Lightroom develop settings

[cduffy]

Hi, I hope someone can help. In a moment of madness I moved a number of file in explorer instead of in Lightroom. Having lost track of what came from where, I just synchronised the folder but it looks like I have lost my settings.
Is there some was I can get my develop settings back? There are about 300 images which I've done this with and I really don't want to have to start on them again.

Cheers, Carl

 

[Jan K.]

The settings are stored in sidecar files, XMP?
So a search for "image-name.xmp" should do, and in same folder, you'll probably find other "lost" xmp-files...

 

[Spuriousfish]

LR always keeps the development changes you've made in its Database. It will only write them to XMP sidecar files if you have the option set to automatically do this or you've done it manually.

Have you got the image files back in the original folders?

Colin

 

[cduffy]

Thanks for the suggestions, unfortunatley the edits were lost as when I sychronised I had ticked the 'remove missing files' box which removes the sidecar with it according to something I read on the adobe site. Spent the last day or so getting back to where I was but sorted now....one of those silly mistakes you only make once.

Thanks again.

 

[Furtim]

Time to review your backup process perhaps!

Aside from giving you the option to restore the original unprocessed file into their original locations, I'd personally also consider a regular 'post processing' file from lightroom as part of the backup process.

 

[Spuriousfish]

I suspect that if LR had removed the files they would most likely be in the Recycle Bin and capable of being restored.

All images managed by LR are essentially the originals since LR uses non-destructive processing and stores the development settings either as metadata or in it's database (or XMP if you use that option).

So, a backup strategy that covers your images and the LR catalog and other settings should cover all you need. However, the backups in this case are only of use if you realise you've made a mistake immediately or at least before you run the next backup.

Colin

 

[Furtim]

I suspect that if LR had removed the files they would most likely be in the Recycle Bin and capable of being restored.

All images managed by LR are essentially the originals since LR uses non-destructive processing and stores the development settings either as metadata or in it's database (or XMP if you use that option).

So, a backup strategy that covers your images and the LR catalog and other settings should cover all you need. However, the backups in this case are only of use if you realise you've made a mistake immediately or at least before you run the next backup.

Colin

I agree that original + catalog should be sufficient, but a periodic dump of the processed output can't hurt and provides some added protection if as your last point suggests you're only going to have one version of the backup (even if you have multiple copies of that version).

The alternative, and better approach is to maintain multiple versions of the backup (this week, last week, last month, 2 months ago etc). Alternatively, consider 'archiving' as well as backups.

 

[Spuriousfish]

Not sure what you mean by a periodic dump of the processed output.

Maintaining historic backups is fine but gets expensive in terms of disk space and management.

Typically the main reason for backing up is protection against hardware failures where you may lose everything. Accidental deletions occur less often and are maybe not as catastrophic.

Pays your money etc, etc

Colin

 

[Furtim]

Not sure what you mean by a periodic dump of the processed output.

Maintaining historic backups is fine but gets expensive in terms of disk space and management.

Typically the main reason for backing up is protection against hardware failures where you may lose everything. Accidental deletions occur less often and are maybe not as catastrophic.

Pays your money etc, etc

Colin

All I mean is export a full size set of processed jpgs every once in a while. Not a huge overhead.

I'd still recommend some form of rolling backup - even it is just to alternate between two backup sets. There's nothing worse that finding out you've been backing up corrupted files and have no other means of recovery!