Synchronizing Lightroom Classic folders to find missing files

[@brunojungmann8666]

Thank you very much! You helped me a lot!

[@jman-v7x3q]

you have 10k plus pictures on your lightroom?! i recently just deleted everything out of my lightroom because i thought the 5k pictures were making it slow down. What kind of computer do you have?

[@jfbreese]

Super helpful! Thank you!!

[@Dex-bm8vn]

YOU SAVED ME, i MISSCLICKED SOMETHING THAT i DON'T RECALL AND MISSED ALL THE SOURCE FILES AND THOUGHT i'D ONLY BE ABLE TO USE THE INITAL PREVIEWS WHICH WERE VERY LOW QUALITY

[@amthunder1]

How do I find a folder with images created outside of LrC in LrC?! The folder and images were created in Bridge (I can see them in Bridge) but cannot find them at all in LrC . I have tried everything. Thank you.

[@buzzzqwert]

Thank you, I did not know that could be done.

[@KristianDale]

How does this affect photos that are already in a collection? Will the new files take their place, or will they be removed?

[@nicolesy]

If the files are still in their original location, then nothing should change. If you removed files in the folder they were in (and were previously imported into Lightorom), then they will be removed from Lightroom because the original file is no longer there.

[@danyeleonard]

Very helpful!

[@Wilspj]

I’m trying to do this with pictures, Would removing the previews erase the edits I did? Making me have to re-edit the photos that are now found? Or will all the edits apply to the new found images

[@fabioverissimosantos]

yes. and that is a very important thing that the video fails to explain.. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[@ScreenLa]

@@fabioverissimosantos You have to click update folder location instead of sync. It's right under it. That deff should have been covered.

[@adreaminfocus]

Thank you so much xx

[@themichaelmartinify]

I just lost weeks of work. Thanks for not mentioning that is erases all your edits. I could scream right now.

[@nicolesy]

Syncing a folder does not erase your edits, it only matches up what is in the folder with what you see in the catalog, so I'm not sure how that happened. Maybe you had "scan for metadata updates" checked and do not have the .xmp files in the folder. If you are only saving your edits to the catalog then I HIGHLY suggest you change that in the settings. Go to Catalog Settings > Metadata, and make sure that "Automatically Write Changes to XMP" is checked. This will save your edits to your computer and not the catalog. (If your catalog is corrupted and you don't have a recent backup, you'll lose all of the edits you had ... checking this box saves the .xmp data files to your computer so you always have them.) For now, you can try checking the History panel in your image to see if the previous edits are still there.

[@emmam4302]

@@nicolesy and the guy didn't even bother to thank you hah!

[@catherinem2112]

All of my photos from that folder disappeared from my library

[@nicolesy]

Did you possibly make changes to the folder outside of Lightroom? If you moved any images around in the folder on your computer (not in the Lightroom application) then this might happen.

[@NewsMagazineChicago]

OMG. We just lost all our edits following this. Guys look for another video with more detail.

[@nicolesy]

My guess is that you did not write your changes to XMP (and instead wrote them to the catalog, which is not a good idea for this exact reason). You will want to make sure that you change the setting to write all of your edits to XMP or you will likely lose your edits to other photos, especially if your catalog is corrupted or you lose the catalog for some reason. The XMP data is stored in a side-car file alongside your raw images. If you don't have this file, then it's possilbe that Lightroom scanned for updates and could not find any XMP files and so it removed your catalog edits. If the images you were synching to relocate were moved outside of Lightroom, and did not have the XMP data assocaite with them, then yes, the edits would probably disappear because they were moved outside of the catalog (and if the edits were stored in the catalog, then you moved the photos "away" from the edits so Lightroom did not know how to re-connect them). You always want to move photos within the catalog or Lightroom doesn't know where to look for them. Also, try looking in the history tab to see if you can back-track your images to a previous state. Or, if you backup regularly (another thing you should do daily or whenever you close the program), you can restore your previous catalog state to retreive your edits.

[@bernhardracher2510]

ty ty ty 😅