53. FINDING MISSING FILES AND FOLDERS

YOUR LIGHTROOM CATALOG does a great job of managing where you place pictures and what you do with them. However, there will come a time when you move a folder or a set of pictures outside of Lightroom (Figure 53.1), and Lightroom is not going to know where it is. Go back to the analogy we used at the beginning of this book: it is as if someone walks into your house and moves a box of pictures, but never writes this down in your notebook.

You’ll be able to open up the files in the Library module and Rank, Sort, Pick, add stars, and add colors without a problem, but the moment you move into the Develop module, you’ll notice that all of your sliders are grayed out (Figure 53.2). This is because the Develop module requires you to have references to the original pictures. Directly under the histogram, there will be a warning message that says the photo is missing.

From here, you have a couple of options. Your first option is to right-click on the picture and select Show in Finder (Mac) or Show in Windows Explorer (PC). Lightroom will provide a dialog box that shows the last location of the picture, just in case you need a little bit of a refresher (Figure 53.3). Click Locate, and then browse for the missing picture on your computer or an external drive. Once you find it, Lightroom will match all of the pictures that are in the same directory for you (Figure 53.4).

However, I do not recommend using this option. This is a great option for finding a set of images that are inside one folder. But what happens if you’ve moved a folder that has subfolders inside of it? You can find the individual files in one folder, but then you’re going to have to repeat that process over and over again for all of the other subfolders that are inside the main folder.

To avoid this issue, I suggest you take just one extra step. Instead of using the Show in Finder option, right-click on the image and select Go to Folder in Library (Figure 53.5). This will take you to the Folders panel in the Library module and you will see that the folder has a question mark next to it. Right-click on the folder and select Find Missing Folder (Figure 53.6).

Now you can find the location of the missing folder on your computer (Figure 53.7). Once you find it, all of the images inside that folder will be mapped back to Lightroom, and you can work on them in the Develop module again (Figure 53.8). If you have subfolders inside the main folder, all of the images in the subfolders will be mapped as well. You can save a ton of time just by taking one extra step.

Figure 53.1 When you move a folder outside of Lightroom, the software no longer knows the location of the images in that folder.

Figure 53.2 When Lightroom cannot reference the original image file, the Develop settings are unavailable. Right-click on the image and select Show in Finder (Mac) or Show in Windows Explorer (PC).

Figure 53.3 Lightroom will show you the previous location of the missing image. Click Locate to browse for the missing image on your computer.

Figure 53.4 Once you’ve found the missing image, Lightroom will take care of creating new location references for all of the other images in that folder for you.

Figure 53.5 Right-click on the missing image and select Go to Folder in Library.

Figure 53.6 The missing folder will have a question mark next to it in the Folders panel. Right-click on the folder and select Find Missing Folder.

Figure 53.7 When you find the missing folder and select it, all of the images will be mapped back to Lightroom.

Figure 53.8 Now that Lightroom can reference the location of the original image file, all options in the Develop module are available.