# Lightroom Classic CC import problems and anomalies.  Help!



## Bathgate

Operating System:MacOS Sierra
Exact Lightroom Version (Help menu > System Info):  LR Classic CC release 7.2

Just got back from a photo trip with a few thousand images on SD cards.  Been importing and organizing.  I work with a file structure that I've used for years with no problems, arranging files into folders and sub-folders with lots of keywords.  All was going smoothly but the last few imports, luckily only a handful of images each, haven't worked.  LR seems to repeat the import of previous images rather than the new ones.  Example -- I try to import 6 new images, select only those I want imported, add my keywords and hit import.  LR then starts repeating the images from the or a previous import.  Sometimes it overlaps the previous with a few of the new.  

With a few thousand left to import, I've got to get this figured out.  Any help will be MUCH appreciated.


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## Bathgate

Oh, and I've quit out of LR and re-started it but got the same result.


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## Denis Pagé

In the fullpage import dialog box in the right column under file management, do you have do not import duplicates checked?


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## Bathgate

Thanks for the response, Denis.  Yes, I do have that box checked and that does help but beyond simply importing duplicates, the issue is that LR isn't importing those images I tell it to and is, instead, importing images from the SD card that are adjacent to those checked for import and sometimes some from the most recent previous import.  The number of files imported seems to have no obvious relationship to the number I've indicated should be imported.


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## Victoria Bampton

Hi Bathgate, welcome to the forum! Have all of these photos been imported into the same catalog? No import/export catalog involved, as that can trip it up?


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## Linwood Ferguson

While the mystery is interesting, if you just want to move things forward, copy the files to disk manually (finder) and then import, and/or while on disk rename them and try?

Any chance they are being imported, but their capture date or other renaming/location aspects are hiding them from you once imported; does the previous import show the wrong files imported?


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## Bathgate

Victoria Bampton said:


> Hi Bathgate, welcome to the forum! Have all of these photos been imported into the same catalog? No import/export catalog involved, as that can trip it up?



All the files have gone into the same catalog although sorted into appropriate sub-folders within the file structure.  I believe I've now got them all imported although there have been multiples of some that were imported second and third times while trying to import the ones I wanted.  A problem now is that many seem to have imported out of order which will make finding and lining up some planned panos tough and finding and lining up some planned focus stacks even tougher.


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## Bathgate

Ferguson said:


> While the mystery is interesting, if you just want to move things forward, copy the files to disk manually (finder) and then import, and/or while on disk rename them and try?
> 
> Any chance they are being imported, but their capture date or other renaming/location aspects are hiding them from you once imported; does the previous import show the wrong files imported?



Thanks, Ferguson.  The short answer to your questions is no.  They aren't being renamed and date/time isn't wrong although many of the last imports seem to be showing in the LR Library module slightly out of order.  The issue really has been that I'd select, say, 13 photos for import off of an SD card, using the built-in SD card reader on my iMac, and LR would re-import maybe 9 previous photos and 1 of the selected ones.  But those numbers are totally random and change each time.  I now have folders with many multiples of some images acquired while trying to import specific others.  This has been very frustrating.


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## Victoria Bampton

Bathgate said:


> A problem now is that many seem to have imported out of order which will make finding and lining up some planned panos tough and finding and lining up some planned focus stacks even tougher.



Set the sort order to Capture Time at the bottom of the Grid view.


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## Bathgate

Thanks, Victoria.  Capture Time is the default in my set-up.  Looking at some of these files now, I realize that capture time as shown in LR is wrong.  Images that I know were captured in the morning are showing as afternoon, etc.  That's a first for me, too.  Something screwy going on.


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## Linwood Ferguson

@Bathgate, most often when I've seen that it is a time zone issue in the camera.  You might want to take another viewing program (e.g. if Nikon, ViewNXi, not sure which is Canon) and view exactly what is in the original file, and you may find a clue.

There are MANY times in and attached to a file that relate to origin - capture time, digitized time, file create time, etc.  Some cameras and some ingestion programs play fast and loose with how these get set, but once you see what you particular camera/ingestion combination is doing it should be easy to adjust so it always works consistently.

If the time zone (or whatever) shifts across a date boundary, that can also contribute to your difficulty in seeing what you expect to import arrive, as it may be in the wrong folder if storing by date.


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## Bathgate

Good info there, Ferguson.  Thanks.  But not applicable to the current issues so far as I can see.  All photos taken within 7 days or each other, all in the same time zone.  I've got pics taken within minutes of each other interspersed with others taken hours earlier for no discernible reason.  Or sometimes those within a single shoot are simply out of order upon import.  I've used LR for years and consider myself at least fairly adept.  This behavior is new and definitely unwanted.


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## Linwood Ferguson

But Bathgate, are you SURE the problem is in Lightroom.  You are sure of when the photos were taken, but are you sure of what data the camera wrote into the file?  I still think it useful to look with a different program at the images to ensure they are correct before looking for a problem in Lightroom.

Not suggesting lightroom doesn't have bugs, but a LOT of people use that feature. If I were placing bets I would bet on at minimum that there is something unusual in the input files.  You can even use something like EXIFTOOL to dump every possible bit of info from the file, see if something looks unusual.


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## Bathgate

Point well made and well taken.  I'll have a look with ViewNX to see if I can find anything.  Will report back here afterwards.


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## Denis Pagé

And check for the obvious like double checking the time and date the camera is set to.


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## Bathgate

Well, my bumfuzzlement continues.  There do appear to be some time and date anomalies upon import of some (and only some) of the images.  They do show up both in LR and in ViewNX.  That seems to suggest that it may be more camera-related if the images having wrong time and date info attached upon capture.  I was working with 2 bodies on these shoots so I have to make sure that I'm isolating the shots taken by only the one that seems to have yielded bad data.  Neither had changes made deliberately to time and date in camera during the week of shooting and all have proper info on earlier imports.

 Right now I'm just going to be happy that I've finally been able to import all the photos even though some remain out of sequence and even though I've wound up with multiples of many that were imported in place of those I was attempting to import.  I'll try to get out sometime later this week to take some new shots and see if they import properly.


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## shaun.furey

hello Bathgate,

I know exactly what you are talking about, this is happening to me. This is the first I've seen someone else with the problem!
have you figured out what it is? 
I can't work it out, tried different SD cards and same problem, 
I use fuji don't know if that has anything to do with it?

let me know how you get on!


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## John Little

[QUOTE="Bathgate: I'll try to get out sometime later this week to take some new shots and see if they import properly.[/QUOTE]

You could test this sitting at your computer by taking 5 or 20 or 100 pictures of your surroundings. Of course, if the problem doesn't show up it's not very helpful, but, as I used to tell my colleagues when we were considering scientific experiments to try, if there are two possible outcomes and you can't interpret one of them, maybe you'll get lucky and you get the other result. It's not a sufficient reason to avoid doing the test.


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## Bathgate

shaun.furey said:


> hello Bathgate,
> 
> I know exactly what you are talking about, this is happening to me. This is the first I've seen someone else with the problem!
> have you figured out what it is?
> I can't work it out, tried different SD cards and same problem,
> I use fuji don't know if that has anything to do with it?
> 
> let me know how you get on!



Hi Shaun,

Good timing.  I was out on a week long shoot when you posted and since I've been back the problems noted above have persisted as I've wrestled with uploading and organizing about 1800 images from the trip.  In attempting to avoid problems, I worked to create as clean an environment as possible.  I quit out of all programs other than LR to try to keep all computing resources available to LR..  I turned off Time Machine (I work on a Mac) and SuperDuper!to avoid any possibility of automated backups starting up.  I cleared my 20GB or RAM 3 times in succession.  That was my preparation for uploading.

As I was creating new folders for multiple subject-related collections, I ejected the SD card and shut down LR and backed up the directory after each collection was uploaded.  I then cleared RAM again before re-opening LR prior to the next round of image transfers.  While I had no specific reason to suspect any of these things was responsible for the problems I was experiencing, I simply was attempting to create as clean an environment as possible and to eliminate potential issues.  While I can't say that it didn't help, it certainly didn't resolve the problems.

I again experienced all the problems noted in the original post.  

*  Importing wrong images to file (not the images checked and selected for import).  Instead, non-selected images are imported in the same number as the intended import. I even tried  copying images from the SD card to a new folder on my desktop and importing to LR from there instead to no avail.  LR somehow repeated a previous import from the SD card and not included in the source folder instead.  

*  While image numbering appears intact, those images are imported out of order, with images scattered throughout the folder in no discernible order.  Among other problems that creates is that it makes creating panoramas, focus stacks and exposure stacks frustratingly difficult as I have to search for what should be adjacent images throughout the folder.  

*  Time and date notations attached to each individual image appear correct and intact, both in camera and in both LR and Capture NX-D following import.  By that, I mean that when looking at individual photos, the correct time and date are attached to them upon capture and those notations remain intact.  LR retains that proper information but  still imports them out of order.

*  Images have been imported sideways and upside down.  This seems new as I don't remember experiencing this issue before.

Between my first experiencing these problems back in March, imports of smaller numbers of images have generally happened as anticipated although I have experienced similar issues once or twice.  This really seems to happen moreso when I'm working with larger numbers of images.  As with the first time I experienced this and posted about it here in March, I eventually have been able to get all of my images into LR, although not always where I wanted them and definitely not in correct order.

I've considered reverting to LR 5 and giving up on CC.  There are features I'd miss but if LR 5 will allow me to create and maintain my file structure while CC continues to create problems, that may be my only recourse.

Any further suggestions or help from anybody here will be greatly appreciated.


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## Bathgate

John Little said:


> [QUOTE="Bathgate: I'll try to get out sometime later this week to take some new shots and see if they import properly.



You could test this sitting at your computer by taking 5 or 20 or 100 pictures of your surroundings. Of course, if the problem doesn't show up it's not very helpful, but, as I used to tell my colleagues when we were considering scientific experiments to try, if there are two possible outcomes and you can't interpret one of them, maybe you'll get lucky and you get the other result. It's not a sufficient reason to avoid doing the test.[/QUOTE]

Right you are, John.  Thanks for the reminder.


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## Victoria Bampton

Bathgate said:


> Any further suggestions or help from anybody here will be greatly appreciated.



I think it's time to put it in front of the engineers, if you haven't already done so. Here’s instructions on how to report it to Adobe: How do I send a bug report or feature request to Adobe? | The Lightroom Queen


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## Bathgate

Thank you, Victoria.  I'll do that and will report back here if I ever get any definitive resolution.


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## timpr

This may not be your issue, but I just solved a similar problem. I had set a custom import to re-name the files on import. When I tried to import 2 different cards from the same date, that created duplicate files (with the same filename i.e. 20181104-untitled-2.DNG ) that continued to reference the first import. When I looked into the folder, both sets of photos were there with the same filenames, even though in lightroom only the first import was visible.

1. be careful when setting up custom file import naming.
2. be sure to include some unique identifier.
3. Adobe should fix it so you can't have files with the same filename.




Bathgate said:


> Operating System:MacOS Sierra
> Exact Lightroom Version (Help menu > System Info):  LR Classic CC release 7.2
> 
> Just got back from a photo trip with a few thousand images on SD cards.  Been importing and organizing.  I work with a file structure that I've used for years with no problems, arranging files into folders and sub-folders with lots of keywords.  All was going smoothly but the last few imports, luckily only a handful of images each, haven't worked.  LR seems to repeat the import of previous images rather than the new ones.  Example -- I try to import 6 new images, select only those I want imported, add my keywords and hit import.  LR then starts repeating the images from the or a previous import.  Sometimes it overlaps the previous with a few of the new.
> 
> With a few thousand left to import, I've got to get this figured out.  Any help will be MUCH appreciated.


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## Linwood Ferguson

timpr said:


> When I tried to import 2 different cards from the same date, that created duplicate files (with the same filename i.e. 20181104-untitled-2.DNG ) that continued to reference the first import. When I looked into the folder, both sets of photos were there with the same filenames, even though in lightroom only the first import was visible.



How could two files be in the same folder on disk with the same name?


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## LouieSherwin

Ferguson said:


> How could two files be in the same folder on disk with the same name?



I think that Tim did not include the file sequence number or something similar  in the rename template to give the unique names.

-louie


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## Bathgate

Operating System:MacOS Sierra
Exact Lightroom Version (Help menu > System Info):  LR Classic CC release 7.2

Just got back from a photo trip with a few thousand images on SD cards.  Been importing and organizing.  I work with a file structure that I've used for years with no problems, arranging files into folders and sub-folders with lots of keywords.  All was going smoothly but the last few imports, luckily only a handful of images each, haven't worked.  LR seems to repeat the import of previous images rather than the new ones.  Example -- I try to import 6 new images, select only those I want imported, add my keywords and hit import.  LR then starts repeating the images from the or a previous import.  Sometimes it overlaps the previous with a few of the new.  

With a few thousand left to import, I've got to get this figured out.  Any help will be MUCH appreciated.


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## timpr

Ferguson said:


> How could two files be in the same folder on disk with the same name?


Thanks. I'm trying to systematically recreate the event with images... will report back.


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## Philippe Coudé du Foresto

Il you rename files in import, one way to be sure to have a unique file name is to include <ImportNumber> and <FileNumber> in the file name.


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## timpr

timpr said:


> This may not be your issue, but I just solved a similar problem. I had set a custom import to re-name the files on import. When I tried to import 2 different cards from the same date, that created duplicate files (with the same filename i.e. 20181104-untitled-2.DNG ) that continued to reference the first import. When I looked into the folder, both sets of photos were there with the same filenames, even though in lightroom only the first import was visible.
> 
> Here is an example of a test I just ran. 2 different objects photographed on to 2 different SD disks, 4 photos each. SD disks were reformatted before photos. This is on one camera, but the same issue happened on 2 different cameras.


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## timpr

Ferguson said:


> How could two files be in the same folder on disk with the same name?


I saw in the process that the files had the same names, but not the same extensions. It may be that when it got to the point of writing the files with the same names, and the OS file system stopped it,  that is what messed up the LR script that runs the import.


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## Linwood Ferguson

LouieSherwin said:


> I think that Tim did not include the file sequence number or something similar  in the rename template to give the unique names.



My question is not about lightroom but what's on disk.  If there's no unique name, neither Mac nor Windows, so far as I know, will let you have two files of the same name in the same folder.  Makes me think I did not understand the question.


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## LouieSherwin

@Ferguson Seems that they have the same base name but different extensions CR2 vs DNG. 

@timpr : Per @Philippe Coudé du Foresto you should consider including something in your rename template that will generate unique names for your files. I think that using the camera generated sequence number is the easiest.

-louie


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## Philippe Coudé du Foresto

LouieSherwin said:


> I think that using the camera generated sequence number is the easiest


Unfortunately,it's not a garantee. Usually, the camera counter has 4 digits. When it reaches 9999, the camera restarts it at 1, which mays leads to duplicate file names.
Also, if you use several memory cards, or use a memory card coming from an other camera, depending of the camera settings, the camera can use the next number from the card which might overlap the numbres from the previous card. For exemple, if in card A the counter was left at 665 and you use card B with a counter left at 354, the next file name will have 355 as counter, not 666. Again, this might leads to duplicate file name.


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## LouieSherwin

Yes I understand that it is not perfect, however, I have found that when using the the full date YYYYMMDD and the camera sequence number in the new name that I rarely have a name conflict.  I regularly import from three separate cameras. Only once in the last 10 years have I had two cameras use the same sequences on the same day. 

There may be other workflows where this does not work.

-louie


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