# Help Please! :-)  Random photos wont let me develop/ crop



## jordan (Oct 25, 2016)

I recently uploaded 300 images for some catalogue work.  As I went through and adjusted and cropped I found 7 out of the 300 that will not let me do anything to them in develop mode. I want to crop and adjust exposure, the options in develop all appear dark and you can't click on them. Past settings is also dark and cant be clicked on. On one of the 7 later it did allow me to edit, but I don't know why, it happened randomly after I went and edited a couple other photos and deleted a couple pasted settings, and then back to the image that wouldnt allow any adjusting and surprisingly it no longer had the problem, the other 6 I still cant edit, and I have tried restarting, Lightroom, the computer etc. Thanks for any help!!! Much appreciated, I go back tomorrow for another day of shooting for catalogue so I want to figure this out. Of the 300 initial images they were all captured in a 2 day period same camera, 150 each day, just random how some can be edited and a couple can't the ones that cant are mostly near each other in sequence, although they all were not. Thanks!!


----------



## clee01l (Oct 25, 2016)

Welcome to the forum.  Check you file permissions on these image files.   If the Photos were missing, it would be indicated under the Histogram.    I also note that the histogram is blank too.  This suggests that LR can read the file to create the histogram.


----------



## jordan (Oct 25, 2016)

thank you Cletus!  are the file permissions something I access in Lightroom ( under what tab?)  Or do I do that through the folder in folder where the images might be stored long term.  THANK YOU!


----------



## clee01l (Oct 25, 2016)

In LR, right click on an image and choose "Show in Finder".
Then in Finder Right click the file name and choose "Get Info"
At the bottom of the "Get Info" window take a look at "Privilege" in the "Sharing and Permissions" section.


----------



## Johan Elzenga (Oct 25, 2016)

It's not your permissions. The problem is in the file name. You have added a slash in the file name, but that is an illegal character. A slash indicates a separator for a folder in a path. So while you named the file "napkin rabbit hare s/4.NEF", Lightroom thinks that the file is simply called "4.NEF" and that it is located in a subfolder called "napkin rabbit hare s". That's why Lightroom can't load it.


----------



## clee01l (Oct 25, 2016)

JohanElzenga said:


> It's not your permissions. The problem is in the file name. You have added a slash in the file name, but that is an illegal character. A slash indicates a separator for a folder in a path. So while you named the file "napkin rabbit hare s/4.NEF", Lightroom thinks that the file is simply called "4.NEF" and that it is located in a subfolder called "napkin rabbit hare s". That's why Lightroom can't load it.


Good catch!   Actually "/" is a legal character in OS X.  However it is not in Windows.  And LR is written to naming standards common to both OS.  This is why OS X/MacOS permitted the file name to begin with.


----------



## Gnits (Oct 26, 2016)

In the File Handling Tab within Preferences, you can specify how Lr will deal with filenames which may have illegal characters when Lr is creating or renaming (F2) the file names.




Windows will not allow you to rename a file with a forward or back slash. Not sure what happens on Mac


----------

