A question for this forum - Has anyone had Lightroom 3 corrupt their files? I had a problem importing files, but it turned out to be my Canon 5D's compact flash port. However, when I important files from my compact flash cards, some of the files were corrupted still corrupted after fixing the camera. Thinking it was a bad card, I switched out cards, but I am finding that Lightroom will corrupt my files that have already been imported, some from years ago.
Here is an example of what the corrupted file looks like.
Could this be because of Lightroom 3.5 or is my computer doing this to me? One thing I noticed today when the problem occurred, is that it happened after telling Lightroom where to find the catalog. All files, including the catalog, are stored onto a main external hard drive and backed up to a second drive. When I delete my older catalogs, I sometimes have to point Lightroom to the newest catalog folder. When I went to the prior catalog folder, the files were corrected. Perhaps Lightroom is not writing the catalog correctly.
I've been experimenting with LR3, importing/exporting, editing, deleting files, etc.. non-stop and I haven't had that happen except once -- my former Canon 5D2 did that to me once.
I imported my photos (at that time using iPhoto) and the files were corrupted. Why or what caused this to happen, I still don't know. However, the images looked exactly like the sample you have posted. Also, it was only a few like that -- the other images were all gone .. I reformatted the card and all has been functioning perfectly to date (knock on wood).
I doubt that it's LR doing it but I suppose that's possible.
What OS are you using?
I've had similar corruption using Mac OS X Lion, reading the built-in SD slot and storing my files on an external drive connected either through Firewire or USB.
I watch for the corruption and when I see it, I delete that file, copy it again and it works fine.
In other words, the file on the card is good, it's somewhere in the copying chain that I get the issue.
LR only reads your files, doesn't write to them -as long as you're not using .DNG-files- and so it really can't be the source of your problem. Might be a bad card, something gone wrong during transfer, your camera or your harddisk.
Thanks for the comments. I suspect that the problem might be my computer. The computer is an older Athlon X2 running Windows XP Pro (SP3) and about 4GB of RAM.
Lightroom doesn't overwrite the files. If I pull them up in DPP, the files look fine; or if I restore the catalog via backup, it looks fine. Somehow, during the process of importing or access the files, it gets messed. Some of the file problems were from images imported 3 years ago, so I don't think it is a memory card problem.
I was curious if anyone else had encountered this issue. At worse, I will probably upgrade my computer so I can use something to handle the demands of Lightroom 3.
I currently have this similar problem with lr2 but I've narrowed it down to my working hard drive. My other copies of the same nef files are fine. I've used two differnt pcs, 3 different hard drives and the only ones corrupted are on the drive lr3 edits. It is possible lr3 is corrupting, there was a bug in the past, that I read about but it only happend under one of the hp cameras. Not sure that helps.
I've seen problems like this on a Mac. It was from loading the iamges from the camera. What I like to do is to make a folder on the hard drive and drag and drop the files direct from the card to the hard drive. I then import them into LR from there.
So wait, you can open the RAW file in DPP and it looks fine?
HOw are you looking at it in LR? Develop module? Library? Library uses a LR-created preview to display, Develop rebuilds the image you look at from the raw file each time you open it.
That looks like a bad card reader to me, or the file was corrupted during import or something. Maybe just the JPG preview was corrupted. At any rate it's unlikely that it's LR doing something nefarious.
Boyd, you might try telling Lr to build a new preview image for the affected files. Perhaps you are seeing the result of an old corrupted preview.
Do you see the corruptions in Develop mode as well as Library mode ? Develop mode is already rebuilding the previews whenever you use it. However, Develop mode also uses a partially completed raw file conversion stored in the Adobe Camera Raw cache, and perhaps that cache is corrupted. You could empty the cache (which may slow things down for a while even for the healthy files) and try again, or instead you could delete/remove the file from the Lr library (but do not let Lr delete it from disc) and re-synch the folder that holds the file to load it in again. That ought to rebuild both the ACR cache entry and the preview from scratch.
Sorry for the delay in responding to the posts. I see the corruption in both Develop and Library mode. I suspect the problem is with my computer and the connection to the drives. Probably time to look for a new computer.
Alan - I tried the delete image and re synch and still had the problem. I replace the RAW file with a backup version and the problem went away. Again, I think it is a computer problem and not a lightroom issue.
Thanks for all of the input.
Boyd
Alan321 wrote:
Boyd, you might try telling Lr to build a new preview image for the affected files. Perhaps you are seeing the result of an old corrupted preview.
Do you see the corruptions in Develop mode as well as Library mode ? Develop mode is already rebuilding the previews whenever you use it. However, Develop mode also uses a partially completed raw file conversion stored in the Adobe Camera Raw cache, and perhaps that cache is corrupted. You could empty the cache (which may slow things down for a while even for the healthy files) and try again, or instead you could delete/remove the file from the Lr library (but do not let Lr delete it from disc) and re-synch the folder that holds the file to load it in again. That ought to rebuild both the ACR cache entry and the preview from scratch.
Thanks for the notice, Alan. I just saw that and upgraded. As I was going through older parts of my collection, the files would randomly corrupt. My theory is it has something to do with the hardware and the software. If I take the RAW file to another computer and load it via DPP, the file is fine.
You might get lucky.