Lightroom missing photos

At some stage, most people run into worrying exclamation points or question marks denoting missing files. These warnings appear when Lightroom can no longer find the photos at their last known location.

We open Lightroom, start scrolling through our images and we get it. The dreaded punctuation of despair. That little symbol in the upper right-hand corner of our images exclamation mark or folders question mark that says you have missing Lightroom photos. And we panic. How are the files missing?

Lightroom missing photos

This is one of the most common questions we are regularly asked. First you need to know that your images are not really in Lightroom. Lightroom is just a catalogue, like the old days in a library, where you had a little card that showed where all the books were stored. So too it is for Lightroom. When you want to work on an image you simply go through the digital cards and select the book, or image in this case, that you want to read. Yes you can make changes to your image, but those changes are only to the digital information or data of the particular image. The changes are only applied when you export that digital information as a file type that shows the data as an image, in this case either a. Most of the time though it will be missing from the Lightroom catalogue because you have moved the file or folder to another location. The common cause is when you back-up files to an external hard drive or you rename a folder. Remember when you imported the files into Lightroom in the first place, you needed to make, or choose, a destination folder on your hard drive that would store those files? If you right click on the missing image in Develop mode and choose Go To Folder In Library , Lightroom will open the Navigator function and highlight the folder where the file was stored at the time of import.

Keep 3 copies of your images, stored on 2 separate drives with 1 copy off-site. I would gladly pay you to fix my problem.

Good organization is key to keeping your photos in order and online in Lightroom Classic. If you are new to Lightroom, I highly recommend reading my How to Properly Set up a Lightroom Catalog article which will help prevent missing photos in the first place. If you have already lost some of your photos, continue reading to learn how to find and reconnect missing photos in Lightroom Classic. Keep in mind that every situation is unique and some problems may not be able to be solved without losing some edits. Before you attempt to reconnect your photos it is a good idea to make a backup of your Lightroom Catalog as well as all of the photos and folders that it is referencing. If a photo becomes disconnected from the Lightroom catalog an exclamation point will display in the upper right hand corner of the image thumbnail. If a folder becomes disconnected you will see a question mark icon on top of the folder and it will become dark gray.

Or what if your hard drive is dying? Lightroom creates a temporary collection of the missing photos so that you can relink them. If Lightroom finds that some photos are missing, right-click on the thumbnails and choose Show in Library. To remove this temporary collection from the Catalog panel, right-click on it and select Delete this Temporary Collection. When you run the Find Missing Photos command again, the collection will be recreated. If you have the Photography Plan, then as well as Classic you have access to the Lightroom cloud ecosystem including the mobile apps and web interface. For more information on these apps, see Adobe Lightroom — Edit on the Go.

Lightroom missing photos

Good organization is key to keeping your photos in order and online in Lightroom Classic. If you are new to Lightroom, I highly recommend reading my How to Properly Set up a Lightroom Catalog article which will help prevent missing photos in the first place. If you have already lost some of your photos, continue reading to learn how to find and reconnect missing photos in Lightroom Classic. Keep in mind that every situation is unique and some problems may not be able to be solved without losing some edits. Before you attempt to reconnect your photos it is a good idea to make a backup of your Lightroom Catalog as well as all of the photos and folders that it is referencing. If a photo becomes disconnected from the Lightroom catalog an exclamation point will display in the upper right hand corner of the image thumbnail. If a folder becomes disconnected you will see a question mark icon on top of the folder and it will become dark gray. Lightroom also allows you to search for missing photos. This is the easiest way to know if you have any missing photos in your catalog.

Heydy gonzalez

The Synchronize option is now finding some missing photos which it asks to remove by default. Could they be in another folder? If you right click on the missing image in Develop mode and choose Go To Folder In Library , Lightroom will open the Navigator function and highlight the folder where the file was stored at the time of import. How are the files missing? NOTE: Reconnecting a missing folder will also reconnect any missing media that has been disconnected due to the folder being moved or renamed. Here are a few quick strategies to prevent this worst-case scenario: Never use a memory card as your only means of storage. So grateful for yoour help. Thank you so much for your help! I have to repeat this with al of the main folders. Victoria, I also have a backup of all my Lightroom pictures. When I go and try to Synchronize my folder again, it again finds the same missing photos and I can either choose to remove them or have LR show them to me via a temporary collection…. Use the rule. Find the folder that Lightroom lost track of and click on it. Lightroom displays the last known location of the photo.

This page may contain affiliate links where I earn a small commission to help cover costs. They do not affect the price you pay or the service you receive. In this article, we look at how to find missing photos in Lightroom.

Once you know where the folder is located make a note of the folder path. I literally needed every word of what you wrote here! Hi Victoria! Scroll to the top to start reading. Rename the photos or folders. This is a bit of a problem and unfortunately you will lose any edit that you performed to the RAW files. Good organization is key to keeping your photos in order and online in Lightroom Classic. If a folder is moved from its previous location, or the drive letter changes, it can be fixed more easily than individual folders. When I change the name of the file, it imports! How do I fix this?