Import hangs with camera/phone source devices, works with same card using card reader

[gardnjam]

Lightroom CC 2015.12

Camera Raw 9.12

Windows 7 Professional SP1

Canon SL1

Samsung Galaxy S7

Issue:

Lightroom import hangs (fails to even generate image previews) when importing from a camera or phone source.  Using a card reader with the same SD card (removed from camera) works correctly.  Unfortunately, this is very annoying for images on a cell phone which are not on removable storage.

Details:

For the past 3 years, I've had zero problems importing photos into Lightroom.  My workflow has always been to use Lightroom to perform an import Copy directly off the camera or phone by connecting the device to the PC.  The destination is always an internal hard drive who's folder is part of my single Lightroom catalog.  Starting around 3 months ago and unchanged to this time, when I select the camera/phone source it never generates preview images of the files on the device, and the icon in the lower left corner will spin forever.  Import hangs.  Pressing Cancel exits the import window, showing a zero progress import status bar in the upper left region, which clears after a few seconds.

This is what I see in the import window once I select the camera or phone as source.

As noted above, if I remove the SD card from my camera and use a card reader, selecting the card reader as source with the exact same settings works correctly (image previews appear, I can then select which photos to import, and the copy operation succeeds).

I've searched and found many references to various import issues, but none of their solutions have worked for me.  Notably, I've tried many different import settings to no avail, as well as creating a new lightroom catalog and the import behavior was unchanged.  Copying files manually from the device to my hard drive, then importing using Lightroom Copy works correctly, similarly to how importing from an SD card reader works normally.  This process is very slow and painful of course.

What should I try next?

[andersk56511155]

I have the same problem. Samsung Galaxy S7 doesn´t work with Lightroom. I doesn´t work with Photoshop Elements Organizer either. Same issue there... I bought Lightroom CC just to fix this error. Bummer...

[gardnjam]

Sorry to hear that Anders.  In my case, I was able to import into Lightroom 5/6/ & CC with both my Canon DSLR and Samsung S7 devices in the past. Import stopped working correctly a few months ago (it now sits forever at the step where it tries to find photos on the device after I've selected the device on the source panel, no photos are ever shown).

Importing from an SD card (even the same one taken out of the DSLR & phone) works just fine, as does importing from hard drives or other internal and external storage.  I'm using this approach for now, but it's quite a pain to my workflow.

It's both my DSLR and phone that seems to cause Lightroom to get confused when it looks for photos on these devices directly.  I'm trying to figure out if part of my install is bad, if anyone else is experiencing this, and what the resolution could be.

Import issues are abundant, so it's difficult to find specifics from my searches.  But the few cases I've come across don't seem to be resolved by re-installation.

[andersk56511155]

Thank´s! You are in more trouble than me, I think. My Nikon D5000 works flawlessly with Lightroom. Sorry to say both ours S7 don´t.´All we see is the spinning wheel and nothing happens. No big deal, we just use  explorer to copy and paste, but it is a few more steps that we rather would like to not have to do. We just wait and see if there´sa solution coming up... Otherwise I think Lightroom is just great!

[ManiacJoe]

Some camera pretend to be hard drives better than others.

Ultimately, you will be much happier using a card reader. Card readers are faster with the transfers, require no special drivers, are far less error prone, and do not drain you camera batteries.

Most cell phones do a poor job at pretending to be hard drives. When scanned for image files, the phones usually present all the images on the phone -- including the unwanted browser cached files -- in a list with no folder information. Your best bet here, when looking to scan the phone from your computer, is to manually copy the desired images to the computer using the computer's file browser then import the images from the computer's hard drive.

Probably not the answers you are hoping for....

[andersk56511155]

OK, got it. I continue to transfer my files using file transfer. But please don´t blame the Samsung phones, the only software so far not to be able to work with them are PSE  ( 8 was ok, 12 and 15 are not) and Lightroom. Even Photoshop CC2017 opens the pictures from the phones without any delay, so the problem is in the software of Lightroom and Photoshop Element Organizer.