Recover Lost Images with LRViewer

A user over at the Adobe Lightroom Forums was having a problem recently. It seems that he had imported some images into Lightroom and now could not locate any of the original files. While he could work on them in the Library module he couldn’t do anything else without those source files. The previews were there. He could see the images. But that was it.

We discussed it a bit and tried some tests but nothing. A thorough search of his drives yielded no results. The originals were gone! Then Don Ricklin made a brilliant suggestion that I want to pass on to you. Marc Rochkind is a photographer and software developer. He has made available a free program called LRViewer. LRViewer let’s you view the contents of a Lightroom catalog and see the previews and metadata for the images.

One of the features in the program is the ability to export JPEG files created from the Lightroom previews! Just select some of the previews and then choose Export JPEGs… from the File menu.

Brilliant! Thanks to Marc for making such a useful utility and to Don for coming to the user’s rescue! LRViewer is available for both Mac and Windows. Go to Marc’s ImageIngester site to find out more. While you’re there take a look at the other fine utilities Marc has.

It isn’t as good as having your original RAW or JPEG files but it will get you a source image as good as the preview which you can import into Lightroom and work on. The moral of the story is twofold: (1) keep track of your source files and (2) BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP!

Print This Story Email This Story

Tags: Lightroom, Tip

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 at 10:58 am and is filed under Lightroom, Tip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Line Break

About the Author: Gene McCullagh
Contact Gene

Gene is an Adobe Community Professional and and Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop Lightroom, Photoshop, and InDesign, an avid Lightroom fan. He belongs to the Professional Photographers of America (PPA) and the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP). Gene also the Co-Founder, Manager and a frequent blogger for the Dallas Fort Worth Adobe User Group (DFWAUG).

In addition to running Lightroom Secrets, Gene also contributes to O'Reilly's media blog, moderates on the Adobe forums, and helps out on lightroomforums.net.

dealaddict

I accidentally deleted the files and trying to recover from the catalogue, however, I can't see the raw files from LRViewer. Does this work on RAW?

Gene McCullagh

LRViewer will show you whatever was in the catalog the files where originally imported into. If the RAW file was imported and LR showed a thumbnail image then LRViewer should be able to see that image.

Remember, it doesn't work on the files but on the catalog (.lrcat) file.

dealaddict

hmm .. for some reason, it can't show the photos. Then I tried an old catalog from LR 1.3, it can show some of the RAW files, but not all, most of them says Image not available. I use Canon 5D and Lightroom 2.6, running Mac OS X .. any idea?

Gene McCullagh

If you cannot see some of the images then the only thing I can think of is that the preview LR generated is no longer in the .lrdata file. If that is the case then you won't be able to recover anything for that file. Your only hope is if you have those original files backed up somewhere or if you can recover the deleted files via some other means. Sorry.

Jason

Great link, Thanks!

Lightroom Secrets