Posted by Phillip Noll on February 9, 2009 at 11:42 PM
While importing photos into lightroom the program has eaten about half a dozen photos (out of 13,000). Some were scanned slides and some were digital images. All were tiff files. The top portion comes through but the rest is black. Anyone else have this happen? I'm on a Mac running Lightroom 2.2. Good thing I had these files backed up on a CD! I'm worried though that I may lose one of my good photos eventually. Its a small percentage but its worrisome.
Posted by Phillip Noll on February 9, 2009 at 11:43 PM
Here's another. (No critique needed ) I know its a crappy photo (old point-n-shoot).
Posted by Bill Pelzmann on February 10, 2009 at 12:59 AM
Phillip, I've only seen that happen with corrupt files.
Can you read those original TIFF files with any other program?
Posted by Nat Coalson on February 10, 2009 at 1:04 AM
Checking them in other apps is essential. Those images look to me like bad files.
In any case, in a basic import Lightroom doesn't modify files as they are imported; it only reads their image data and builds previews. (It's also possible that only the LR previews are bad for these, but I doubt it.)
Lightroom can't work with cmyk files or files with more than 65,000 pixels on the longest side. I could envision situations where LR tries to import a file and only recognizes it can't after already starting. Otherwise, you should be able to get files of any supported format into the LR catalog with no modification whatsoever.
Make sure that when you import existing files on the hard drive that you don't have LR try to convert them etc. or modify them in any way. LR will just add them to the database and try to build previews.
Chances are very slim that Lightroom would corrupt any original files just by importing them; with the processes involved it's not feasible. If you set up the import correctly, LR isn't making any changes to the files.
And in general don't convert files other than camera raw to dng; that can definitely produce some weird results.
Posted by Phillip Noll on February 10, 2009 at 9:59 AM
These files are backed up on CD. When I copy them to my hard drive and then open them in Photoshop CS3 they both work fine. There is nothing wrong with the files that I can tell. But something happened during import into Lightroom. I have not tried to re-import them into Lightroom to see if this happens again. I'll try that tonight.
BTW, when I import files into Lightroom I always have Lightroom convert them to DNG and mover them to another folder. Of course when it gets to a tiff or jpg it does not convert them and I have to do that manually later.
When I click import and the preview window comes up (where you can check which files to import) all the files look fine but once they are actually in Lightroom and being displayed in grid view that is when I first see that 70% of the file is black.
sorry to hear this...good you have it backed up. I import lot of scanned stuff in LR, no problems. Occasional hang up but that is my PC which is 5 years old now.
Posted by Brent Murphy on February 10, 2009 at 11:12 AM
Are the TIF files compressed? I haven't tried, but maybe LR doesn't like ZIP or LZW compressed TIF files?
Posted by Mel Ladewig on February 10, 2009 at 11:17 AM
Phillip,
Lightroom may just be having trouble with the files internally. Before taking any other action, check the file in in photoshop or an appropriate viewer to see if there is really a problem in lightroom. I've read this issue before and this was step one.
Then if the image is OK in other apps, you can try to have lightroom update the thumbnail or delete the image from the catalog and import it again.
Mel-
Posted by Nat Coalson on February 10, 2009 at 12:45 PM
Philip, you need to verify whether or not the problem is with the files on disk or just the previews in Lightroom. Like Mel pointed out there may be files that Lightroom has trouble handling, but this shouldn't affect the file on disk itself. If Lightroom can't properly read a file it will generate bad previews.
If LR can't read the files, look closer at their specs. There may be something different about those files than your other TIFs... like Brent mentioned, compression, etc. (but LR should handle LZW and ZIP compressed TIFs just fine).
Check the files that are currently in the catalog (the ones with the black area) in PS. In Lightroom, select the photo(s) and press Cmd+R ot Ctrl+R. This will show the file(s) on your desktop - Finder or Explorer. Open that file in PS.
Or from within LR you can use Edit in Photoshop, and see what that shows.
If you know for sure the file on disk is OK, try rebuilding the previews in LR and/or take the photo into Develop. You may see error messages that help pinpoint any problems LR is having in processing the file.
Posted by Andrew Yip on February 10, 2009 at 12:51 PM
If you pointed Lightroom at the CDs when you did the import, it's possible some of the files got corrupted in the process of being copied from CD to hard drive. If you re-copied the files before trying them in CS3, you won't see the problem, because the new copy probably succeeded. Try going to the location where Lightroom put the original imported file, and open that one with CS3...if its corrupted in CS3 too, then there's a good chance that a re-import will solve your problem.
Posted by Phillip Noll on February 10, 2009 at 3:03 PM
Thanks for all the suggestions! I'll try some things tonight and see what happens and report back.
Discussion
10 repliesCan you read those original TIFF files with any other program?
In any case, in a basic import Lightroom doesn't modify files as they are imported; it only reads their image data and builds previews. (It's also possible that only the LR previews are bad for these, but I doubt it.)
Lightroom can't work with cmyk files or files with more than 65,000 pixels on the longest side. I could envision situations where LR tries to import a file and only recognizes it can't after already starting. Otherwise, you should be able to get files of any supported format into the LR catalog with no modification whatsoever.
Make sure that when you import existing files on the hard drive that you don't have LR try to convert them etc. or modify them in any way. LR will just add them to the database and try to build previews.
Chances are very slim that Lightroom would corrupt any original files just by importing them; with the processes involved it's not feasible. If you set up the import correctly, LR isn't making any changes to the files.
And in general don't convert files other than camera raw to dng; that can definitely produce some weird results.
BTW, when I import files into Lightroom I always have Lightroom convert them to DNG and mover them to another folder. Of course when it gets to a tiff or jpg it does not convert them and I have to do that manually later.
When I click import and the preview window comes up (where you can check which files to import) all the files look fine but once they are actually in Lightroom and being displayed in grid view that is when I first see that 70% of the file is black.
Lightroom may just be having trouble with the files internally. Before taking any other action, check the file in in photoshop or an appropriate viewer to see if there is really a problem in lightroom. I've read this issue before and this was step one.
Then if the image is OK in other apps, you can try to have lightroom update the thumbnail or delete the image from the catalog and import it again.
Mel-
If LR can't read the files, look closer at their specs. There may be something different about those files than your other TIFs... like Brent mentioned, compression, etc. (but LR should handle LZW and ZIP compressed TIFs just fine).
Check the files that are currently in the catalog (the ones with the black area) in PS. In Lightroom, select the photo(s) and press Cmd+R ot Ctrl+R. This will show the file(s) on your desktop - Finder or Explorer. Open that file in PS.
Or from within LR you can use Edit in Photoshop, and see what that shows.
If you know for sure the file on disk is OK, try rebuilding the previews in LR and/or take the photo into Develop. You may see error messages that help pinpoint any problems LR is having in processing the file.