Lightroom 2 issue

[Y Ddraig Goch]

Hi, don't know if any of you have had this issue but after formatting my computer and reinstalling my programmes I find all my photos have lost the adjustments I have made to them, only thing they still show are the names and ratings I gave them.

I'm using Lightroom 2/ Windows Vista Home Premium 64bit and my photos are in RAW format and I still have the .xmp files with them.

All help is welcome

[Bruce Williams]

I don't use Lightroom so this may or may not be relevant.

In Photoshop you can elect to hold your .xmp files in a central databas or in the folder with the associated raw files. You select the desired option in the Camera Raw Preferences dialogue. I normally access these preferences from Bridge but they are also accessible from Adobe Camera Raw.

I think the following will be the case:

If your .xmp files are held within the same folder as the associated raw files and you set "Camera Raw Preferences to "hold xmp files in database" then your settings will not be found. The reverse is also true.

Bruce

[Richard G.]

Lightroom doesn't use the .xmp sidecar, but creates a separate database with all adjustments. This is the catalog that you imported your images into and has a .lrcat extension. Hopefully you have a backup copy of this catalog.lrcat file somewhere?

[Bruce Williams]

I'm pretty sure that Lightroom can (optionally) write .xmp files either as each file is processed or as a batch job (write metadata to file). You say that you have the associated .xmp sidecar files, so either Lightroom or Photoshop/Bridge/ACR must have created them in the first place.

Without the ability to write or create .xmp files Lightroom would be isolated from the rest of the Photoshop suite and I can't imagine Adobe doing that.

Anyway, if you cannot find the .lrcat file that Richard mentioned, I'm pretty sure there will be an option to rebuild your Lightroom database from the .xmp files.

Bruce

[GerryNick2]

I tend to agree with Richard G, if you have not exported the Raw images as a jpeg, Tiff etc all the information regarding adjustments made to these images from within Lightroom is retained in the Lightroom Catalogue file.
Not sure about Vista but with XP Lightroom creates a folder in "My Pictures" and the catalogue file (.LRCAT) is stored there and needs to be reinstalled into Lightroom. If the catalogue is not there it will need to be reinstalled from a backup copy, hopefully you have backed up the catalogue to a separate drive which is strongly recommended.

If you click on the edit menu in Lightroom and then Catalogue settings you should be able to see where the catalogue is located and restore if necessary. The options for backing up the catalogue are also in this sub-menu.

Good Luck

Gerry

[pressld2]

I think Lightroom might be clever enough to know if you have Photoshop installed.

I've been using it for a couple of years now and never saw any .xmp sidecar files until after I downloaded and installed a trial version of Photoshop CS3. I've since removed Photoshop but Lightroom is now creating .xmp files. (Is Photoshop yet another program that doesn't clean the registry properly when de-installing?)

As an experiment, I made some corrections to a file, added keywords and copyright info then shutdown lightroom, deleted the .xmp file, rebooted my PC and restarted Lightroom. All my corrections and metadata amendments were still there so I'm 99% certain that the .lrcat file is king.

Btw, I'm still on v1.4 of Lightroom.

Dave P.

[Y Ddraig Goch]

Thanks for the help. gona look for the .lrcat extension file but don't think I copied it.