# Lightroom has encountered problems reading this photo



## snapdragn

I keep getting an intermittent error saying "Lightroom has encountered problems reading this photo. You will not be able to make adjustments to the photo." However I don't know why this is popping up. As far as I can tell there are no issues with the file or hard drive. It's readable in other applications and if I restart LR the notification goes away.

I'm running on LR Classic CC, using RAW files. Hard disk is an external TB drive. On Mac / high Sierra.


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## clee01l

Welcome to the forum.
 Are you getting these messages repeatedly on the same file or files?  Other apps may only be reading the embedded JPEG preview and not the RAW data  What happens when you try to open the suspect file with a RAW data converter like ACR or On1 Photo RAW?  Files on a disk drive can suffer "bit rot" over time.   You may need to restore these files from backup to get a clean copy.


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## snapdragn

I don't believe this is bit rot. I can open up the files fully in PS using ACR even though LR says it's not readable. The message may appear on a file then disappear after quitting and restarting Lightroom. None of the files exhibit any sort of artifacts associated with bit rot.

My best guess is somehow Lightroom or some other process is temporarily messing up the file permissions so that LR can't read it.


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## Johan Elzenga

Lightroom uses a path the the files, so my guess would be that there is something going wrong with that path. Some time ago somebody had a problem with scanned images. As soon as the image was imported, Lightroom would show a 'missing image' error instead of building a preview. It turned out that this person was using a slash in the file name, like 'image/2018/04/19.tiff'. For MacOS X a slash in a file name is perfectly acceptable, but Lightroom uses the slash as the separator in its paths. So Lightroom was looking for a file called '19.TIFF', in the folder hierarchy 'image/2018/04'. Both obviously didn't exist.

We regularly see another problem that is known as the 'capitalisation problem' or 'case sensitive problem'. Basically, the problem is that while MacOS X and Windows are case-insensitive, Lightroom is case-sensitive. That means that if you have a folder called 'Pictures', and at the same level another folder called 'PICTURES' or 'pictures', then MacOS X is perfectly OK with that. It will see both folders as one and the same, and display the images in both folders as being in one and the same folder. So in the Finder you'll see only one of the two (let's assume 'Pictures') and you'll never see the other. But Lightroom is case-sensitive, so Lightroom does see the difference between an image in 'Pictures' and an image in 'PICTURES'. The problem usually manifests itself when people start importing, or when they send an image to Photoshop. That image then suddenly appears in a subfolder that is shown at the wrong level and outside the expected hierarchy. I could imagine that the "Lightroom has encountered problems reading this photo" could also occur in certain cases.


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## Hal P Anderson

If the message sometimes appears on a file and sometimes doesn't _on that same file_, then you almost certainly have some kind of hardware problem. That's how hardware errors usually manifest themselves: intermittently. Eventually, they progress to the point where things are obviously broken, but it generally is best to nip it in the bud by replacing the faulty component.


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## jcothron

Hal P Anderson said:


> If the message sometimes appears on a file and sometimes doesn't _on that same file_, then you almost certainly have some kind of hardware problem. That's how hardware errors usually manifest themselves: intermittently. Eventually, they progress to the point where things are obviously broken, but it generally is best to nip it in the bud by replacing the faulty component.



I've seen this issue on a couple of occasions, on a new very up to date system. I've only seen it....ever...on Lr 7.2 and later so it is something relatively new occurring. 

I'm also seeing a new issue with 7.3 very consistently. If I leave Lr open for 2 or 3 hours while I'm away, it will hang up completely and have to be "killed" and reopened to continue working. Before I say that is a Lightroom problem for sure though I need to isolate some plugins I use and see if that makes a difference. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## snapdragn

@JohanElzenga I do use capitalization in my folder names. Like "20180101 - Great Sand Dunes", but I've been doing this for years and not had this problem until recently. It also only affects 1 or 2 images in my folder not everything.

@Hal P Anderson  I'm going back and re-verifying all of my raw files by hash. Got most of the way through and not had any errors. I suppose it might a RAM error too but I haven't had any crashes etc.

Now that I think about it, I believe this typically happens right after I import files from a shoot and start working on them. I may have been trying to access the file while it's building previews. I'll try to keep better notes about what I was doing when I next see it.


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## Johan Elzenga

snapdragn said:


> I may have been trying to access the file while it's building previews.


That should not cause a problem.


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## Victoria Bampton

It's not just you. I saw this with a single photo a couple of days ago. File was absolutely fine, opened ok in ACR, but couldn't open in LR. I wrote the metadata out to the file, removed it from the catalog and reimported it and it was fine. I haven't been able to reproduce it again since, but there could well be a bug here.


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## Lightbrigade

jcothron said:


> I've seen this issue on a couple of occasions, on a new very up to date system. I've only seen it....ever...on Lr 7.2 and later so it is something relatively new occurring.
> 
> I'm also seeing a new issue with 7.3 very consistently. If I leave Lr open for 2 or 3 hours while I'm away, it will hang up completely and have to be "killed" and reopened to continue working. Before I say that is a Lightroom problem for sure though I need to isolate some plugins I use and see if that makes a difference.
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


This is a new issue for me, since the new update.  Before this I have never had a problem.  There are a few problems with this update.  I received an error on export and LR refused to export my files, I had to use Bridge, then PS/raw.  Like everyone on the Forum, I don't have time to screw around with LR errors, it's and expensive problem.  I use OnOne too, so is it time to switch?  My photography is on and exterior hard drive, everything is up to date, I run Windows 10/64 and I'm operating a Nikon D850.  The files I'm refering to are not even as large as they could have been!


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## Victoria Bampton

Hi Lightbrigade. Is it happening with all photos, or intermittently?


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## Lightbrigade

Intermittently.


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## Lightbrigade

Victoria Bampton said:


> Hi Lightbrigade. Is it happening with all photos, or intermittently?


working with it this morning and it doesent want to upload work to a folder, tried top end the upload and it crashed my machine.  I feel like I have to hand hold it through the process. I have to say the next project I work on, it will be with OnOne.  I've been with Adobe since PS2...


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## Victoria Bampton

It's not a problem we're hearing much about, so it may be specific to your machine... unless, there is one issue on Windows, which is causing issues when drives go to sleep or get disconnected. I wonder if this is related. When you say you have to hand hold it, what are you doing to make sure it works? And when you say it doesn't want to upload to a folder, what happened when you tried?


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## Lightbrigade

You are probably right. I may have a bad connection. I ordered new cords and uploaded my work directly  to my machine, so I'll let you know if this works. Thx!!


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## baxterbradford

I'm now getting this 'lightroom has encountered problems.. ' occasionally. Has happened twice in last week. Quitting & restarting LR at least once seems to clear the issue. However I'm doing nothing different than I have for the last year! Photos it has happened to have been read perfectly fine, edited and then I get the error message. Odd. Screen shots show error message and then same Library/photo after having Quit & restarted with the error gone. Camera is Fuji GFX50S. Using LR Classic 8.2 (ie latest) OSX Sierra 10.12.6. I spent 10 mins unsuccessfully trying to find my way around Adobe website to try to submit bug report before admitting defeat


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## Victoria Bampton

I'd wonder if the drive is dying Baxter, so make sure your backups are good.


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## Califdan

failing drive was my first thought as well.


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## baxterbradford

Oh I really hope not. Have Time Machine backups... Seems odd that it's LR that can't read it, shut down the software, then it's absolutely fine once reopen. FWIW it's a 3TB iMac Fusion drive, so presumably not cheap! Will try Disk First Aid.


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## Califdan

You can pick up a 3tb external portable HD for around $70 these days.  Whether or not various check/fix disk programs find and fix anything,  $70 bucks is a pretty cheap insurance policy if there is concern that a drive is starting to fail.  It's much less stressful to make a copy of the entire drive you're using onto another drive while the existing drive is still usable.  Waiting for it to stop working altogether and then dealing with it is much more difficult - even with time machine.    Until you get the problem resolved, just refresh the spare drive once or twice a week  _just in case_.   If the main drive never fails, you're out $70 bucks but have a spare drive.  If the main drive fails and time machine does it's thing and recovers all your files from the failed drive onto another drive then again, you're out $70 unless you decide to use that spare as the official drive.    But, if the main drive fails and time machine can't recover the data (maybe some or all of that drive was not included in time machine or the time machine recovery files are on the same failed drive, you will be very happy to have spent $70 and only have to worry about changes you made in the past week or so since the last refresh.

Anyway,  I'm just preaching.  But preaching based on 40 years in Information Technology and getting paid by many clients who didn't worry about this sort of thing till it was too late.

Dan


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## Makespictures

Victoria Bampton said:


> I'd wonder if the drive is dying Baxter, so make sure your backups are good.


I've had this issue intermittently whilst shooting tethered, no pattern to when it happens. Replaced cables, tried different ports. Image is actually fine when I restart Lightroom and reload it. Has there been any other talk about this issue? Can't seem to find much information on it on the web.


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## Victoria Bampton

Makespictures said:


> Image is actually fine when I restart Lightroom and reload it.


That makes me think RAM or GPU is the issue. I would run MemTest to check the RAM, and I'd check the graphics card manufacturer's website for updated drivers.


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## Makespictures

Victoria Bampton said:


> That makes me think RAM or GPU is the issue. I would run MemTest to check the RAM, and I'd check the graphics card manufacturer's website for updated drivers.


Thanks Victoria. Shooting to a different hard drive I did not have any problems. I will look at what you've suggested but I think you might be right about the hard drive being on it's way out.


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## PhilBurton

Califdan said:


> You can pick up a 3tb external portable HD for around $70 these days.  Whether or not various check/fix disk programs find and fix anything,  $70 bucks is a pretty cheap insurance policy if there is concern that a drive is starting to fail.  It's much less stressful to make a copy of the entire drive you're using onto another drive while the existing drive is still usable.  Waiting for it to stop working altogether and then dealing with it is much more difficult - even with time machine.    Until you get the problem resolved, just refresh the spare drive once or twice a week  _just in case_.   If the main drive never fails, you're out $70 bucks but have a spare drive.  If the main drive fails and time machine does it's thing and recovers all your files from the failed drive onto another drive then again, you're out $70 unless you decide to use that spare as the official drive.    But, if the main drive fails and time machine can't recover the data (maybe some or all of that drive was not included in time machine or the time machine recovery files are on the same failed drive, you will be very happy to have spent $70 and only have to worry about changes you made in the past week or so since the last refresh.
> 
> Anyway,  I'm just preaching.  But preaching based on 40 years in Information Technology and getting paid by many clients who didn't worry about this sort of thing till it was too late.
> 
> Dan


Even if it turns out that your disk drive was not the issue, you would be wise to pick up another drive for backup, if only to protect against file corruption caused by faulty RAM.  As Califdan said, and I'm going to repeat for emphasis:

_  $70 bucks is a pretty cheap insurance policy if there is concern that a drive is starting to fail. _

Phil Burton


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