Lightroom missing photos

We open Lightroom, start scrolling through our images and we get it. The dreaded punctuation of despair, lightroom missing photos. 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.

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.

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. But if Lightroom thinks my photos are missing—how do you fix it? Missing files are identified by a rectangular icon in the corner of the Grid thumbnail, with or without an exclamation point. In earlier versions, it displayed a question mark icon instead. If the entire folder is missing, the folder name in the Folders panel goes gray with a question mark folder icon. If an entire drive is offline, the volume name in the Folders panel and the small rectangular icon on the left turn gray. Then fix it as soon as you can, using the instructions below, as problems tend to snowball if you ignore them. The quickest way to fix the missing files is to follow these instructions in order. If you start relinking missing photos before you relink missing folders and drives, you can create a bigger job. Is it disconnected? If the drive is disconnected, plug it back in or reconnect to the network storage. This can confuse Lightroom, requiring you to relink missing files on a regular basis. Leaving the drives plugged in to your computer, or always reattaching them in the same order can help avoid the drive letter changing.

If so, it would sound they already exist in Lightroom, in a different location.

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.

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. We also look at why photos can go missing to help you avoid this problem in the future. Remember, the best way to deal with missing photos is to avoid creating the problem in the first place. The reason photos can go missing in Lightroom is connected with the Lightroom database. This is more commonly known as the Lightroom Catalog. Its purpose is to track all your work in Lightroom, including the photo files you import. A common mistake new Lightroom users make is to think that Lightroom stores a copy of the photos they import.

Lightroom missing photos

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.

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While my Lightroom catalog operates just fine on my MacPro , for some reason the catalog structure has long been a bit odd. That was the problem and I have access to all of my photos. Or should I just not worry about that? Scroll to the top to start reading. Preventing the question marks and exclamation marks of despair is simple. Applications like the Photos App on a mac store all of your photos in a single folder and nests them within the application itself. Victoria, someone previously asked for a fee schedule. Do I need to save the catalogue on all hard drives? Please email me your fee schedule. The Synchronize option is now finding some missing photos which it asks to remove by default. I had to use this information to reconnect my photos to my catalog. This will fix the path to your files. Erm, could you clarify what you mean by Lightroom Non-Classic?

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.

If you renamed the photos outside of Lightroom, the quickest solution is to restore the photos with the old names from your backups and then redo the rename within Lightroom. You are absolutely right, delete from disk should delete from the catalog as well as the disk. I then had a tech company help me, their solution was to delete that library file and then reopen Lightroom. WHY were the photos marked as missing in the first place? Photography Courses Member Login Blog. Now I noticed that that in the in the keyword list for example Monochromes, the number of images against this keyword are only the images since the move to the external hard drive. Already registered? These do not show up in the missing images. I get a merge files pop up when I try to relying. Hi Victoria, am in the process of upgrading to a new MB Pro and will email you soon regarding my keyword issues. Page