I’ve not seen this mentioned anywhere prominently, so hopefully if someone is in a similar predicament as I was, this small write up will help them on their way. This applies to the Windows version of Lightroom.
When I first installed Lightroom, I tried to get it to import all of my files from my removable drive, labeled ‘G:’. Lightroom didn’t see drive G. I tried everything that I could think of: Reboot the computer, disconnect/reconnect the drive, check for the latest drivers, check the Adobe forums. Nothing helped.
Finally, I right-clicked on the drive and selected the properties entry from the menu. The drive compression box was checked. I never use drive compression because it slows down the throughput of the drive, sometimes drastically. The drive was delivered that way and I had no reason to check the properties. I now have a reason for any future drives that I may purchase! Anyway, I unchecked the box, waited for the drive to decompress, then started Lightroom again. Lo and behold, there was my drive.
I’ve since found out, in the forums, that the Adobe engineers decided to ignore compressed drives. I don’t know the reason behind this, but I think that it is something that they should have made painfully clear!
So, I thought that everything was right as rain; however, I found that when I tried to import directly from my CF card, Lightroom would not allow me to import into an existing directory in my ‘images’ directory. I could select the top level directory and then a subdirectory, but that was as far as I could go. I sometimes got an error message saying that the import could not be done with the selected directory, but it never said why. If I allowed Lightroom to create the directory structure, it would work, but I didn’t want Lightroom to organize my photos the way that it wanted to.
So, more experiments, more failures. I gave up. I created the directory manually and copied the files to the directory, then used an in-place import in Lightroom and everything worked. Sure, it was an extra step or two, but it worked.
This morning, I had an idea: I tried to import to drive C:. Everything worked fine. I then created a new directory on drive G: and tried to import. Again, it worked fine! Then I checked the properties on my existing directory: G:\images and guess what?! It has a property saying that the directory and subdirectories are compressed. So, the drive decompression didn’t decompress everything, only the root level and all ‘future’ directories. The old directories remained compressed. Sigh …
Right now I’m in the middle of a long decompression, which will probably take several hours after which Lightroom should be fully functional! Finally!
In short, before using Lightroom:
1. Make sure any drive on which you plan to store images is not compressed.
2. If it was compressed, decompress it.
3. Decompress all existing directories and subdirectories for those directories where you plan to use Lightroom.
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3 Responses to “Lightroom and compressed files”
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I’ll be darned. I had not run into drive compression issues. I keep my images on an external drive too. Who manufactured the drive so folks will know which one to avoid? My Maxdor seems to be fine.
I’m having a Lightroom issue of my own that I have yet to resolve, color format. When I shoot RAW, which is not all that often, there is something that happens in Lightroom, and I’m not sure what it is. If I start my processing in Lightroom rather than the RAW viewer in Bridge, the images lose their vibrance altogether, they do not look like sRGB at all. My post-processed image has to go to Elements, of all things, and do a save as sRGB which for whatever reason retores the color to where it should be. I have not found a way to do the same thing in PS.
John, it wasn’t a problem with the drive itself. It’s a Maxtor drive3 as well; however, whoever pre-formatted the drive set that attribute, Windows saw it and ran with it.
Now, after the decompression, everything is working well.
Regarding your problem, it seems that Lightroom does not apply color management to your RAW files, giving you that nice look that you like; however, I believe that CS2 as well as Bridge apply our default color profile. Lightroom only does output or print color management.
Paul, good detective work.
You would think that Adobe would state that little bit of information somewhere prominently in the documentation wouldn’t you? Instead they made it “painfully” unstated.
I’m using Lightroom on a Mac so hadn’t run into that.