Thursday, September 11, 2014

One Clue closer to understanding a LR foible

Last night I was tired and left Lightroom running on my laptop computer, which was plugged in but in Sleep mode. This morning my computer showed that windows had preformed and “important” security update for Windows 7 and restarted my computer sometime over night. Lightroom was up and running but a Collection (Adobe’s name for an album) I had definitely set up last night was missing, it was missing in the last catalogue backup made as well (not surprisingly as this was made earlier). This starts to explain at some of the unexplained problems and frustration I was having with Lightroom late last year and earlier in the year. I now suspect that, if the computer is shutdown (in this case by a windows update) and the catalogue backup not run,(It may have been waiting for a user response to run it) and lightroom terminated. Then when the system resumes although lightroom resumed fine it uses an older backup. So the problem really is triggered by the windows update. At least one of the problem events earlier in the year related to a significant power outage. I had already identified that leaving lightroom running overnight was not a good idea, so I have to share a little of the blame.

Ok why this time didn’t I loose any RAW edits? The answer was simple I have adopted the tactic of always writing any changes to a sidecar file (.xmp file) immediately.

Thus what we have is not really a BUG in lightroom more a personality foible to do with how she maintains her precious catalogue. (How to do this is mentioned in my previous post).

The moral, Lightroom is a High Maintenance Mistress

Don’t Leave Her (Lightroom) Running Unattended (ie overnight)

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