- Getting started
- Organizing folders
- Using collections to organize images
- Taking your collections on the road
- Using flags and ratings
- Adding metadata
- Tagging faces in the People view
- Organizing photos by location
- Finding and filtering files
- Reconnecting missing files and folders
- Review questions
- Review answers
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Reconnecting missing files and folders
Remember that when you import a photo into your library, Lightroom adds the image file’s name and address to the library catalog file, and displays an entry for the folder in which the photo is stored in the Folders panel.
If you rename or move a photo—or a folder—while you’re outside the Lightroom Classic CC workspace the link to the catalog will be broken and Lightroom may no longer be able to locate the image file.
Lightroom Classic CC will alert you to the problem by marking the thumbnail of the missing photo—or the entry for the missing folder in the Folders panel—with a question mark icon.
In the Grid view, select one of the Copenhagen vacation photos; then right-click / Control-click the image and choose Show In Explorer / Show In Finder from the context menu.
In the Explorer / Finder window, change the name of the selected file to Copenhagen.jpg. Change the name of the Architecture folder inside the Lesson 4 folder to Tower.
Back in the Grid view in Lightroom Classic CC, you’ll notice the missing file alert icon in the upper right corner of the selected image cell (and also just below the Histogram). Click the icon; then click Locate in the dialog box.
Locate and select the renamed file and then click Select.
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When you’ve merely moved, rather than renamed files, you can activate the Find Nearby Missing Photos option in the Locate file dialog box and Lightroom will find any other missing photos in the same folder automatically.
Click Confirm to verify that Copenhagen.jpg is the correct file despite the changed name. You have now reestablished the link to your renamed file; the missing file icon no longer appears in its image cell.
In the Folders panel, the Architecture folder is now dimmed and marked with a question mark icon. Right-click / Control-click the missing folder; you could choose Find Missing Folder from the context menu, and then locate the renamed folder as you did for the missing file, but we’ll take this opportunity to look at a different method instead.
Choose Library > Find All Missing Photos. A new temporary collection named Missing Photographs is created in the Catalog panel. The new collection is automatically selected and the three photos from the Architecture folder appear in the Grid view. Select each image in turn; the missing photo icon appears on each image cell.
Click the missing photo icon on any of the images in the Grid view and follow the same steps you used previously. Navigate to the renamed folder, and then locate the selected file. This time, activate the Find Nearby Missing Photos option in the Locate file dialog box and Lightroom will find the other missing photos in the folder automatically. Click Select.
The renamed folder is now listed in the Folders panel. Although the missing Architecture folder is still listed in the Folders panel, it now shows an image count of 0. Right-click / Control-click the empty folder and choose Remove from the menu.
If the Missing Photographs folder in the Catalog panel is not removed automatically, right-click / Control-click the listing and choose Remove This Temporary Collection from the context menu.
This concludes the lesson on organizing your image library. You’ve learned about structuring your folders, sorting and grouping images into collections, and a variety of methods for tagging and marking your photos to make them easier to find by applying a range of search filters.
However, it’s worth discussing a final step that is invaluable in managing your growing library of photos: perform regular catalog backups. The library catalog contains not only your entire image database but also all the preview images and metadata, together with records of your collections and all your settings from the Develop, Slideshow, Web and Print modules. It is as important to make backups of your catalog as it is to keep copies of your image files. You’ll learn more about backing-up your library in Lesson 11, “Making Backups and Exporting Photos.”
Before you move on to the next lesson, take a moment to refresh some of what you’ve learned by reading through the review on the next page.
