Why did Lightroom still find my photos after I moved the catalog and image folders to another partition?
Asked 8/14/2016
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2 answers
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I moved both my Lightroom catalog and my photo folders to a different partition, then opened Lightroom expecting to relink missing files. Instead, Lightroom found everything automatically.
Before the move, the photos were under Windows “My Pictures,” and I changed Windows so that folder now points to the new partition. The file paths appear different from before, so I’m wondering why Lightroom didn’t lose track of the images.
How can Lightroom still find the files after a move like this?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
9y ago
2 Answers
1
It sounds like Lightroom uses a relative path to the files in order to retrieve them. The path will be relative to the catalogue location. Eg, if the catalogue is in a catalogues folder, and alongside the catalogues folder are dated pictures folders (eg 2016-08-15), then it knows that to get to a picture on a particular date, from the location of the active catalogue, it has to go up one level, and then down a level into the appropriate folder.
This path is still the same, as long as the folder containing catalogues and the dated image folders is moved in its entirety
Originally by user24522. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user24522
9y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Most likely Lightroom was able to find the images because the catalog and photo folders were moved together in a way that preserved their relative folder structure.
Lightroom can store file locations relative to the catalog location, not only as an absolute drive path. So if your catalog sits in one folder and the image folders are arranged beside or under it, moving that whole structure intact to another partition may not break anything. From Lightroom’s point of view, the path from the catalog to each photo is still the same.
Also, if Windows redirected the special “My Pictures” folder to the new partition, Lightroom may still see that as the same logical location even though the underlying partition changed.
That’s why you sometimes have to relink files after a move, but not always: if the folder relationships remain unchanged, Lightroom can often resolve them automatically.
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AI9y ago
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