Moved photos from PM to Lightroom and every photo was deleted from disk

[tinrek]

I was just finished culling an entire wedding and was going to open my red-marked photos in Lightroom. I had already selected and moves some of the photos to LR already but was now going to finish and add the whole selection.

I selected the red color class and started to drag them into the LR-library. I got an error message of some kind that I have never seen before, and I couldn't see the entire text, it said something like "couldn't open files because lightroom catalog XX-XX something something". I then had the option to click "retry" and I did that.

That apparently, for some insane reason, managed to delete 70% of the photos from both Photomechanic and from my external harddrive itself. I had something like 6500 photos in the folder and I'm stuck with around 1500.

It went so quickly and there was no warning window that mentioned deleting photos, and in preferences it says photos are to be deleted/moved to the trash folder. There's nothing there, and this was an external harddrive.

I do have the photos still on my memory cards (thank GOD), but I still lost a days work here.

Added info : PM crashed like 5 times today when just trying to sort the photos in "capture time", so I'm starting to be scared of using this program.
And another completely weird thing, both Photomechanic and LR still show more of the photos than are actually seen in my finder-folder. As in, the folder where I had all the photos from the wedding day just show the ceremony and the portraits, but in both PM and LR I still have photos from both the party and the dinner. I exported all of the photos I had in LR to another disk just in case, and then tried to "find photo in exlorer" and it just opened up the right folder but the photo was not there. So there's more going on here.

I have the PM 5.0 version


Does anyone know what the eff happened and if there's anyyy way to get these photos and the selections back?

I've added the zipped log from my PM.

[Bob Russell]

Hi Tina,

I'm not sure how the selected group of images was accidentally deleted or what application was responsible for that action. When deleting the selected images in Photo Mechanic, by default there will be a confirmation dialog asking if you want to move the selected files to the Recycle Bin. There is an option on the Files preference page to Never warn when deleting photos, but this should option be unchecked.

I am not familiar with dragging the selected files from Photo Mechanic into Lightroom's Library. I recommend having Lightroom opened to the Import module and then dragging the selected group from Photo Mechanic to LR's Import module.  Wait until you see the + added to the mouse pointer before releasing the mouse button. Now LR should show the same number of photos to be imported at the bottom part of the Import module. I use the Add option when Importing photos into Lightroom so both applications will be working on the same image files.

When you drag a selected group of photos outside of Photo Mechanic, PM is no longer in control of what happens to the selected group. It depends on what application the mouse was over when the mouse button was released. If the pointer was over a folder in the Explorer, then the selected images should be moved to the folder.  If the folder was part of Lightroom and LR was running, then it sounds like Lightroom was part of the problem with the deleted photos.

I tested deleting photos on another internal drive in my PC and I did see the warning message about moving the photos to the Recycle Bin.  After the delete, the photos did end up in the Recycle Bin.  Using the Restore option from the Recycle Bin did move the deleted photos back into their original folder.

If Photo Mechanic every crashes, you should start the application and wait for a blank contact sheet to open and then quit Photo Mechanic. This will close any related support files so Photo Mechanic will open correctly the next time it is started.  There is a possibility of a preference file corruption with too many back to back program crashes. If your Photo Mechanic 5 does not seem to be working as it should, then I would contact our support department for the steps to reset Photo Mechanic's preferences. ( support@camerabits.com) Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best regards,

--Bob

[tinrek]

Hi Tina,

I'm not sure how the selected group of images was accidentally deleted or what application was responsible for that action. When deleting the selected images in Photo Mechanic, by default there will be a confirmation dialog asking if you want to move the selected files to the Recycle Bin. There is an option on the Files preference page to Never warn when deleting photos, but this should option be unchecked.

I am not familiar with dragging the selected files from Photo Mechanic into Lightroom's Library. I recommend having Lightroom opened to the Import module and then dragging the selected group from Photo Mechanic to LR's Import module.  Wait until you see the + added to the mouse pointer before releasing the mouse button. Now LR should show the same number of photos to be imported at the bottom part of the Import module. I use the Add option when Importing photos into Lightroom so both applications will be working on the same image files.

When you drag a selected group of photos outside of Photo Mechanic, PM is no longer in control of what happens to the selected group. It depends on what application the mouse was over when the mouse button was released. If the pointer was over a folder in the Explorer, then the selected images should be moved to the folder.  If the folder was part of Lightroom and LR was running, then it sounds like Lightroom was part of the problem with the deleted photos.

I tested deleting photos on another internal drive in my PC and I did see the warning message about moving the photos to the Recycle Bin.  After the delete, the photos did end up in the Recycle Bin.  Using the Restore option from the Recycle Bin did move the deleted photos back into their original folder.

If Photo Mechanic every crashes, you should start the application and wait for a blank contact sheet to open and then quit Photo Mechanic. This will close any related support files so Photo Mechanic will open correctly the next time it is started.  There is a possibility of a preference file corruption with too many back to back program crashes. If your Photo Mechanic 5 does not seem to be working as it should, then I would contact our support department for the steps to reset Photo Mechanic's preferences. ( support@camerabits.com) Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best regards,

--Bob

Hi Bob!

Thanks for your response!

I'll just reply quickly to some of this :

1. I did not get a confirmation window about deleting images, just that I couldn't import the photos to LR and if I wanted to "retry". I clicked on the "retry" button, and then the photos got deleted from both the external harddrive and PM, but some still linger awkwardly as they could be found in PM and LR but not in explorer/finder/folder.

2. There's never any issue dragging the photos into LR, the import window opens automatically like usual right away - I've always done it like this. This time I just got the error-message straight away.


3. The photos I was working on were on an external harddrive, so the photos would not necessarily end up in the trash can on my main drive (c://), and they also did not do that. I also have the box you mentioned unchecked and do have the boxes about confirmation about deleting checked.

4. I'll remember that the next time it crashes (if I'll continue to use the program, this has freaked me out a bit).