# Editors Greyed Out



## AaronP65 (Sep 25, 2015)

Hi All

This morning I awoke to find that I have lost the ability to edit in any of my external plugins such as Google Nik and Elements in my copy of Lightroom 5.7.  When I select a photo and use "edit in" every option is greyed out.  Yesterday all worked fine so it is a little frustrating I have gone so far as to reinstall my Google NIK software but I am still having the same issue.  Is this something that has happened to anyone and if so is there a fix?


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## AaronP65 (Sep 25, 2015)

Hi All

Sorry I have tracked down the trouble and discovered that when you accidently uplug the power from your External HD if using for your main depository of pictures that though you pictures show up as smart previews you cannot edit them.  hope this doesn't happen to anyone else as I spent several hours this morning chasing my tail.


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## Hal P Anderson (Sep 25, 2015)

Welcome to the forum.

Is that image perhaps missing? That will surely cause that symptom. What happens when you go into the develop module to edit that picture?


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## AaronP65 (Sep 25, 2015)

Thanks Hal

Because I have smart preview for all I could edit in Lightroom just not use external editors.  I guess there isn't an obvious clue as to whether the image is a smart preview or maybe I just missed this in my frustration this morning?


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## Hal P Anderson (Sep 25, 2015)

The "Smart Preview" indicator can be found underneath the histogram.


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## clee01l (Sep 25, 2015)

Hal P Anderson said:


> The "Smart Preview" indicator can be found underneath the histogram.


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## williamtod (Sep 29, 2015)

I'm having the same issue.  Is there a way to 're boot' or something so that you can edit Smart Previews in LR while your master images are on an external drive?  That's one of the benefits of Smart Previews and that goes away if your external drive gets accidentally unplugged?  seems like a major drawback to something so minor.  any advice?  thanks.


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## Johan Elzenga (Sep 29, 2015)

williamtod said:


> I'm having the same issue.  Is there a way to 're boot' or something so that you can edit Smart Previews in LR while your master images are on an external drive?  That's one of the benefits of Smart Previews and that goes away if your external drive gets accidentally unplugged?  seems like a major drawback to something so minor.  any advice?  thanks.



It's not minor, it's fundamental. When you edit an image in an external editor, you send a rendered image to that editor. External editors aren't metadata editors like Lightroom. If the original is not available, you would only be able to send a rendered image the size of a smart preview, and that would obviously cause a lot of confusion. You also would not get the full sized result when you reconnect your images. That must be the reason why Adobe chose to disable external editors if you only have smart previews to work on. 

You could export a rendered image yourself (with the same size limitation, of course), and import it into the catalog again. That makes it a new master, so that will allow you to use it with all your external editors. Of course that also means that the result is not magically going to be updated to full size when you reconnect the images, but if you can live with the smaller version than that's an option.


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## Hal P Anderson (Sep 29, 2015)

Welcome to the forum. 

Are you saying that you can't edit images in LR when you both have smart previews built and have your masters on an unplugged external drive? That should work just fine, and if it isn't working, something isn't right. 

The problem that the OP had was that he couldn't send his files to an external editor if the masters weren't available, which is a logical design choice on Adobe's part.


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## williamtod (Sep 29, 2015)

Hal P Anderson said:


> Welcome to the forum.
> 
> Are you saying that you can't edit images in LR when you both have smart previews built and have your masters on an unplugged external drive? That should work just fine, and if it isn't working, something isn't right.
> 
> The problem that the OP had was that he couldn't send his files to an external editor if the masters weren't available, which is a logical design choice on Adobe's part.



Thanks for the replies. 
Yes, that is correct. I have created Smart Previews and the original images are on a Seagate external drive. Even with drive connected I'm not able to edit with an external editor (Nik, On 1 etc) but I am able to edit the image in the LR develop module. Not sure if I'm just noticing this or it's always been this way. I am able to use external editors if it says original + smart preview. Could it be the way I'm importing from my external drive. I usually just 'add' photos from their location and do not 'copy as DNG ' I do have thousands of images on my external drive that I've been moving around and trying to organize. Maybe that is screwing things up?  Really appreciate the help!


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## Johan Elzenga (Sep 29, 2015)

Sounds like Lightroom has lost the connection to the original images, because of that moving around and organizing you've been doing (outside of Lightroom, I suspect).


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