I am trying to open a Lightroom catalog that I have on a back up hard drive (I have the original files on the back up too). However, when I try to open I get the message "The Lightoom catalog cannot be used because the parent folder 'name' does not allow files to be created within it."
How I can get access to the images without going back to the machine I used to create the catalog?
I am working on a group of about 20,000 pictures. It is the stored photos of multiple users on a network drive. My job is to organize the pictures in LR. When I am done, several users will be sharing the catalog. The workflow the group wants to use involves downloading the catalog from a shared site on the network to their desktop. The users would then upload the latest catalog back to the network when they are finished. They are used to the communication this involves and share other work this way.
I am working from my home computer. (The VPN was too slow) I have the pictures at home on a portable external drive. The catalog is on my internal drive. When I have a section done, I export it as a catalog onto the external drive. I import it to the latest version of the master catalog on a desktop at work. The work computer security does not allow me to directly work from my portable external drive so I have to copy and past the import catalog on to the desktop before I import it. When I import it to the master catalog, I move the pictures to the network drive.
My main question is can the users back-up the catalog on the network drive? As part of their workflow, they would automatically back-up the catalog to the network. The next users would then download the back-up to their desktop to use. Once a week, we would clear old back-ups.
Also, are we losing information from the catalog when we copy it back and forth?
I am losing print presets (and import presets) as I test this. When I test the process on two computers at home, this does not happen. I wonder if it is the work computer security? Part of my workflow is to create a pdf contact sheet to send to the user. I use the form pdf wizard to make it interactive so the user can fill in whether to discard the picture and identify people/add text. I e-mail them the contact sheet. They e-mail it back completed. The preset can be recreated but it is tempermental. I want something I can leave for the users.
Ever since I have updated to LR4 with the Cloud I can not access previously saved lightroom catalogs from my back up hard drive. I can see the images but I can not edit them. Lightroom says the files are missing or offline. I have never had this problem before I started using the Cloud.
View 3 Replies View RelatedI have about 900 raw files on an external drive. I edited those files using my master catalog using a laptop while still travelling. When I got home, I copied the master catalog from the external drive to the desk top, then opened the master catalog on my desktop. I can see the edited images on the external drive. So far so good.
I want to copy (add) the edited images to my desk top. I tried to export the images as a new catalog and then import it into the desire location on my desktop drive. However, LR5 does not allow that. I get this message: "There is nothing new in the catalog you have selected. All of the catalog's photos are up to date in this catalog." Yes, but the edited images are not on my desktop.....
I also tried to Import from the external drive and then Copy the files to the desktop, but then I lose all of the work done in the develop module and the keywords.
I watched Kost's LR 3 video on merging catalogs, but she dodges the question of how to deal with this issue since the "merge" is within the same catalog.I'm using LR5 with Windows 7.
How can I move my Lightroom 4 catalog (data, not photos) from my local drive to an external drive? My local drive is running out of space.
View 3 Replies View RelatedI will be managing a small portion of a client's overall image workflow by updating their web prescence on a regular basis with new work and retagging/uploading old work. I believe this requires the catalog and the image library to be housed on an external hard drive that can travel between the two of us. We are both working on PC's with LR 5.3.
The workflow would look something like this:
Client downloads new images onto external hard drive and imports into LR "ClientCatalog" is created Flags Picks and Creates a Collection from those Picks.Hard drive is handed off to me where I open "ClientCatalog".Make suggested edits to images add detailed tags and metadata upload to various social media sites and websites return hard drive to client
Is there potential problem with this workflow? My assumption is that if everything is housed on the external hard drive then there are no worries about the catalog containing all the latest updates. Are there any "safety protocols" you would add in to this workflow (besides mirroring everythign on another hard drive)?
Usually when I import photos into Lightroom I do not right away make a copy to an external drive. So then when I want to update my backup folder on that drive at a later date, I find myself running into the issue of not knowing which photos need to be added to the drive and which are already on it. Is there an easy way to keep the Lighroom folder in sync with an external hard drive so that there are no gaps in images and so that the folder hierarchy is the same both on my computer and backup drive without actually deleting and reinstalling the entire Lighroom folder all over again which would take forever? Basically what is your backup workflow and how do you keep track of everything?
Also is there a way to backup during import so that the images are categorized by year/month (just like in the Lightroom catalog) on the external drive, because usually it just creates a new folder and I have to drag the images into their appropriate folders after the fact.
I am trying to make a copy of my external drive that I use for all the photos in LR5. I was told that I could do that for a backup and lightroom would recognize it. Well, i make the copy and have question marks by all the photos when I use the back-up drive.
View 6 Replies View RelatedI have a mac book pro and use lightroom 4. I use an external drive to store the original images. I have a second external drive for backup of the images. I now make image copies when importing, to the back up drive. Some of my earlier images are not on the back up as I didn't copy them. How can I get these earlier images onto the back up drive. How can I synch these two drives on a daily basis?
View 16 Replies View RelatedI moved my photos to a new hard drive on my computer and now LR4 can't find them. Is there a way to re-index the catalog to the new drive?
View 3 Replies View Relatedwhen I go to quit LR and backup the catalog I am getting a message that reads "Lightroom was unable to back up the catalog named .... Please check your folder permissions, and make sure that you have available space on your backup drive and main catalog's drive." I backed up the catalog as recently as 11/12 (it is 11/16) without incident, as I have been doing for my catalog for many years. The drive to which I back up and which has the main catalog has sufficient space to backup. Folder permissions all seem to be in order. I have tried to backup on 3 different drives and get the same message each time. I have a Mac Pro Tower running OS 10.7.5. I am using LR 4.4.
View 7 Replies View RelatedI have signed up for CC. If I import my LR4 catalog into LR5 and 6 months down the line decide to cancel the cloud and go back to LR4, can I import the LR5 catalog back into LR4?
View 6 Replies View RelatedMy daughter turned off my MAC mid-session edit and now I can't load any pictures from any session let alone that session I was working on. I even tried to close out and back up and it won't back up the catalog..way to get my images back.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI have imported photos from a catalog into a new catalog. Some of the photos in the catalog are located on a remote drive. The drive is not listed when I select the photos to be imported. Is it possible to import catalog photos from a usb drive?
View 3 Replies View RelatedAll my images are currently stored on a 3 Tb hard drive and recently I purchased a DROBO with 15tb of memory. At the momeent I am using the Drobo as back up until the 3tb becomes full. That time has come and I want to use the Drobo as the main drive for my images which contains exactly the same files as the 3tb. I also copied the catalog file onto the Drobo so I thought that all I needed to do is open the catalog in the Drobo and it will automatically access the files in the drobo drive but this is not the case as it still accesses the 3tb files. I tried diconnecting the 3tb thinking that it will try to access the files on the Drobo but then I get ?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI have my complete catalog of Lightroom 3.5 currently on my harddisc of my PC (windows 7). I want to move this catalog to a network based RAID disc and work from there. I've exported my catalog to the networkdisc but how do I tell Lightroom to use that catalog instead of the one on my local drive?
View 25 Replies View RelatedI currently have my main catalog 'gwcat-2-2.lrcat' in what I think is the default directory of ":..D:UsersGeorgePicturesLightroom". I would like to move it to a faster drive. Should I move JUST the lrcat file, or is moving the gwcat-2-2 Previews.lrdata required?
There is a LOT of stuff in lrdata! and would take a long time to move. I've always been a bit confused by the difference between "Previews.lrdatafa" and the cache directory (I already have the cache directory on SSD). --If you go by just the definition of terms, it seems like a distinction without a difference.
I have run out of space on my main hard drive ( C) and cannot resize it.I have another vacant disk drive in the same computer (300 gigs) that I would like to move the en tire catalogue to .
How I would redirect Lightroom to find and use it in the new location.
how to set up LR on new computer.Have my photos on external drive and want them to go to the D: drive.Moved the LR Cat folder to my C: SSD drive with LR off.
Opened LR and relocated LR to new lr.cat file location on C: drive.Lr shows all my Picture folders from year 2000 to year 2014 with the expected ? marks.I don't want the picture folders on C: drive but on D: drive.
Just bought a new PC. All files (same folder structure) moved from D: to E:. How do I update LR5 catalog to "point" to different hard drive?
View 1 Replies View RelatedI know the two normally go together, but is it posssible to put the Lightroom catalog on a separate drive from the previews?
View 1 Replies View RelatedI just mistakenly deleted all my 5000 dng files, and some xmp files are in the trash too. How do I get them back in the catalog? My last backup says it was after I had deleted them (apparently I set it to auto backup?) My only excuse is that I was in an accident 2 days ago. Maybe shouldn't be doing much in Lightroom~!
View 3 Replies View RelatedI'm struggling to recover status quo after an external hard drive failure. My setup is an iMac and two external drives. I keep LR on the iMac harddrive but all photos on the external drive with the second external drive for copies of the photos. My primary external drive died. I have copied the photos from the second external drive over to a new primary external drive, but I can't figure out how to restore the catalog and use this new drive in my regular workflow. When I go to the catalog file and open up the catalog, it first tries to get me to import all the photos from the new primary drive. Is that what I want to do? If my secondary drive had failed I could have figured this out easier but the primary external failure has really thrown me for a loop.
View 20 Replies View RelatedMy hard drive is failing and my catalog is running really slow. I moved all my files onto a new Hard Drive ( mix of Jpegs and Raw). But what do I do now? I need to recover all my actions.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI just upgraded my external hard drive and named the new drive with the exact same name as the original, lets call this HD-1. My entire LR gallery is on this drive. After doing a complete backup to the new drive I opened LR and all Folders and Collects were in their place as they should be.
The Problem -
When I imputed new photos, a new duplicate hard drive appeared with the exact same name HD-1 and holding the newly imported images (which were placed in a subfolder at time of import)
- So now my Catalog shows two hard drives called HD-1. For sake of this discussion I will label them HD-1a and HD-1b. HD-1a has the original photos and HD-1b has the newly imported photos.
- I tried draging the new subfolder of photos for HD-1b to HD-1a but I get a message that the folder already exists, even though it doesn't show in the HD-1a folder structure.
- I created a new sub-folder in HD-1a and was able to drag the photos into it. I then deleted the empty folder on HD-1b. As soon as this was done the duplicate hard drive, HD-1b disapeared.
- I thought this solved the problem but as I was working on images by opening them from LR into Photoshop, the HD-1b drive reappered in my catalog with the PS created files in them.
- So it looks like LR will put any newly created or improted photo file into HD-1b. I can't seem to find a way around this. For some reason LR doesn't want to write new files into HD-1a even though it recognizes it and has no problem reading the existing files.
I am trying to restore my lightroom catalog on an external hard drive to my new computer that has lightroom 4 installed and all my original photos loaded. Whenever I click on the lrcat file I get a message that reads"Lightroom cannot use the catalog named "Lightroom 3 Catalog" because it is not writable and cannot be opened." Below that it says "This could be caused by incorrect permissions or because another Lightroom application is using the catalog. You may try to correct the problem or you may select a different catalog". I don't know what to do.
View 2 Replies View RelatedGoing back to look for photos in LR is very tedious due to this error. I fully expect this error to occur multiple times while locating a past photo. I have to do it in steps by closing LR often, and reopening it so I don't have to start at the beginning of the search when this error occurs. LR does not write a current position to disk until closed (it should write current), which means it forgets where I was after this error.
My photos are in directories by year/date. Expanding a year to find a photo is like fully expecting this error to occur. My preferred import arrangement is year/date (to minimize the length of any one physical file list based in the way I shoot). I don't know if it's the arrangement, but this errors a LOT. I am on V4.4, and this error has been occurring for as long as I can remember. The product testers are obviously not running into this error since it isn't getting fixed. I don't think they test the left pane very well for the various directory schemes that a user can come up with.
My catalog previews were recently rebuilt. The catalog is around 5gb and contains all my photos. I am using SSDs for the LR user files, catalog, raw cache, and previews. Only the actual photos are on spinners.
A friend just had major problems moving his v3 files. He had one top folder for all Lightroom. He keeps his catalog and photos on an external and now needs to increase the capacity of the external. So he copied them over in Windows with the entire Lightroom folder remaining intact, and reassigned the old drive letter to the new external hard drive, so the path to all photos is preserved.
However, everyhting shows up Missing. "Find this folder" doesn't work. You navigate to the new location but it's not clear what exactly you "do" to relink. Clicking the name of the lost folder in the resulting dialog box (new-but-named-the-same-as-old-drive) didn't cange anthong back at the Library display of that folder. I know I -- myself -- will be moving to a new internal drive from the one currently storing my photos in the near future. So his problem is relavant to the hassle i can expect.
I have been storing my LR catalog and all photos on an external drive, which is now full. I got a new external hard drive and would like to move everything over. I started to copy and paste the root folder - which has all the photo folders and the LR catalog folder. If I copy and paste everything outside of LR and open the catalog in the new location, will LR recognize the photos in the new location?
I also read that the catalog could be moved to the new external hard drive (with LR closed) and the photos moved within LR by creating the root folder on the new and dragging and dropping each folder in Library mode.
How do I move the catalog and previews in the default location to another drive?
View 2 Replies View RelatedSo I just tried to do a backup on my new external hard drive and it said it was unable to backup the catalog. Specifically, "Please check your folder permissions, and make sure you have available space on your backup drive and main catalog's drive." I'm not sure what's going on because as far as I know permissions should be fine and there is certainly enough space on the external hard drive. Idk if this makes a differnence but I currently have my catalog backed up on the same internal hard drive that lightroom is used on, I'm just now wanting to back it up on the external. Lighroom 4, Mac computer.
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