Help required with Lightroom library

BananaRepublic · Jul 2, 2015

Im scratching my head with an issue that I came across today and I don't know am I just confusing myself or what :suspicious:

but I opened up Lightroom just now and all my images seem to have gone.

I'm using an external SSD for storage, I have it now a few weeks, and what I did was create folders within the SSD under my own preference/layout then I transferred the images that I had via Lightroom into the specific destinations on the SSD. I don't know if that was the correct way to do it but it has been working up till now. Anyway today I started up LR and under folders on the left hand side it says that I currently have 1 jpeg available under SSD drive and I'm confused as to what happened the rest they were all tiff or nef files, the edits I have made are gone. On the SSD itself everything seems to be in order but it seems like I have to re import the files from the hard drive to LR.

Am I blatantly missing something obvious :nightmare:

KmH · Jul 2, 2015

Image files are never in LR.

Lightroom only keeps track of the path in memory to where the files are on your computer.
If you moved the LR catalog file using your computer's file management applications instead of LR, LR no longer knows the path in memory to your image files.

Do you have more than 1 LR catalog file? LR can only access 1 catalog at a time.

Dao · Jul 2, 2015

You may need to locate where the LR catalog file and then link it back to LR. If the catalog file is corrupted, backup catalog file maybe needed.

BananaRepublic · Jul 3, 2015

See I can locate them but when I open the folder using the open catalog feature the photos are not highlightable it is the same when I go command find.

I did make the mistake that KmH said with one catalog, approx 15 images I tried to relocate them but they appear to be have disappeared entirely not even in My documents folder