Lightroom has encountered problems reading this photo

[photosynthesis_be]

LR CC 2015.10

Camera Raw 9.10

Photoshop CC 2017.1

Mac OSX El Capitan 10.11.6

iMac 5K Late 2014

Photos from Olympus OM-D E-M1 MarkII first with 1.0, later with 1.1 firmware

In Library view, Grid view, many but not all thumbnails show a little black circle with an exclamation mark. Click on it, and get a pop-up saying "Lightroom has encountered problems reading this photo. You will not be able to make adjustments to the photo."

Weird thing is this problem seems to affect photos randomly, and sometimes a photo that had the problem, does not have it anymore later.

I can save the metadata, read the meta data, but that does not help.

I can view it full-screen and in Loupe view, with an additional warning that "There was an error working with the photo".

When I try to go in the Development module for one of these photos, sometimes it is shown (it's a preview), sometimes not, but there is then the additional message that "The file appears to be unsupported or damaged".

This started since I upgraded to LR 2015.10 (from .9).

I also have that issue where LR does not recognise the latest camera raw version although it is installed, but that is not what this discussion is about.

[Just Shoot Me]

LR can't fine the files. Where did you import them to, IE what Drive and Folder?

If an external drive then that drive is either disconnected, has failed or you moved or deleted them.

[photosynthesis_be]

nope, files are there alright, lightroom can even show them in Finder. If a file is missing you get a different sort of error, I do not remember the exact words, but it is immediately clear the file is missing when that happens, e.g. disconnected network drive.

[dj_paige]

"Lightroom has encountered problems reading this photo. You will not be able to make adjustments to the photo."

This photo has become unreadable somehow, most likely due to a hard malfunction in the transfer of the photo to the computer, or a hard disk problem. You need to restore a copy from your backups or from the camera card. If none of those work, then you will not be able to use the photo.

[photosynthesis_be]

I used lightroom to move 3 allegedly corrupt photos from their network drive to a local drive, then again moved them back to their original location on the network, and this fixed the problem. So there fortunately nothing wrong with the files themselves. I do not see myself doing this for the hundreds of affected photos though.

[dj_paige]

seems like perhaps there is a network problem

[photosynthesis_be]

so you're telling me I have a network issue, causing LR to state I have corrupt files, then by copying those files over that same network, twice, I can fix this corruption?? Really ??

[dj_paige]

Really.

[photosynthesis_be]

I'm not buying it. Sure, networks can cause data corruption and timing problems, but to think that such problem would selectively affect the RAW files from only 1 camera out of 5 in my catalog, and none off the TIFF files, is rather hard to conceive.

[dj_paige]

If there was no such thing as an intermittent problem, then I would agree with you.

But it's entirely possible that things are working properly, then something goes wrong at the time you are asking Lightroom to make use of these files (the RAWs only, from that one camera) from across the network, and a minute later everything is fine and so TIFF files and files from other cameras don't show the problem.

[photosynthesis_be]

If this were happening occasionally I would agree. But this is systematic and it's always with photos from the E-M1 MarkII, and never with any of the tiff files or any of the other camera's photos. The network is just fine. I can copy the files using Finder, remove them from the catalog, and re-import them, and they are fine. Including when I put them back on the network. I stopped using LR to do the move back and forth after LR effectively ruined 2 photos, reducing them to zero bytes as reported by Finder.

[photosynthesis_be · Accepted solution]

First: I was wrong. after some more experimentation, I found that photos from other cameras were also affected.

So i rebooted the Mac (it was ages ago, the uptime of this thing is insane), and the problem is solved.

[photosynthesis_be]

Thanks for trying to support me!

[photosynthesis_be]

Also, only RAW files re affected, and only from the E-M1 MarkII. My wife's laptop is running LR CC 2015.9 and does not have this issue.