cindo51

I am about to lie down on the floor weeping. I have spent this entire day searching everyone of my 9 backup drives for my Imac and Macbook. I have a photography that I have printed, framed, and, used on the invitation for my show that opens this weekend! I assumed it was from my trip to Tucson this past May.. but alas, not so! so I have searched and I finally found in a deep dive of the meta data that it was taken at 11:00pm the night of October 25, 2022. It does not say where. I live in Western CT. I was here on that date and for many weeks before..even the month before..
It makes NO sense. I googles for an hour...I spent hours on the phone with a rep a Adobe, and I think he quit his job!
The meta data also indicates the camera serial number which indeed is mine! So thank goodness for that! My daughter says that can happen sometimes.. (but she's talking about on her Iphone).
Can anyone give me any ideas? I am so excited about his picture..I feel like it is one of the very best I've ever shot!
Thanks so much!!!

R.G. Loc: Scotland

Are the image files named using a sequence? If you can find other image files taken around the same time it would show you the numbers in the file naming sequence. You could then run a search on the file names most likely to include the one you're looking for.

olddutch Loc: Beloit, Wisconsin

When it comes up October 25, I think that is the dat that you last Opened it on your Computer or have altered it.. I am sorry but I have no clue on how to go backward from there. I also have a few of those lost pictures myself.. Best wishes..

cindo51

Thanks for responding... no, that's what is so strange about it...
It stands alone.. whether on the date it was originally captured, and all the other dates associated with it are in the last month every time I brought it back into LRC to work on it? The location is 3 hours from Tucson?!? As far as I can tell!

cindo51

Thanks so much for weighing in.... when I went back into the history of my pictures.. there is nothing with that file number except all the version of this as I was editing it? Well, at least the serial number for the camera is mine..whew..for a while I thought maybe I had imported of photo that belonged to someone else!?

R.G. Loc: Scotland

The computer will show the time the edited file was created (i.e. exported) but the Metadata section in Lr's Library may still show the time and date of capture, even after re-importing the edited file. If you haven't tried using the Metadata section in Lr, give it a go.

cindo51

I did! And that was what made me crazy... it showed a date last year in October.. I was here in CT, and the photograph appears to be in the Southwest!? Even the adobe tech guy was baffled!?
Thanks so much for helping out, I really appreciate it!

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

So, when the immediate crisis has passed, you might consider any of the following updates to your work flow:

1, Where are your back-up files? When are you creating these back-up files? If you offload images from the camera and made an immediate back-up copy, you'd likely find an original version of this image file in your back ups. An original file with a more logical and accurate shooting date.

2, How and when are you importing images into your LR catalog? If this was immediate from offloading the image files from the camera, the original metadata of the image should be in the LR catalog, as-is, making the image easy to find by any of the applicable metadata filters, even by camera s/n.

3, How are you organizing your image files on disk? If you followed the LR best-practice of YYYY/YYYYMMDD-Description when offloading your images from the camera, the original image in the LR catalog will also occur in a date-stamped folder, helping to logically and easily organize your image files.

4, When are you keywording your images inside the LR catalog? To assure my keywords are accurate and richly detailed, I try to perform all keyword work between the import and before any edits. You can mass-select images and update all at one time, together, or in large groups of images that all need the same keyword(s). This is faster than individually keywording images 1 by 1 after they've been culled.

Laramie Loc: Tempe

Maybe you could post the image here. There are Hogs from all over, someone may recognize the location.

jcboy3

There are a number of dates in image metadata; check them all with EXIFTOOL.

It is possible that your camera had an incorrect date, which is the source for the dates in your image. If you can't find other images you took at the same time, maybe you corrected them and missed that one?

cindo51

Sure! here goes!

cindo51

I have done a terrible job of organizing my photos on my computers over the years...I am basically self taught, and not very technically savvy...I have way too many hard drives, and they aren't very organized... and there have been stretches when I didn't back up and all...I am so much better now, but how does one go back and fix all that is broken? I raised my daughter and did my photography on the side...because I loved it..then I went back to work for a while when she was in college. Same thing. I have done well in spite of it, but the more I learn the more I am overwhelmed by what I don't know.I will get better...but as I said, I can't undo the years of disorganization. Confession is good for the soul. I will heed your advice going forward, and I really appreciate your wisdom!

jcboy3

Get two big drives and Lightroom. Copy all of your photos to one drive, back it up to the other drive. Get some backup software to run backups periodically. Try to put your photos into folders based on date and location/event, and import them into Lightroom. Use the Lightroom file naming to name the photos based on the folder name and a sequence number. You can get fancy and add other information; I use the Caption metadata field to put other info like name of person or type of plant/animal or anything else you want, and embed that into the file name as well.

Then, at your leisure, you can add metadata keywords like beach, sports, family, and so on.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

No worries cindo51. We all start someplace; and if that 'someplace' was outside / before Lightroom Classic, we likely have less organization than we'd have inside / under a LR approach. Some others have given ideas too, where I agree: find a large & portable drive to consolidate all your older HDs into one primary storage and one secondary back-up. Personally, I use 2x 4TB Western Digital drives, approach 10-years with these drives. There's probably better options for Mac in 2023. Just research, plan and begin the consolidation and organization work, along with the workflow ideas suggested in my earlier points.

jackpinoh Loc: Kettering, OH 45419

What raw processor are you using? Have you changed raw processors recently? Are you organizing your files on the hard drive or using collections?