Moved my photos to another drive, lost develop settings?

Probably a BIG mistake on my part. Recently moved an entire folder from the old 1TB to my 2TB. Lost all my develop settings for each photo. Is there any way to recover this? I'm using LR4.

Thank you.

check in LR on the left folder panel. are there question marks next to the folders or photos? then it just lost the photo location. right click on one, there's an option to find the photos again, do that for one and LR should do the rest for all of them or at least all of them in that folder automatically.

next time, move them from within LR, or just do the right click thing again.

At least I think that's the problem you're facing. the editing info is tied into a file at it's particular location, if you change that location outside of LR it won't know, you have to 'tell' it.

ALWAYS use LR to move photos and folders around on a drive or between drives.

BTW, migrate to LR5. The new features are very good and useful.

No, you didn't lose all your edits. These are in in the catalog. LR is "lost" since its pointers in the catalog are pointing to the original files that have been moved. Do a right click on the folders (on the left side in the Library module) to "find" the missing files (where you moved your files). Once you did this, life will be good again.

There are no question marks as the files are not lost.
I couldn't drag the folder outside of the drive, so I went in to "My Computer" and moved the files to the new drive and imported the files into LR without moving.

I think I am screwed unless I can recover the edits from a prior LR catalog backup. The one issue is the backup is from 10/19 and I have added photos and edits to those photos since the 10/19 backup.

All these photos are in one folder "Downtown Savannah".

Hope this makes sense and hope I can recover the edits.

Thanks again for any help.

The edits are in the catalog. Do you have a catalog before you did the move and re-import? I would read this one in instead the default one. If you see "question marks" that may be a good thing since it probably has all your old edits, and you tell LR where the files are as described above.

The one thing LR needs is to know where images are. It logs that info in the catalog so it can know which develop settings to apply to which file. If you move them outside of LR it loses track and will display a question mark on the folder. The correct thing to do is to right click on the top most folder and select "update folder location". It will then know the new location and can apply the develop settings. The wrong thing to do is to synchronise those folders or import the images - that tells LR that these image are new and they will be imported as if they have never been processed. In addition synchronising a folder tells LR you want to add new images and delete any ghost images that were moved or deleted outside of LR. Doing this will clear out any edits for those ghost images - I suspect this is what you have done.

As you moved the images LR would let you import them again as to LR they are brand new. I would suggest though that within the LR catalogue the folder tree will still show the old folder location on the other drive, with the images with the ?. Simply remove the latest import from the libary (make sure you do NOT delete from disk) and do the find files routine from the old location.

If you really do not have the old location in the folder tree anymore then you will have to recover from the backup. Open the Backup .lrcat file in LR. Now you will find the old folder location listed with with the ?'s. Do the file find routine to find the files in the new location. Once you have the location sorted you then need to export that folder as a catalogue file. I suggest you name it something distinctive. When you are doing the export two of the checkbox options allow you to include original files and the previews, make sure these are NOT ticked you don't need them. Now open your main catalogue and again remove the newly imported images from the libary. Now do an import catalogue and import the catalogue that you previously created and gave that distinctive name. This will import the images back in with the edits.

When moving images to a new disk in LR at least on Windows (Mac's may varey) you need to put an image file in the root folder (or the top folder of the part of the folder tree you want to use,any old image file will do but copy don't move it) you then have to import that image to the catalogue so that LR and the catalogue file knows the drive exists. Once you have moved the images you want onto the drive you can then delete the image file you used to show LR the new drive. LR can only access the whole file system when doing an import.

Alan

chantu wrote in post #16622129
The edits are in the catalog. Do you have a catalog before you did the move and re-import? I would read this one in instead the default one. If you see "question marks" that may be a good thing since it probably has all your old edits, and you tell LR where the files are as described above.

I was able to load a backup from 3 months ago to recover most of the edits.

Dan Marchant wrote in post #16623119
The one thing LR needs is to know where images are. It logs that info in the catalog so it can know which develop settings to apply to which file. If you move them outside of LR it loses track and will display a question mark on the folder. The correct thing to do is to right click on the top most folder and select "update folder location". It will then know the new location and can apply the develop settings. The wrong thing to do is to synchronise those folders or import the images - that tells LR that these image are new and they will be imported as if they have never been processed. In addition synchronising a folder tells LR you want to add new images and delete any ghost images that were moved or deleted outside of LR. Doing this will clear out any edits for those ghost images - I suspect this is what you have done.

Good to know for future moving, thank you.

BigAl007 wrote in post #16623311
If you really do not have the old location in the folder tree anymore then you will have to recover from the backup. Open the Backup .lrcat file in LR. Now you will find the old folder location listed with with the ?'s. Do the file find routine to find the files in the new location. Once you have the location sorted you then need to export that folder as a catalogue file. I suggest you name it something distinctive. When you are doing the export two of the checkbox options allow you to include original files and the previews, make sure these are NOT ticked you don't need them.

Completed all this, thank you. BUT...

BigAl007 wrote in post #16623311
Now open your main catalogue and again remove the newly imported images from the libary.

I'm not understanding what the "main catalogue" is. I did a catalog backup a few minutes ago before I opened the 3 month old backup to regain access to the old edits.

If I understand correctly, I will open the backup I just created and remove (not delete from disk) the files that are older than 3 months. At the moment I have the older catalog open which is from Oct, therefore is not showing any of my photos from Oct through to Jan 2014. Then import the uniquely named catalog to get the photos back in with the edits.

One thing that was odd... when I opened the old catalog from Oct. The missing files showed up in LR on my old drive. 1,4?? files. But, as soon as I clicked on the question mark and found the first photo, all the thumbnails disappeared and the number went to 0. The files were then visible in LR under the new 2TB drive.

Thank you all for the help! I really appreciate it!!

Back in Business

I started playing around with the catalogs and have everything back together X 2! So, all my photos are back with develop settings and there are duplicates of each one it appears. No big deal as I will clean up the folder.

Thanks a lot for all your help!!

JJD.Photography wrote in post #16623725
I'm not understanding what the "main catalogue" is. I did a catalog backup a few minutes ago before I opened the 3 month old backup to regain access to the old edits.

If I understand correctly, I will open the backup I just created and remove (not delete from disk) the files that are older than 3 months. At the moment I have the older catalog open which is from Oct, therefore is not showing any of my photos from Oct through to Jan 2014. Then import the uniquely named catalog to get the photos back in with the edits.

One thing that was odd... when I opened the old catalog from Oct. The missing files showed up in LR on my old drive. 1,4?? files. But, as soon as I clicked on the question mark and found the first photo, all the thumbnails disappeared and the number went to 0. The files were then visible in LR under the new 2TB drive.

Thank you all for the help! I really appreciate it!!

I suppose I used the wrong words. The main catalogue is the one that you have been using. It will have all your latest images in it. This is the one you lost your develope settings from in the movement of the files. To recover the develop settings without creating duplicates, you need to remove the fresh import of the images in the new location by removing from library not deleting from disk.

Then you open the backup catalogue. This will still have the images recorded at the old location, so the first thing to do is tell LR where the images are now, you do that by clicking on the ?. Once you have the file location corrected you then want to export the images in the folder as a NEW catalogue, You do not want to delete all of the other images from the backup, because than they will no longer be backed up!

Once you have done the export you then Import from the NEW catalogue that you created into the one you broke by moving the files outside of LR. This will ensure that you end up with the existing edits, and also ensure that you DO NOT create any duplicate files.

If you have duplicates in the Libary after you have finished then some how you have copied files to more than one location, as LR will not allow the same file in the same location to exist in the database together.

Alan