Did I really just lose all my photos from Lightroom?!

MB Lacey · 05-08-2009 08:39PM #1

:eek:

I'm posting this hoping someone owns amac and uses Lightroom and might be able to see where I went wrong here and how to get my photos back.

I have a mac, I have Lightroom and I have a USB key.

I wanted the 649 photos from my lightroom to go on my USB key.

This was my first time trying to export photos from LR to a usb key - I'm still new to lightroom.

I put my USB key in my mac, opened up lightroom, held down the cmd button and selected the 15-20 folders which contained my 649 folders.

They were all highlighted so I Right clicked the option ' export photos' and it came up with a box asking where I wanted the photos to go.
I said the USB key.
My mac was happy and looked like it exported all the photos and the mini task bar at the top told me 'task completed'.

So i closed down LR - but when I opened the USB folders - it had only exported 5!!! photos.

To look at those 5 photos it asked if I wanted to re-launch LR to see them so I clicked 're-launch'

and now....all thats in my lightroom....are those 5 photos and the other 645 are NOWHERE....

I've closed everything down a few times but it's still those 5 photos of my mum and dad in kilmainham jail!!

any advice obviously gratefully received.

Paulw · 05-08-2009 08:41PM

I don't have a Mac, but do use Lightroom.

From the sound of things, Lightroom has created a new catalog with just the new images.

Within Lightroom, click File, Open Recent, and you should see a Lightroom Catalog.

It's highly unlikely that you've lost your images. They are still there on your machine.

Fajitas! · 05-08-2009 08:44PM

In your library, make sure the toolbar on the left is open, you've probably selected "Previous Import", click the "All photographs" option, or similar, and Bob, will hopefully, be your uncle.

MB Lacey · 05-08-2009 08:57PM

Thanks for the advice - Panic over.

I took out the USB key and re-opened LR, it had made the photos on the USB key the default for LR - once that was removed it asked if I wanted to revert to other catalogues in LR - when I said 'yes please' there were all my photos.

The reason it had only exported 5 photos was that I must have right clicked 'export photos' whilst hovering over the folder with only 5 photos in..
so even though all folders were highlighted it only exported that one.

I'm exporting again now and I right clicked over the 'Lightroom' folder at the top of all my individual photos.

It's still exporting as I type - it seems to be taking forever - I hope it's just exporting the photos and not the whole LR software onto the USB key.

PaulW do you find Lightroom very slow to export?
If it's this slow I might switch to using Photoshop3 which I've also got.
Like I said, I'm just starting to use LR so it might be a good idea to swap over to PS3 now.

Paulw · 05-08-2009 09:11PM

It will be slower to export to a USB stick than to your hard disk.

I don't find it slow at all.

Lightroom does over 95% of all I need with photos.

MB Lacey · 05-08-2009 09:14PM

How did you fully learn how to use LR?

just by trial and error or did you read up alot about it?

I found this link on quickening up the export on LR if you're interested..

http://www.oreillynet.com/digitalmedia/blog/2007/03/five_ways_to_speed_up_lightroo.html

Fajitas! · 05-08-2009 09:24PM

Just keep on playing with LR and pushing it and yourself to get the results you want - Play around with presets and see how other people get effects, so you can make your own

Arciphel · 06-08-2009 01:15AM

MB Lacey wrote: »

How did you fully learn how to use LR?

just by trial and error or did you read up alot about it?

I found this link on quickening up the export on LR if you're interested..

http://www.oreillynet.com/digitalmedia/blog/2007/03/five_ways_to_speed_up_lightroo.html

Those tips refer to a very old version of lightroom, a lot of those tips refer to things you can't even tinker with in the new version.

mervifwdc · 06-08-2009 10:17AM

I'm a big fan of LR, just wish it had a few extra things - better watermarking when exporting as an option for example.

it's slow on a catalog with anything over 50k images, but I guess that's acceptable.

merv.

padocon · 06-08-2009 11:04AM

I don't have lightroom but last year when I was using iphoto the same thing happened. Never got them back. They were still on the computer just not in the software so I was able to get them back.
I do not use lightroom so I can't be of any help, sorry.
Hope you get them back!

Anouilh · 06-08-2009 11:11AM

I'm very new to using Lightroom so cannot offer advice.

This might be useful:

http://digital-photography-school.com/warning-dont-make-these-5-mistakes-in-lightroom

It seems that much trouble starts when files are moved.

Hope it gets resolved and that you don't experience further alarms.

Anouilh · 11-08-2009 10:58AM

For anyone who has not tried Lightroom, one of its most pleasing features is the way one can quickly change highlights or add a selenium or cyanotype toning.

Did I really just lose all my photos from Lightroom?!

Comments