Today’s Question: I was missing some photos in Lightroom Classic and used “show in finder” and located them. How do I get them into Lightroom Classic??
Tim’s Quick Answer: If the photos have a missing status, you’ll want to reconnect the missing images with the source files. If the photos are not in Lightroom Classic at all, you can use the Synchronize Folder command to import the photos that aren’t present.
More Detail: The “Show in Finder” command (“Show in Explorer” on Windows) enables you to display a window showing the storage location for a photo in your Lightroom Classic catalog.
For example, if some photos in a folder are missing, you could right-click on a photo that is not missing and choose “Show in Finder/Explorer” from the popup menu to go to the folder location where the missing photos are expected. The missing photos may have been renamed on the hard drive, for example, or they may have been moved to a subfolder, among other possibilities.
If you’re able to locate the source file for a missing photo in this way, you can reconnect the photos in Lightroom Classic. Start by clicking on the exclamation point (!) icon at the top-right of the thumbnail for the image to bring up a dialog where you can click the Locate button. In the dialog that appears, navigate to the folder location and select the applicable source image, then click the Choose button. The image in Lightroom Classic will be updated to reflect the correct filename and folder location for the image.
If, on the other hand, your exploration led you to discover that some images in the folder on the hard drive are not in your Lightroom Classic catalog, you can use the Synchronize Folder command. Right-click on the folder in the Folders section of the left panel in the Library module in Lightroom Classic and choose “Synchronize Folder”.
In the dialog that appears, turn on the “Import new photos” checkbox, which will have an indication of the number of photos that were found to the right of the label. I also recommend turning on the “Show import dialog before importing” checkbox so you can configure the settings you want to use for adding the photos to the catalog. Turn off the “Remove missing photos from catalog” and “Scan for metadata updates” checkboxes. Click OK, and the photos that were not in the catalog will be added.
