Lightroom help

I use a PC w/Windows XP.

I have been using LIghtroom for about a year now. I have my entire portfolio of images in Lightroom and have used it & a combination of Photoshop CS3 to 'develop' all my images into their final output.

I recently renamed some of my folders in Lightroom & moved some images around to tidy up but now for some reason, I can't find all my 'negatives' or original files & the ones that do show up don't have the history of what I've done to 'develop' the images.

I can't figure out a way to fix this. Can anyone help? I hope that all the time I've spent developing my final images isn't lost. That's the one thing that scares me about database-based programs.

Thanks.

Did you use Lightroom to move the images or did you do it in Explorer? Is it just the moved images that don't have the edits or is it the renamed also? It sounds like you moved the raw files without moving the xmp files. If you used LR it should have moved everything together.

I'm not entirely sure but here are a few things you can try.

Try using the synchronize folder. Right click on the folder in the folder list and click on synchronize. If the images are there it should update.

You may have to do a windows search by filename. It should find the image and the xmp file. Make sure they are in the same folder then update LR.

eddarr wrote in post #5988480
Did you use Lightroom to move the images or did you do it in Explorer? Is it just the moved images that don't have the edits or is it the renamed also? It sounds like you moved the raw files without moving the xmp files. If you used LR it should have moved everything together.

I'm not entirely sure but here are a few things you can try.

Try using the synchronize folder. Right click on the folder in the folder list and click on synchronize. If the images are there it should update.

You may have to do a windows search by filename. It should find the image and the xmp file. Make sure they are in the same folder then update LR.

Thanks for your help. I used Lightroom to move the images. I think it's just the moved images but I'm not sure. I'm so confused as to what happened by now I'm not sure. I have set in the preferences not to write separate xmp files, just to embed the metadata in the file. All my working files were on my primary D: drive. After I tidied up & moved folders around in Lightroom, that's when the problem began. Since I couldn't figure out how to fix it, I copied my backed up originals from an external drive back to my D: drive, then I re-imported that folder and it brought them back, but they're now linked to my external drive.

I'd like to figure out how to get them linked back to my D: drive again. Any suggestions?

Have you had a look over on the Lightroom Forums? - A very useful resource IMO.

I believe if you move the files from within Lightroom it will automatically update itself. I recently moved all my image files to another drive and I'm sure I did it this way but can't remember exactly...