Why won't Lightroom save my changes?

[jennifer_broderick]

I'm going nuts here. I've just spent hours editing my photos and closed down the program. I later went

back to do some more work and the pevious edits are all gone. I thought Lightroom automatically saves

my work.

 

Please help.

 

Thanks,

 

Jen

[alan_olander1664878205]

Lightroom saves all the changes in a database or XMP sidecar files if you're editing raw images. If you open these images again in Lightroom, your changes should be there, although not part of the file unless your using DNG. What are you editing, raw, jpeg? Did you open the file again in Lightroom or another editing program?

[jennifer_broderick]

Hi Alan. Thanks for the response. I'm editing in RAW and I opened the RAW files in

Lightroom again. It seemed that the database reverted back to the last time I had performed

a backup, which was a couple days ago. Where do I find the XMP sidecar files? Do you

recommend using DNG instead of RAW? I'm new to this, so I hope this makes sense. Thanks!

Jen

[alan_olander1664878205]

You won't see the XMP sidecars in Lightroom, but if you open the folder of images with Explorer, for example, you will see along with each image is an XMP file. However, if you don't have checked "Automatically write changes into XMP" in the catalog preferences or "Save metadata to file" in the menu, the metadata will be in the database.

 

DNG is Adobe's RAW format. You would have to convert all your RAW images into that. You can do that within Lightroom or Adobe DNG converter. Some like DNG, others not. It's not necessary to convert to use Lightroom effectively.

 

DNG link: http://www.adobe.com/products/dng/

[ellis_vener_photography]

To be more precise DNG is Adobe's non proprietary "raw" format or envelope as some people call it.

[jennifer_broderick]

Hmmm. I looked and I don't have any XMP files along with my CR2 files in finder (mac). I

also don't have the "Automatically write changes into XMP" box checked in Lightroom. I

couldn't find the "Save metadata to file" section you talked about. So does this mean that the

metadata is only in my database and when the database reverted back to the last backup

(don't know why it did this) I lost those changes?

 

So the best way to go about this is to check the "Automatically write changes to XMP" box so I

won't lose my changes again? Thanks!

[msd52]

Does the history show no changes?

[jennifer_broderick]

I'm working on about 50 photos. The only history changes are the ones that I made two days

ago. It doesn't show the changes I made yesterday, though. Does anyone have any idea why

I would lose the changes I made yesterday and the database would revert back to the last

time it was backed up two days ago? For example, yesterday I flagged some photos as

rejected and when I opened it up again, those photos were now showing as picks (as they

were two days ago) Nothing unusual happened with my computer and this this is the second

time this has happened.

[dan_meyers1]

Did you possibly open the saved catalog from two days ago instead of the current version?