LIghtroom unable to locate file

[relatively_mike]

I took some quick snaps for an event yesterday and I imported them into Lightroom, now the program won't let me do anything to the photos. What appears to have happened is that LR was working with the photos directly from my CF card. Now that the card has been formated and is no longer connected to the computer it can't find the pic (this is reasonable) The questions I would really appreciate some help with are:

1) How is it that LR still has the pic previewable? And could I pull this pic to use out of the software

2) If all hope is lost from LR is there a way to recover the pics off of my formated (yes sad but true) CF card.

Thanks in advance for any assistance,
Mike

[PixelMagic]

Probably the only way that could happen is if you told Lightroom to import your photos from their current location. What you see in Lightroom are "previews" not the actual image so they really can't be used except probably to print small thumbnails.

All is not lost though; its very easy to recover files from a card even after it has been formatted. I use a software program called File Scavenger but there are other programs like Recover My Files that work equally as well. And depending on the brand of your flash card it might even have come with data recovery software.


I took some quick snaps for an event yesterday and I imported them into Lightroom, now the program won't let me do anything to the photos. What appears to have happened is that LR was working with the photos directly from my CF card. Now that the card has been formated and is no longer connected to the computer it can't find the pic (this is reasonable) The questions I would really appreciate some help with are:

1) How is it that LR still has the pic previewable? And could I pull this pic to use out of the software

2) If all hope is lost from LR is there a way to recover the pics off of my formated (yes sad but true) CF card.

Thanks in advance for any assistance,
Mike

[krusnof]

1) Lightroom has a db-file where every preview are stored and therefore is able to display the picture even though it is deleted or moved. I don't believe that you can recover from that option - please correct me if wrong.

2) There are several programs out there for recovering files on HDD and photo cards - I use myself the one that followed along my SanDisk Extreme III cards (another reason for buying those!!!).

Using PC?? http://www.snapfiles.com/get/mjmphotorecovery.html
Don't know the program, but found it through Google - you can try yourself if not satisfied. GOOD LUCK!!!

[Victoria Bampton]

1)I don't believe that you can recover from that option - please correct me if wrong.

If it turns out that you can't retrieve the files from the CF card (youch, nasty problem!!), then it is possibly to rescue at least Lightroom's previews using LRViewer http://imageingester.com/ImageIngester/LRViewer-info.php

[relatively_mike]

I managed to salvage with recovery software! Thank you so much for all the help.

[krusnof]

Cool, may I ask what software you ended up using!?

Way to go! Be careful in the future ;-)