I had something happen recently when importing pics into LR5. The import seemed to go okay, but happened much faster than I was expecting. There were 98 pics shot in RAW on the SD card and the process completed almost instantly. Reviewing the thumbnails in LR, several of them were extremely pixelated. So a red flag went off in my head, and I deleted the pics and used the CF card instead (Nikon D810 using both an SD and CF card). The CF card images looked good but also imported quickly.
*pause*
Made a big mistake here. Should have already been thinking that something wonky was happening. Since the preview pics looked good, I let things slide. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Since I thought the import was okay, I formatted both cards in the camera. My usual practice to prepare for the next shoot.
When I went back to edit the pics in LR, I experienced a moment of panic--all of the editing options were greyed out. Oh no. When I tried to export the pics, I got a message that the original file couldn't be found.
No, no, no.
Okay, I screwed up. Both imports were borked. While I could still see all the pics in LR (and could even zoom in on them), the original files didn't get imported.
Chalked it up to the "live and learn" pile of experiences--NEVER delete the originals until you are absolutely positive that the originals have been transferred successfully onto your hard drive. Started thinking of ways to recover the lost images since they were still showing up in LR (at least as previews).
Displayed the pics full screen in LR on my rMBP and then took screenshots of them. Then imported the screenshots back into LR. I obviously lost all of the advantages of RAW, but was lucky in that most of them didn't require much tweaking.
Not anywhere close to an ideal solution, but it let me salvage some pics that would have been lost otherwise. Needed to do some cropping to remove the black bars on the sides of the screenshots.
1404 pixels by 1755 pixels
2190 pixels by 1752 pixels
Obviously less data to work with in post. And I learned my lesson about formatting data cards too soon. But it ended up being not as bitter of a pill to swallow as I initially thought.
Not sure if something similar has happened to others. Also not sure if there are other/better solutions. Clearly the most important thing is to not let it happen in the first place....
*pause*
Made a big mistake here. Should have already been thinking that something wonky was happening. Since the preview pics looked good, I let things slide. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Since I thought the import was okay, I formatted both cards in the camera. My usual practice to prepare for the next shoot.
When I went back to edit the pics in LR, I experienced a moment of panic--all of the editing options were greyed out. Oh no. When I tried to export the pics, I got a message that the original file couldn't be found.
No, no, no.
Okay, I screwed up. Both imports were borked. While I could still see all the pics in LR (and could even zoom in on them), the original files didn't get imported.
Chalked it up to the "live and learn" pile of experiences--NEVER delete the originals until you are absolutely positive that the originals have been transferred successfully onto your hard drive. Started thinking of ways to recover the lost images since they were still showing up in LR (at least as previews).
Displayed the pics full screen in LR on my rMBP and then took screenshots of them. Then imported the screenshots back into LR. I obviously lost all of the advantages of RAW, but was lucky in that most of them didn't require much tweaking.
Not anywhere close to an ideal solution, but it let me salvage some pics that would have been lost otherwise. Needed to do some cropping to remove the black bars on the sides of the screenshots.
1404 pixels by 1755 pixels
2190 pixels by 1752 pixels
Obviously less data to work with in post. And I learned my lesson about formatting data cards too soon. But it ended up being not as bitter of a pill to swallow as I initially thought.
Not sure if something similar has happened to others. Also not sure if there are other/better solutions. Clearly the most important thing is to not let it happen in the first place....
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