karenmr

When I first started using Lightroom a year ago every photo I had in my hard drive was imported in. This was obviously a big mistake on my part. I have recently spent hours removing years worth of photos that I will never edit in Lightroom. Today I made a BIG mistake and removed every photo. The photos are still on my hard drive, but is there a way to reimport edited ones from the past year? Please some help .

AndyH Loc: Massachusetts and New Hampshire

Yes. Open library, then select your folders and photos in Navigator pane and do import all over again. You can do it one folder at a time or all at once. Remember to set your naming and location protocols.

Andy

karenmr

Thank you Andy I will try tomorrow after work. And will my edits still be there?

blackest Loc: Ireland

If you havent moved the files on the hard drive try loading your last backup of your catalog.

karenmr

Thanks I haven’t yet so I will try that

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

If the images have not been moved to the trash or recycle area and are still in their original locations on the drive, then he needs to re-import, just as you suggested, but use the "Add" option rather than copy or move.

traderjohn Loc: New York City

A question. Even if the pictures are in Trash, that does not mean they are Trashed. I thought from Trash if you did not empty Trash you can return the items to a prior location.

johnst1001a Loc: West Chester, Ohio

And that is why I do not use Lightroom. File management through the Finder windows on a Mac works fine, if I move a photo from one folder to another, it is easy to find, move etc.. Perhaps I am not a good user of Lightroom, but I don't want to have to move files, then have lightroom say there is no file, and I have to do something else to link it in again, reimport or what ever. Yes, I do not know Lightroom that well, nor care to learn. Photoshop does all I need.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

No, don't do it this way. If you've had LR for over a year, I'm sure it has prompted you to backup your Catalog many times. Simply open up the last backup of your catalog and you're back in business.

Here's a youtube video on how to backup and restore a backup. The guy has a Mac, so it may be a little different than yours if you have a PC. Or just search youtube again and someone will probably have a PC so you can see exactly how.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ06ncvd-Xs

LA Loc: Little Rock, AR

If you re-import, you will not have any of your edits. If you open with a backup, you will have all of the edits up to the point that the backup was created.

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

This actually is not about LR, it's about a mistake made by a user who happens to be using LR. The best way to avoid these mistakes with any program is to know it completely, have a routine for loading/unloading, and be sure to think before you use it. We all make mistakes.

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

Hi, I've used LR for about 8 years and have around 70,000 images linked to the application. I don't believe I have made any mistake at all doing this. If I don't want a specific folder linked I can simply unlink it, although I cannot image why I would want to do that. I process my images in many different applications, always starting from and returning to LR as home base. Linking your images to LR does not take up any disk space and should not create any other problems and, does, in fact, make my work easier and faster. Once you process an image in LR the edits are saved into he catalog portion of the application and will remain there. You can unlink a folder and relink it and the edits will still be there. If, however, you change a name or location of a folder or images, the application will no longer be able to read the information and the link will be broken; you could, however relink it but the edits will only match up with the exact same file name. Since you do not say how you removed all images, which would actually be difficult to do I think, so I cannot comment on that other than what I have already said. It's always good to know how the programs we use actually work and what they can and cannot do.

DWU2 Loc: Phoenix Arizona area

I agree - re-importing would cause edits to have to be performed again. Load the backup catalog!

tomcat

Sorry, but I have to come to the defense here. LR can corrupt catalogs on it's own, without any foreknowledge from the user. This just happened to me, a veteran LR user many years, since version 1.0. During the recent upgrade to v 7.4, I discovered that the catalog has been corrupted. Fortunately, I have backups and I can find the folders in one of the backups, but the folders are all mixed together under a "Pictures" folder, with no separation according to the external drives that the originals are on. So this LR program can be at fault, not just due to a user's poor choices. It is incredibly aggravating to sort out and I had to go back to July to find the correct backup, even with a weekly backup to search through. The strange thing about this corruption is that backups prior to this one week in July are also corrupted.

I used to blame the catalog problems on users as well, but now I realize that we don't always create our problems and that we are at the mercy of LR's whims.

tomcat

See my comments few threads down. LR can corrupt a catalog no matter how skilled you are and how diligent you are about following the "rules". It happen to me a month or so ago. My catalog corrupted without any warning and the folders are not in their proper lineup in the Library module. I spent a week searching though backups to finally find the last correct catalog before the corruption occurred, but even this one has some of the subfolders listed under the "Pictures" main folder and some of the folders and subfolders listed under the two external hard drives that are connected to the computer as separate folders. LR did a terrible job at re-arranging the folders into separate groupings and who knows why it did this. Fortunately, all folders are present but it's going to take some planning and thinking how to get the sub-folders back into their correct folder. I changed nothing in my usual routine about importing and exporting files and making certain that all drives are connected to the computer before importing. Noting changed from my usual routine of importing and exporting straight to and from a folder on the external hard drive and keeping the catalog on my desktop. Nothing! However, LR found a way to corruption......