Missing photo

Question

hi
i'm on the last of 10 lessons on lightroom 3. i imported the four photo's for the lesson, but they all have the "missing photo" icon instead of the "metadata file needs updating" icon. i managed to convert one photo to the "sidecar has conflict" icon, but still i cannot continue. everything i have tried says file is empty, or path not found. yet i can see all four photo's quite clearly. does it really have to be as complicated as this? its taking all the pleasure out of it.
any advise please.
from jan

Answer 1

Hey Jan,
   If you bring up LR, and go to Catalog Settings,  the top lines in the window will tell you where the catalog resides, and what it's name is.
To delete the catalog entirely, you want to delete the .lrcat and .lrdat files/folders.  Just trash them.   The test images you imported are where ever you left them, since you used Add.  Delete as appropriate or not, they aren't that big.
Thre is no need to uninstall LR, and uninstalling it does not delete the catalog anyway.
The most important part of putting together a new catalog is figuring out where you want to put your photos.  Think about it carefully, then make a home for them.  Once you create the catalog, you can put all of your images in there.  That would be your "main place" to store your images.  I recommend an internal drive, one that isn't near being full.  If you only have one drive, then your choices are a _little_ more limited.
As I said before, my images are located under a single folder, called CanonPhotos.  That way I know where they all are, and it makes it easy to back them up, or move them.  Just move that one whole directory if needed...
Start with only a _few_ images!  Do NOT make copies of 4500 images!  That's just silly...  I would take no more than 100 of them.
Then, when you are happy and think you have the structure all settled in your mind, THEN you can import the rest of them, but use the Move command instead.  That will move them into the same locations as all the rest of the images, and you're on your way!
As for raw...  Yes, working with raw is a bit more limiting, in that you have to use a "raw converter" to edit them.  You have several choices: your program that came with your camera, LR, or PS (via ACR).  When you install LR it will automatically connect you to PS, if PS is already installed.  So that's one down.
Later, when you import your raw images, the only difference you will notice in LR is when you want to edit in PS, it will make a new file, because PS can not (and should not) write to the raw file.  Other than that, all things will be basically the same.
Most people will tell you: Never delete your raw images.
There is a good reason for this.  If you think about film negatives, and printing photos... destroying your raw file is the same as printing a photograph from your film, then throwing away the film.  You just don't do it.  If you keep your raw image, then later on, when you have a new idea on trying something (converting to black and white, making it all magenta, doing strange things with noise, etc), then you have your original to work from.. Otherwise, you are stuck with how you did it the first time.
Eventually your workflow will turn into something like this:
copy the images from your memory card into a temporary folder on your computer.
Import all of the images into LR
Play and Print
That's it!
So, think about where you want to store all of your images over the long haul, and then how you want the folders organized...
Cheers!