# Corrupt files in Lightroom



## boog69 (May 10, 2010)

Guys and gals, I've got what I hope is not a serious problem. I've never had this happen before. The last two times I've imported into Lightroom, some of my files are showing to be corrupt. I don't believe it's the cards(Sandisk Ultra II). The first time I imported, the file wouldn't show corrupt until I opened in Develop module. It was fine in filmstrip at bottom and when I opened in develop and started adjusting, it would get those really bright funky colors all over the screen and some of the pictures would go completely black.
On the second import, the pics were fine as I came home and started working on pictures(different CF card) and no problems at all. I went a couple of days and got on tonight and darn if it didn't start happening again. I can open pics in the my pictures folder and they look fine. I can open in CS2 and develop and they are fine. It just happens in Lightroom. I shoot in Raw which I don't believe has anything to do with it. I believe everyone probably knows what I'm talking about but if need screen shots, I'll do it as soon as possible if someone will jog my memory on how to do it. These have fortunately been snapshots of kids fieldtrip and nothing to awful important. Any help would greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time. I've got version 2.5 and my colorspace is Srgb.


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## Brad Snyder (May 10, 2010)

boog, welcome to forums.

Without trying to be a Lr fanboi, we've never seen a convincing case of Lr corrupting photos unassisted. Lr is aces at finding existing corruption tho'. Not saying your problem isn't real, but it's probably in the rest of your system, not Lr.

Tell us more about your import workflow, and the equipment you use. Do you use a card reader, or straight from camera? Import from card, or copy to HD and import in place, etc. Stuff like that. We find a lot of this comes down to card readers, cables, hard disks and/or memory cards starting to have problems.

Two things to think about. With one arcane exception(which is disabled by default), Lr *never* *ever* writes to your raw files. So, that makes it pretty hard for Lr to mangle a raw file. Lr uses OS services for all the rest of its copy/move/delete/rename, etc. file operations, so the problem is not likely there, either, or it would be showing up everywhere. 

If you have a small screen capture file, &lt;25'kb, you can attach it by going to the advanced response mode, by clicking 'Preview' below the text box. At lower left, below the Preview mode text entry box, Click Additional Options, which has an attachment tool. 

Keep the dialogue going, we'll help you get to the bottom of it.


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## boog69 (May 11, 2010)

Ok, I use a Canon 2'D and both sets of shots are with a 17-4'L 4.'. I have a Sandisk Multi card reader. When I insert the card, the pop up box comes up and I import to my folder with keywords, new filenames etc. Upon import, I usually start fixing pics and will either sync or copy and paste based on lighting. While importing, I will back up to external hard drive. My card reader is probably 5-6 years old. As for as cables, pretty much use what comes with the equipment other than cable from computer to monitor(used good cable for that). Thanks for help and let me know if you need anything else.


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## boog69 (May 11, 2010)

I stand corrected. I opened the pictures up that were corrupt in Lightroom in CS2 and they were corrupt as well. The same ones. I've had these cards for a while but bought from reputable places. Now the RAW file looks fine in the My Pictures folder but show corrupt when open certain ones in Lightroom and CS2. I just have a hard time with two cards going bad at the same time. Would you all agree?


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## Brad Snyder (May 11, 2010)

Seems weird for two cards to go bad together. How do you format them? When you're looking at raw files in 'My Pictures', what tool are you using? I ask because many tools only show you the embedded JPG preview and not an actual rendered raw file.

Maybe buy or borrow a new card reader, and see if that helps.


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## clee01l (May 11, 2010)

Cards can be sensitive if you do not handle them properly.  Removing a card from the card reader before Windows has closed the write operations on the reader can damage it. In the camera,. the photo is first written to a buffer and only later does the camera write the buffer contents to the card. This usually only takes seconds. But if you turn the camera off before the write operation is complete or worse, yank the card from its slot, you can short the card and damage it in that way. 


> I've had these cards for a while


 Even the best cards will fail eventually. Sandisk is a reputable card ,but it does have exposed contacts that can get wet with sweat, set in hot sun, or other conditions that may affect the life of the card. 
Are these SD, SDHC or CF cards? Trying another reader as brad has suggested might make a difference, but I would not hold my breath.


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## boog69 (May 11, 2010)

I use Microsoft Raw Image Viewer to view raw files. I always reformat card in the camera before each use. That being said, the first card that I had trouble with was full and for some reason I hit delete and then all. I freaked out! Then I went back and reformatted. Didn't help I'm sure. That's the first time I've done that in a long while. I'll try a new card reader. Will get one tomorrow and let you know but I'm guessing it's the cards. Will also try another card. Thanks for your help.


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## Victoria Bampton (May 11, 2010)

It's not necessarily the cards, although that's probably a likely option. Other things can also go wrong too. Considering it's happening to 2 cards, and it's an old card reader, I'd suspect the reader first. They're not the most stable of devices, and often it's the cable rather than the reader itself that goes wrong.


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## boog69 (May 18, 2010)

Ok I'm a little slow. I finally got another CF card reader and that wasn't the problem. I had deleted the files and uploaded them again and the corrupt files were still there. I have since tried a third card and had the same problem so I'm ruling out my cards but am getting a friend to try on his computer and see if he gets the corrupt files. If not CF cards, could it be video card? Can a shutter going bad on camera cause this? Thanks for your time.


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## Jim Wilde (May 18, 2010)

As you seem to have eliminated CF cards or your card reader as being the source of the problem, I think at this stage I would be starting to be concerned that my camera was the cause of the trouble. The fact that you can see the jpeg previews OK both inside and outside Lightroom sort of implies that the actual raw sensor data may be the issue. You are doing absolutely the right thing in trying a 'corrupted' file on a different PC....an alternative approach would be trying raw files from a *different* camera on your own PC. If the same problem crops up, you can eliminate the camera and start looking in more detail at your PC.

Exactly how persistent is the problem....is it happening on ALL new raw files, or only some out of many? If the latter, have you tried to identify a common strand, e.g. same combination of ISO/Aperture/Shutter Speed? You said in an earlier post that you were using your 17-4'L lens, is that a common factor, i.e. do you get corruption using a different lens?

Let us know what happens on your friend's PC, or if you can try raw files from a different camera on yours.


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## boog69 (May 18, 2010)

It is just some files out of many.  It's happened on two different cards with the 17-4' and my last card was with my 7'-3'' IS. Total of three cards. It has just happened in my last three shoots on those cards. I'll tell you a funny thing( well not so funny ) but I uploaded pics last night and some showed corrupt. I deleted them off my computer and reloaded them and I believe different files showed corrupt. I'll have to check for sure tonight. I was spitting nails last night and it just dawned on me that it looked liked differnt files. Like I said, I'll have to check tonight. I believe that would mean it was the computer wouldn' it?


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## Jim Wilde (May 18, 2010)

[quote author=boog69 link=topic=9778.msg66665#msg66665 date=1274194364]
I believe that would mean it was the computer wouldn' it?
[/quote]

Quite possibly, but you need that confirmation test first, i.e. raw files from your camera/card imported to Lightroom on another PC, OR raw files from a different camera and card imported into Lightroom on your PC. If it's your PC causing the problem then everything will be fine on your friends PC, and everything will NOT be fine using files from a different camera on your PC.

Out of interest, am I correct in thinking that you import directly from card into Lightroom (i.e. you do not first copy the raw files from the CF card to a folder on your hard drive, and then import from hard drive to Lightroom)? During this import you would use the "Copy files to new location and add to catalog" option, yes? Specifying the 'new location' as a folder on your hard drive? And during the same import process you use the option to take a backup copy of the files being imported, the copy location being a folder on an external hard drive?

If I have understood your import workflow properly, could I ask if you have tried to import one of the 'corrupted' files from the backup copy on the external drive (obviously you would need to remove the corrupted original from the catalog first)?

One other thought.....have you tried taking your ACR Cache file out of the picture? If the corruption is happening there it might neatly explain why you have corruption appearing only in Develop in Lightroom and in Photoshop....the cache file is, I believe, shared between the two applications. Perhaps worth a try?


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## boog69 (May 19, 2010)

Ok, I finally got a buddy to check my cards. He imorted into lightroom 3 and the pictures were fine. He said he would check again tonight. Reader good, cards good which means camera is good. This leads me to computer! Would it be the video card? Hard drive going bad? Jim, your exactly right on workflow and I do bac up to external hard drive. You lost me on the ACR cache file though. Could you explain a little more? Thanks for help.


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## Victoria Bampton (May 19, 2010)

You said you import to an internal hard drive and backup up external at the same time? Do both copies show the same problem on the same photos?

I'd be suspecting hard drive connections, hard drives, or ram as a next port of call.


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## boog69 (May 20, 2010)

Victoria, thanks for your reply. When I view pics in My pictures on my computer's hard drive and on the external hard drive, they show up fine. It's just when I open in photoshop or Lightroom that the files show to be corrupted. It's also just a few pics and the rest are fine. I've even had some be fine and when I pull the pic up in develop and try to paste changes from the previous pic, the pic will pop up corrupt and it was fine before. This just seems to be happening on my last three imports. My other pics in Lightroom show up fine with no corruption. I opened up a few folders and all was good with those pictures. Thanks again for your help.


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## Victoria Bampton (May 20, 2010)

My Pictures is just looking at the JPEG preview embedded into all raw files, and they often escape corruption.

If you open the same photo - the one on the internal and the copy on the external - into LR, do they both show exactly the same corruption?

And if you open one of those photos into other raw processing software, are they still corrupted? DPP would have come free with your camera, or you can uploaded it using www.yousendit.com and one of us will take a look.

That will determine whether the corruption's occurring at the time of import or later, and whether it's a problem with CS2/LR or whether it's inherent to that file.


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## boog69 (May 21, 2010)

Victoria, I deleted the pics in lightroom and imported them form my external hard drive into lightroom. For about an hour it looked good as no pics were corrupted. Then one picture showed corruption and when I switched to another picture, it showed corruption and the other picture went back to normal. I swapped back and forth between the two and the corruption went back and forth between the two pictures until it finally stayed on one. I would pull the picture up and it would turn yellow. I would then pull up other picture and it would turn purple but other would go back to normal. Then back to other picture and it would turn back yellow and other would go back to normal. The same pictures are NOT corrupt as before. As for now, seems to be a lot less corruption importing from external drive but it is still there. Any Ideas? Thanks for your time. Also, the same pictures in lightroom show corrupt in DPP from CS2.


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## Mark Sirota (May 21, 2010)

Hmm -- file corruption generally wouldn't show up as a color cast. How does the histogram look?

- If the part of the histogram that's normally white has a color cast, then you have a corrupt monitor profile.

- If the image has a heavy color cast but the histogram doesn't show it, then it's a display problem of some kind, possibly a corrupt monitor profile. I've never seen this happen, but maybe it's possible.

- If the image has a heavy color cast and the histogram shows it too, then you may have a corrupt file.


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## Brad Snyder (May 21, 2010)

If you can do it, a screen shot, suggested earlier, would be very helpful. These various potential problems have very distinct looks, which can help differentiate them. A shot encompassing any normal and corrupted regions of the image, which also includes the Lr histogram would be most excellent.


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## boog69 (May 22, 2010)

I've got an account on yousendit. Can someone give me a rundown of how to use it? Thanks.


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## sizzlingbadger (May 22, 2010)

You can attach screen shots to your posts on this forum.


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## clee01l (May 22, 2010)

[quote author=boog69 link=topic=9778.msg66866#msg66866 date=12745''185]
I've got an account on yousendit. Can someone give me a rundown of how to use it? Thanks.
[/quote]I think 'yousendit' is for transfering files between individuals. What the others are asking for is a shot of your LR screen view (A view of the image as it appears inside LR). I do not know if the 'Snipping Tool" is included on your version of Windows, but this or something like it is what you can used to create a JPEG of the contents of your screen. If you do not have the "Snipping Tool" on XP, you can use a variety of Freeware imaging applications to take a screen Shot and convert it to JPEG to attach to one of your replies.


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## Mark Sirota (May 22, 2010)

Victoria also offered to take a look at the file if he sends it to her through yousendit. You can also send to me if you like, I'm &lt;firstname&gt; at &lt;lastname&gt; dot org (fill in my first and last names).


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## boog69 (May 25, 2010)

Here is a screenshot of lightroom for one of pictures. I'll put more up in a while. I've come across a few other things since last post. I imported pics from my daughters p & s. All jpeg. Pictures went through fine with no corruption. I bought a new card and imported about 15' pics. About five showed corruption. I went through and made a few adjustments to my pics and when I went to export. It told me my files is offline or missing. Well the raw files are under the my pictures folder. I export jpeg maximum to a file called export in the original folder.


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## boog69 (May 25, 2010)

Another couple.


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## boog69 (May 10, 2010)

Guys and gals, I've got what I hope is not a serious problem. I've never had this happen before. The last two times I've imported into Lightroom, some of my files are showing to be corrupt. I don't believe it's the cards(Sandisk Ultra II). The first time I imported, the file wouldn't show corrupt until I opened in Develop module. It was fine in filmstrip at bottom and when I opened in develop and started adjusting, it would get those really bright funky colors all over the screen and some of the pictures would go completely black.
On the second import, the pics were fine as I came home and started working on pictures(different CF card) and no problems at all. I went a couple of days and got on tonight and darn if it didn't start happening again. I can open pics in the my pictures folder and they look fine. I can open in CS2 and develop and they are fine. It just happens in Lightroom. I shoot in Raw which I don't believe has anything to do with it. I believe everyone probably knows what I'm talking about but if need screen shots, I'll do it as soon as possible if someone will jog my memory on how to do it. These have fortunately been snapshots of kids fieldtrip and nothing to awful important. Any help would greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time. I've got version 2.5 and my colorspace is Srgb.


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## boog69 (May 25, 2010)

Another couple and I'll quit. You guys get the picture.


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## boog69 (May 25, 2010)

Ok. One more. I thought this was pretty &gt;:(.


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## boneywhitefoot (May 25, 2010)

could you try one more thing??
choose those same images on the card using explorer,just copy them straight to your desktop rename them and then import them into L/R and see if the corruption is identical


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## boog69 (May 25, 2010)

Ok boneywhitefoot, I did what you said and the corruption was not on pictures at all. I've deleted pics before and then imported them back in and different pics show corruption. Any ideas? Thanks for help.


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## boog69 (May 25, 2010)

Mark, I sent you some files to look at. Victoria, if you would like some of files, please send me your yousendit address. I tried exporting some pics from other catalogs in lightroom with the corrupted pics and they actually went. Any ideas why the others wouldn't go? Thanks again.


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## boneywhitefoot (May 25, 2010)

atleast we have a work around till one of the l/r gurus gets it sorted for you.


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## Victoria Bampton (May 25, 2010)

[quote author=boog69 link=topic=9778.msg66997#msg66997 date=1274761766]
Victoria, if you would like some of files, please send me your yousendit address.
[/quote]

If Mark's happy following this up, I'll leave it in his capable hands. You won't get an awful lot of sense out of me at the moment, as I'm working 24/7 to get the book finished.


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## Mark Sirota (May 25, 2010)

I have your files, and will take a look at them sometime today.


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## Mark Sirota (May 25, 2010)

The three files you sent me are JPEGs, apparently generated by Lightroom. Are these exports from Lightroom?

It would help to see the originals as well (raw or JPEG, whatever came out of the camera).


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## boog69 (May 26, 2010)

Mark, yes they are generated by lightroom. The corrupt files that I exported out. Maybe two of hundreds of the raw files show a little corruption. I'll try and send the raw files of the corrupt ones I sent.


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## boog69 (May 26, 2010)

Hey Mark. Raw files sent. Thanks again.


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## boog69 (May 29, 2010)

Hey Mark, did I send you the wrong files again? I still haven't come with a solution yet. Thanks for your time.


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## ACHABMP (May 29, 2010)

Hello. I got a similar problems of corrupted files. Here my experience:

I have LR 2.7, and keep my archives separeted by years. Archives 2'1' started importing corrupted raw files two months ago, from two differet cameras (Eos 5D and Eos 7) and two differents cards. Previous imported files were ok. The corrupted files seemed ok in the library and then, after a while, appeared corrupted in Develop. Also corrupted in ACR.
I tested cards and hard disk, but found no problems. No problems neither with other LR archives. So my feeling was there was kind of corruption in 2'1' archive. I tried creating a new 2'1' archive, and since then things go perfectly!

What's your opinion about?

Hope my English is sufficiently clear! 

Thanks

Mauro Poggi


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## Mark Sirota (May 30, 2010)

Huh. I thought I replied minutes after you sent the raw files, yet my reply appears to be missing. Sorry!

The short answer: These raw files are indeed corrupt. In all three cases, the corruption in within the raw data itself; the metadata is fine, including the embedded preview.

This sort of corruption is usually caused by a bad card, a bad card reader, or a bad cable connecting the card reader to the computer. If you still have the cards and they haven't been written over, I'd try getting the files off them using some other mechanism.

If that doesn't work, you can extract the embedded previews, so at least you'll have something. From this camera they're not full size or top quality, but it would be something. I used exiftool. Jeffrey Friedl has an online EXIF viewer that can do it too. But neither of these will automatically attach the metadata to the JPEG. The most complete tool I know of is Instant JPEG From Raw from Michael Tapes at RawWorkflow.com. It's free, but you need to register with the site to download it.


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## boog69 (May 30, 2010)

I bought a Sandisk Ultra III 4 gb card and a new card reader and tried that and still showed up corrupt. I had the new card reader plugged into a new multi port USB. The only thing not new was the extra USB ports on my computer. I have four extra and then there is three on the motherboard. I am not sure which one the multi USB port is plugged into but will check and try another one. Could this possibly be problem? I've used three Sandisk Ultra II cards and the new one and they have all showed up corrupt. As before, I can't see all the cards going bad at same time. How else would you suggest getting pics of cards as I have them all? I also have the Instant Jpeg from Raw. Thanks again Mark for your and everyone's help.


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## Brad Snyder (May 30, 2010)

I'll second Mark's verdict, that the problem is hardware related somewhere. Lr doesn't do anything to raw files at all. (Except for one rare edge case, not applicable here). When Lr copies or moves files, it uses the standard OS calls to do that. 

Boog, I think you're correct in trying to identify the common factor, if that's an addon USB module or adapter, that's a possible culprit. Don't forget that other devices on the USB bus can affect each other as well, so you might want to try an experiment with as many other accessories temporarily disabled as possible.


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## skypix (May 10, 2011)

*Corruption*

I've had the same problem with LR, currently 2.7 but had it with earlier versions too.  It's intermittent, it's not the card, it's not the camera.  I'll do an edit of a shoot of maybe 800 images, cull it down to 150, start developing, and bam, all of a sudden RAW files (I only work with RAW, no jpegs created in camera) go all crazy with pinkish lines over all or part of the image.
When I completely erase the image from the catalog (but not the disk to which I've transferred the images from the camera's CF card, through my Sandisk reader or through the camera), then re-import it, it's fine.  I've not had an instance of re-importing an image and having it still be corrupted, which rules out everything...except Lightroom, or hardware overload on my system.
Here's what I think's happening: I believe the system resources get overloaded.  Now this is not an easy call to make, but usually it seems to happen with I have Firefox open, and a music program like iTunes or Windows Media Player playing music.  When I get a corrupted file, I close LR, close all my other programs, then reopen LR, erase the corrupted file, reimported it from the hard drive, and that's the end of my problems...until the next time I get tired of working without music, or leave Firefox open, or both, and bam, files -- eventually -- start to corrupt.
It'll happen sometimes when I'm developing an image, and that image goes blooey.  But sometimes it's the image next to it...I can see it in the filmstrip.  Or another image somewhere else in the grid in Library, but mostly it seems to happen in Develop.  I'll pay more attention and if it turns out to be different than what I've written above, I'll revise that.
My hardware:  Pretty doggone stable (crashes maybe once a month or two) self-build: Asus P5WDH Deluxe, 8 GB DDR 2 memory, two Dell 22" HD monitors, new video card ATI Radeon 5700 with 1GB onboard (it did the same thing with my old card though, a nVidia Gforce 7600 GS with smaller monitors), quad core 6600 CPU, that's the basics.  Also Vista 64 bit, which is frankly very stable, I like it a lot.

I don't believe I've had the problem except when I have other programs running.  I keep succumbing to temptation by working in LR, then opening a music program and/or Firefox.  Not long after, the problems start with corruption.View attachment 542


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## Victoria Bampton (May 11, 2011)

Hi skypix

Dodgy ram can cause non-standard corruption scenarios like this, and would support the theory of it only happening when you have more programs open too.  Maybe run memtest, something like that, to see if that's likely?


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## skypix (May 11, 2011)

Hi Victoria, thanks for that idea, I hadn't thought of that. I've got 4 two-gig sticks of premium OCZ ram I've had in there for 2-3 years...maybe that's the culprit. I'll run a memtest 4 shur. I thought maybe a drive was going bad, did quick diagnostic on that which was green light good so cud B the ram. 

Lightroom queen, sounds impressive. . What do you think of LR v3?  Worth the $/hassle to learn?  

Tnx again!


Jim


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## sizzlingbadger (May 11, 2011)

skypix said:


> My hardware:  Pretty doggone stable (crashes maybe once a month or two) self-build: Asus P5WDH Deluxe, 8 GB DDR 2 memory, two Dell 22" HD monitors, new video card ATI Radeon 5700 with 1GB onboard (it did the same thing with my old card though, a nVidia Gforce 7600 GS with smaller monitors), quad core 6600 CPU, that's the basics.  Also Vista 64 bit, which is frankly very stable, I like it a lot.View attachment 542



I have had one crash in the past 6 years. Once a month is far from stable in my book :disgusted:

I would definitely check the hardware out.


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## Victoria Bampton (May 11, 2011)

skypix said:


> Lightroom queen, sounds impressive. . What do you think of LR v3?  Worth the $/hassle to learn?


 
LOL Jim!  It was a nickname I was given on a forum a few years ago and it stuck!  

LR3 - well worth the time.  If you're already on 2.7, there's not a vast learning curve to pick up the changes and improvements.


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## skypix (May 12, 2011)

sizzlingbadger...man, that name conjurs all kinds of thoughts, very funny.  Thanks for the thought, I'm running a memory test today.  I forgot to add that, although I have a 750W Corsair power supply, I also have 5 internal HDD, four external HDD, and two DL DVD burners, four of my DVD ports are in use, and so I am no doubt running this machine at the max.  It's been very reliable, so even though it occasionally locks up and I have to reboot, it's always when I have Firefox open and other memory hogs like Photoshop or Lightroom, WordPerfect (another classic system crasher for the last several years and across three different platforms I've owned) so even if my memory proves to be okay, I'll consider my system's power load to be a "usual suspect".
Lightroom Queen, thanks for the vote for LR3...I do love LR 2.7, it's streamlined and enhanced the quality of my imaging workflow considerably over trying to work with that ridiculous Bridge, although I still have sticky sliders using my Wacom tablet...and I read online that LR3 doesn't solve that issue but I'm used to it now.  Love the program, it's amazing all that it lets you do in one place.  I'll check out your blog!


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## Kiwigeoff (May 12, 2011)

Hope this gets sorted Jim! LR3 has the best raw processing - a quantum leap from LR2.
While on names - your Skypix and signature is most interesting. I spend an amount of time photographing hot air balloons from both the ground and the air - tough life, I get a free ride every month or two!!


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