Some of my photos have odd patterns/distortions in Lightroom

While editing some photos today from yesterdays shoot I found- after editing- a few of the photos had strange patterns over parts of them. It happened in the jpg exports as well. At first I was thought it was a sensor issue but the photos look fine on the camera screen. I shut down LR and restarted the comp. Went back to Lr to check the photos. By clicking between library and develop modules I was able to get the photos to export a jpg without the issues. One of the photos still shows the patterns in the library module and navigator preview window but it is fine in the develop module.

Lightroom CC. I havent updated to the new version yet (classic) as I have been in the middle of too many projects the past few months. Windows 7. 16 gigs ram.

Anyone ever have this happen? Theories, suggestions... ? Pics attached.

The files are corrupt. Exactly how they have been corrupted isn't clear as there are several possibilities...
1. The card was faulty and they were corrupted while being written to the card. - This is unlikely if they all looked fine on the back of the camera but not impossible. What you see on the camera is the JPG preview that is embedded in the RAW data but it is possible for the RAW to be corrupted while the preview appears to be OK.
2. They were corrupted during transfer (faulty cable).
3. There is a hardware problem with your HD or some other component of the computer that has caused corruption.

The fact that you were able to get some of the images to correct by turning the machine on and off again indicates that the files may not actually be corrupted but are being corrupted when read into memory or when the LR previews are created and saved to disk. That would indicate that option three is the culprit.... but it could be the disk or memory or some other component that is causing the actual corruption.

It is very unlikely that LR is the actual culprit because much of the file handling in LR is actually done by the OS. If it was, say, a corrupted LR install then the problem should occur when you open/edit other images as well.

Dan hit the nail on the head. You may want to try downloading the images from the card again and see if that corrects the problem. If not, try a different card reader or try downloading directly from the camera to see if that helps.

I believe I have narrowed it down to the previews being corrupted. May indicate a HD issue. I will be making another BU of the drive this weekend and will reupload the images on a new drive to see if it solves them problem. It was strange that these patterns didnt occur until after I was done editing.

And the winner is... A bad stick of RAM!

New cmos battery and two new Ram sticks and we are running better than ever! I think the RAM was dying a slow death. I would occassionaly over the past few months have odd pc behavior and some glitchiness that I couldn't replicate. So nice when the studio pc is happy!

Glad to hear it got sorted. I was leaning more towards ram being the cause because of the intermittent/changeabl​e nature of the issue.

Dan Marchant wrote in post #18582318
Glad to hear it got sorted. I was leaning more towards ram being the cause because of the intermittent/changeabl​e nature of the issue.

Exactly- although the initial mystery at least got me off my butt to make a third copy of my current work drive. Complacency sucks!

I am having this same issue. Is there a way to test the RAM to see if that is the issue? My local Apple repair shop did not know how to fix it. Thanks.

Firehouse wrote in post #18605043
I am having this same issue. Is there a way to test the RAM to see if that is the issue? My local Apple repair shop did not know how to fix it. Thanks.

I ran memtest. I let it run through all eight levels but it was apparent after two minutes that the RAM was toast. I am on a PC.

I reimported the photos once I replaced the RAM and all was well. Dont format that card just yet!