Lightroom lost my photos after swapping external hard drives out.

I moved everything I had on an external hard drive to a new external hard drive. I then went into Lightroom, and used the "Find Missing Folder..." option, and restored my photos. After doing this, I lost all of my edits. The photos are completely unedited.
How do I tell Lightroom how to reassign the edits to these photos? Lightroom does still have the "edit" information, but I dont know how to connect the two.
I appreciate any help!
Aaron

The obvious implication being a format of the boot disk happened.
You could try using Disk Utility via the recovery partition (press and hold ⌘R after the boot chime), and — failing that — you'll probably be rolling in your backups.
If you have critical data that wasn't backed up, then you're probably headed for private drive data recovery — if so, that won't be cheap, and you will want to keep the disk offline to preserve whatever might be left on the disk.
If there's nothing on the disk, roll in OS X from the recovery partition or from Internet recovery, and start over.

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I have a macbook pro with only 128gb of hard drive. I have lightroom installed and all my photos on an external hard drive. Can I store my lightroom library on the external hard drive too?

I have a macbook pro with only 128gb of hard drive. I have lightroom installed and all my photos on an external hard drive. Can I store my lightroom library on the external hard drive too?

Yes. Find the LR catalog file by looking in Edit/Catalog Settings/General. Close LR and navigate to that spot. The catalog file is the one that ends in .lrcat - move it to wherever you want. Next to the .lrcat file is a subfolder called Previews.lrdata. You can move that over as well, but if you don't LR will generate new previews. Double-click on the .lrcat file in its new home and LR will open with that catalog. Set Preferences to When Starting Up Use Most Recent Catalog.

I imported my photos from an external hard drive into Lightroom, edited my photos but what next...?!

Adobe,
I imported my photos from an external hard drive into Lightroom, edited my photos and when i decided to export them the originals had not been updated and the deleted photos had not been deleted. How do i set it up so that once i import the photos, edit them and export they are then placed back in their original folder edited and updated?
I have managed to export the photos to another file but these were exported with an Adobe.xmp file. What is this and is this necessary?
Thanks for your help!

It's important to realise that LR is a DAM (Digital Asset Management) application - no images are actually imported into LR only links to where they are. Secondly, the details of any edits that you make to your images are kept only in the database and/or xmp files depending how you set this up in Preferences. In the general workflow e.g. edit in Lightroom, further edit in Photoshop and returning to LR then creating xmp files aren't really necessary. So just to emphasise - edits are stored in the LR's database, the original RAW images themselves don't change (non destructive editing). You can prove this yourself by desaturating an image (turning it into a B+W) and then look at the original images in Explorer - you'll see it's still being shown in colour.
Exporting an image is something different. By implication, you've finished with the image and perhaps want to save an image for posting on the web somewhere. Now assuming your not using any additonal and freely available LR export plug-ins, one way would be to Export a jpeg image to a folder on the desktop and this is allowed for in the Export dialogue. At this time LR reads any edits from it's database and applies those to the exported jpeg (or tiff) file it's going to send to the folder on the desktop.
As mentioned earlier, any edits and keywords etc are stored in LR's database - original RAW files remain untouched. XMP files also store the edits if LR is set up to create xmp files (in Preferences) but these are not really necessary unless you are going to be editing an already edited RAW file in another application. As an example - you import into LR's library a scanned negative. Now because strictly speaking LR isn't designed to work with negative images, you now open this file via Bridge into ACR and from here reverse the negative into a positive image. All fine and good except when you go back into LR what's shown is still a negative so what is needed is to update the metadata (LR > Metadata > Read Metadata from file) which will force LR to read the newly created metadata from the xmp file that Bridge generated. As already suggested, if you're happy editing your RAW files in LR and only LR then xmp files aren't really necessary - all the data being saved in LR's database.
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My whole catalogue was nearly lost due to a failed external hard drive. Professional help recovered photos but I can't find my smart tags. Is it possible they were lost on failed drive?

My whole catalogue was nearly lost due to a failed external hard drive. Professional help recovered photos but I can't find my smart tags. Is it possible they were lost on failed drive?

Hi,
In order to recover the tags/albums, etc, you need to have the catalog db. Since currently you only have images, the organization done in the older catalog is probably lost.
Which version of PSE you have and is there any chance, that you have access to catalog location (default is : %programdata%\adobe\elements organizer\catalogs on Windows and ~/library/app support/adobe/organizer/catalogs on MAC) ?
Thanks
Andaleeb

Lost with 10000 photos on a external hard-drive!

hello-hello, I have just bought a new-mac.
I've got just over 10.000 photos on an external hard-drive.
These photos are from all sorts of places, old cameras, scanned in, emailed over, downloaded etc...
On my external hard-drive they are organised into about 300 folders and sub folders more subfolders.
When I import them into iphoto its obsessed about 'events'
Is there a way I can import my folders and subfolders into iphoto and view them through that?
Cheers

You can recreate your current folder structure in iPhoto using Albums, not Events.
Start at the bottom of your hierarchy and drag a folder of images to the Album section of the left hand pane in the iPhoto Window. iPhoto will create an Album of the same name. You can then create the enclosing folder in iPhoto (File -> New Folder) and drag the Album to it. You can nest folders inside folders as well.
A couple of general comments, as an fyi. Mimicing a FInder set up in iPhoto Window is not making best use of the additional organisation possibilities of iPhoto.
If you're folder system is date based then the calendar tool and/or smart folders make that form of organisation pretty pointless. The calendar tool makes it possible to find all the pics taken o0n a specific day/month/year at any time.
If the folders are Theme based, then keywording is also more flexible.
Regards
TD

When I try to import, I receive the following message: "An internal error has occurred: not enough memory". I always download my photos onto an external hard drive.

Yesterday,I downloaded an update for Lightroom 5. Now when I try to import, I receive the following message: "An internal error has occurred: not enough memory". The message comes up right after I click import, before I choose a file to upload.Here is the information I can think of that might be needed to answer this question:
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- I have edited 2794 photos in Lightroom and it is all in one catalog.
- I did not have this problem until I made the update. I did have my first "bug" earlier this week when one of my photos had a line show up through the middle of it when I exported it. I was able to export it a second time without the line.
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As a mich more powerful app I think you'll find that Lightroom is also quite capable of "uploading, screening, and deleting unwanted photos."
The point about using both is that you have an overly complex workflow - and that leads to situations like the one you have now, where you can't recall the workflow you used.
Put another way, it's like wrting your novel part on Word and part in TextEdit. Which bit goes where? The best advice is to pick one horse and ride it.
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On your Mac you have Time Machine as a back up application. There are also many, many others. Search on
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Regards
TD

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4. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.
Regards
TD

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So I did the classic click and drag method, putting all my photos into my external hard drive, fast and easy. But what I noticed was that no information about the pictures was kept, no dates, locations etc. If you drag one picture the information comes with it, but not if you take a bunch at the same time. Then the original date is replaced by today's. I've got over 20.000 photos and I really want them on my hard drive, can someone please help me out here?

Export them using the appropriate options to include the desired metadata - see the user tip on exporting for details on eachoption
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LN

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Start up iPhoto and select all the photos you want to move to your external drive. Go to the File Menu and select Export... For size choose original and then select the external drive as the destination. (It would be good to create a folder for the photos first.)
Since export doesn't create folders and you may want the photos organized, you can select one event or one album at a time and export each separately, putting them into separate folders on the external.

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How to correctly move your media:
iTunes: How to move the library to an EHD
iPhoto: How to move the Library to an EHD
It is important that the External Hard Drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended (journaled).
And also make sure that all is working to your Satisfaction before Deleting anything Off your Mac.

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example:

Warning: Time Machine is not an Archiving application. It keeps rolling back ups. That means if you delete something from the source Mac it will eventually be also deleted from Time Machine. How long that takes depends on the amount of disk space TM has. So, remember, backing up in Time Machine is not the same as Archiving.
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Yes you can split the Library, where some of the Masters are stored locally and some on an external disk, but really, you don't want to do that. iPhoto's file management tools are limited at best, and if the path to the files changes then you could find yourself repairing the links to the files - all of them, one by one.
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1. Quit iPhoto
2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library.
4. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.
If you want to have a smaller library on your internal disk:
Here's one way to do what you want:
Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
1. Quit iPhoto
2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
Now you have two full versions of the Library.
3. On the Internal library, trash the Events you don't want there
Now you have a full copy of the Library on the External and a smaller subset on the Internal
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As a general rule: when deleting photos do them in batches of about 100 at a time. iPhoto can baulk at trashing large numbers at one go.
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You can keep the Library on the external updated with new imports using iPhoto Library Manager
Regards
TD

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Lightroom lost my photos after swapping external hard drives out.

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