Recovery of Selections after Reboot

[Mike Miller]

I met with a client last night and initially culled 130 photos from about 450 on a card. I didn't ingest the files at the time. I just opened a contact sheet (reading the card) and color coded the pictures. We then narrowed down the selection into a number of different sets for different reasons. My intention was to later copy the selected files onto a hard drive. However, it was late so I decided to leave it all to today. Unfortunately, when I returned this morning I discovered that my laptop decided to update last night  , which meant that Photo Mechanic was closed before I moved the selected photos to a hard drive. Although the laptop should have gone to sleep it didn't and the battery was fully drained. When I powered up my laptop and opened PM this morning all of my selections were gone.

Is there anyway to restore selections of files stored on a card if PM is closed before the files are moved off the card?

Thanks.

I'm using PM 5.0 (build 19395) on a Windows 10 laptop.

[Mike Miller]

OK, I've done some more detailed searching and I found the answer to my own question. I now know that by default PM will not save edits or color markings on files on cards - unless the user checks 'allow modification of files on camera disks' under preferences/files. Since I didn't have that preference marked, I've lost my color markings. Lesson learned.

I have another question, however. The warning given concerning this preference says that the original files may be corrupted if edited. But if the only change to the file is a color/star mark in PM is there really much of a risk at corruption? I do a lot of sports photography and only want to save a percentage of my shots on a HD. I normally copy/move immediate after making selections, but when I chose to delay import (or when my laptop updates/closes automatically) I think the preference change would be helpful - if the risk of corruption is small.

Thanks again.

[Kirk Baker]

Mike,

OK, I've done some more detailed searching and I found the answer to my own question. I now know that by default PM will not save edits or color markings on files on cards - unless the user checks 'allow modification of files on camera disks' under preferences/files. Since I didn't have that preference marked, I've lost my color markings. Lesson learned.

I have another question, however. The warning given concerning this preference says that the original files may be corrupted if edited. But if the only change to the file is a color/star mark in PM is there really much of a risk at corruption? I do a lot of sports photography and only want to save a percentage of my shots on a HD. I normally copy/move immediate after making selections, but when I chose to delay import (or when my laptop updates/closes automatically) I think the preference change would be helpful - if the risk of corruption is small.

Mostly the problems encountered are with cards that are full (which is quite often the case).  If PM were to modify an image for any reason, even for setting a rating or color label and during that process there were to be a write error, then your file will very likely be damaged.

When images are only on your card and not on your computer, that image is the only copy of that image and if it were to be damaged, it is lost.  It is for this reason that we never recommend that you edit directly on the card.  Ingest/Copy first, then edit.

-Kirk