for exporting a portion of the LR RAWs as JPEGs for all kinds of purposes.

Plus all the storage you need to support everything else on your engine?

I don't keep my exports after I have used them (e-mail, web, print). I don't know what "all the storage you need to support everything else" refers to.

Where and how do you keep these 1-2 TBytes while maintaining the performance levels of that single LR catalog as well as of other apps and the overall system?

You keep the stuff on your hard disk(s). The performance of a LR catalog does not depend on the amount of photos that are imported into the catalog. (And I don't see where you get 2 TBytes, everything you talked about adds to 1 TByte, even though as I said, that makes no difference at all).

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Explorer ,
Apr 13, 2017 Apr 13, 2017

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The LR catalog incl. negatives would be 125GBytes per year in this scenario and that is what my macbook pro can accommodate but no more including all other applications work.

I would never trash my JPEG exports as maybe next year, I might want to do an update on a professional slideshow and re-use the JPEGS generated for that purpose. Otherwise I would have to go through a re-selection (out of say 2000 travel photos) and re-exporting process.

So at the end of year I work towards 200 GBytes, just for photographic work.

Just can't see how I could do that any other way than putting this on an external (back-up) disk(s) annually and and start over??

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LEGEND ,
Apr 13, 2017 Apr 13, 2017

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The LR catalog would never reach the 125GBs of space used. you would need to have many millions of images imported to the catalog and more than likely use Smart Previews for all of them for the actual catalog file to use that much disk space.

Not sure you are aware of this but no images are ever really In LR. LR is a Database program and only references your images into the database file, the catalog file, from where they are store on the drives connected to your computer or your network.

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Explorer ,
Apr 13, 2017 Apr 13, 2017

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Be rest assured that I am aware of the catalog by itself not requiring that much space but in practice, this does not make a difference as without the negatives, the catalog is useless. The negatives sit on the same disk as I import them from the camera, so it remains a disc space issue in the sum of things.

May I just remind us that this discussion is not bringing any clarification to the problem which I may rephrase as follows: why seem to "enjoy" copy-negatives, which are imported from a different catalog,  a smart preview treatment, but non-imported negatives don't?

And why and how can an external disk drive, which contains the other catalog and the associated negatives, fix that problem just by being plugged into one of the thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) slots on the macbook but not even be selected / activated in the finder??

Appreciate your help and patience!

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LEGEND ,
Apr 13, 2017 Apr 13, 2017

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I would never trash my JPEG exports as maybe next year, I might want to do an update on a professional slideshow and re-use the JPEGS generated for that purpose.

I don't keep my exports, I can regenerate them from Lightroom if I need them in the future. If you are talking about the Lightroom slideshow module, there is no need to export JPGs to make this work.

Just can't see how I could do that any other way than putting this on an external (back-up) disk(s) annually and and start over??

There is no need to start over. If you move your photos to an external disk, you don't have to start over, your edits can remain with the photos and the photos remain in Lightroom. (And moving photos to an external disk is no any form of back-up).

You seem to have a number of misunderstandings about how Lightroom works, but I assure you that there are plenty of people who take more photos than you do in a year keep them in one catalog file, and have several external disks, and everything works well, and they have none of the problems you think you would have.

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Explorer ,
Apr 13, 2017 Apr 13, 2017

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To dg_paige last response.

I keep my exports because I do not want to reselect and regenerate which can be a major task on bigger projects.

Maybe you are right and I am missing a piece on how LR works. When I import the photos from the camera, I am aware that LR does not import the negatives themselves. But they sit on the same disk after import and my understanding has been, that I should not move them, otherwise the catalog would not find them anymore, right? So how can I move them to another disc and maintain the same catalog?

Anway, again, we discuss a different workflow but not the problem as I re-described it in my response to Just Shoot Me.

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LEGEND ,
Apr 14, 2017 Apr 14, 2017

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But they sit on the same disk after import and my understanding has been, that I should not move them, otherwise the catalog would not find them anymore, right?

If you move the photos properly, they can be moved to any disk or folder you want. The instructions are in "Part 2 — Updating Folder Location" of this document Adobe Lightroom - Find moved or missing files and folders

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Explorer ,
Apr 14, 2017 Apr 14, 2017

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Thanks a lot dj_paige!

Was aware of procedures that allow to re-locate photos which have inadvertently been lost by lightroom, but I have not been aware that relocating photo files can be made standard procedure and so provide the ability to place them anywhere without exporting the entire catalog.

The fact that just plugging in my external drive, while not even selecting it, but Lightroom linking appropriately and automatically to the original negatives, confirms this.

And by the way, I did not mean to be a mass producer of photos, I just wanted to map out what causes me to create a new catalog about once every year. That has worked fine for me in the past. Have no idea why this time, my imported negative-copies are not accepted as such. The only speculation I have is that the exported catalog was LR5 based and my current version is LR6. LR6 triggers an automatic catalog update when linking to the old LR5 but maybe there is a hidden twist to it when importing.

Thanks again!

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LEGEND ,
Apr 14, 2017 Apr 14, 2017

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I just wanted to map out what causes me to create a new catalog about once every year. That has worked fine for me in the past.

Pardon me, but according to your earlier words, it has not worked fine, you have to do extra work to combine photos from different catalogs so you can create the proper slideshow. You also have to do extra work to create new catalogs every year, and extra work to switch between catalogs. And lastly, but most importantly, you cannot search or perform tasks across different catalogs, this is a major drawback to multiple catalogs. All of these drawbacks can be avoided with a single catalog.

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Explorer ,
Apr 14, 2017 Apr 14, 2017

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Well, let me put it this way: unlike this time, it has been doing what I expected it do.

Setting up a new catalog wasn't much work, I even enjoyed the fresh start with perhaps a new folder structure reflecting e.g. a different forthcoming focus  as well. When I needed a selection of negatives from an older catalog on an external disk, I could import them and work with them on the current catalog. If I can do that, that is all I need to be happy given the limited number of cases and photos involved. Searching across catalogs I hardly had a need for.

This time, it confronts me with a problem I have never experienced before. Fortunately it is not a killer. In fact, the fix is to do what I would have do anyway with the "one catalog workflow": connect the external disk and the banding disappears.

Having said that, I do much appreciate you having me sensitized to a potentially more efficient workflow which I am not questioning at all but may take on board in the future. Thanks again!

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