Lost edits from lightroom catalogue - what to do

[Dave Millier]

Hi Folks

I have been doing some housekeeping today and realised that 14,000 images from 2006 and earlier that were on a separate drive appear to have disappeared from my catalogue. I re-imported them but now I have 14,000 unedited raw files which is nice, but not quite what I want.

I have no idea what happened to the the catalogue, but looking through my catalogue backups, this appears to have happened at least a year ago.

Assuming I can find a backup from before when this happened, is it possible to restore just the part of the backup (this missing drive) without affecting the newer parts of my current catalogue?  It would be a bad thing if I could only restore the 2006 and earlier files by overwriting the 2007 and later files!

I'd be grateful for some advice, to say the least...

regards

Dave

[eliedinur]

If you find a backup with the 2006 edits, run LR with that catalog and select only the 2006 and earlier folders. Export those selected images as a catalog, File>Export as Catalog (no need to include negatives and previews), return to your current catalog and import the 2006 catalog that you just made into it, File>Import From Catalog.

Reimporting the images was not a good idea. You might want to remove them before doing the above procedure to avoid conflicts.

[john beardsworth]

Yes, it's possible. Just go slowly, and ensure you have backup copies of your catalogue at each stage of the process.

What you are going to need to do is find a version of the catalogue with the 2006 and earlier photos with their edits. You can then select them and File > Export as Catalogue - you don't need negatives/previews. This creates a smaller version of your catalogue with just your older pics.

Now you can go back to your main catalogue and remove the earlier 14000 pictures (make sure you don't delete). Use File > Import from Catalogue and bring in the small catalogue created above. You should now have your older images with all your work.

[Dave Millier]

Thanks, everyone, that's good to know.

Got another problem now, computer won't start - I'm reduced to a 10 year old Linux Box ;-(