OK. That was unpleasant. My meticulously organized 77,000+ photo library, residing safely on an external drive and cataloged in Lightroom with keywords galore, lost a keyword.
Sometime in the last year or two, my “goodshot” keyword decided to pull a disappearing act. Now, out of 77,000 photos, I’d estimate a maximum of 300 truly earned the “goodshot” designation. Lightroom, bless its heart, said it had about 100 goodshots. That seemed plausible, given I often have multiple versions of the same shot. But when I actually asked Lightroom to retrieve them? Two. A grand total of two photos – one from this year, one from a couple of years back.
Not good. Not good at all.
The photos themselves are still there, perfectly safe. It’s just the one keyword that seems to have vanished into the ether. And while I have plenty of Lightroom library backups, the thought of rolling back my entire catalog to recover a single missing keyword feels like an unnecessary risk. What if I mess up something else? What if I destroy all the edits? No, thank you.
So, my assignment is to find my old “goodshots”. Started this afternoon.
This is one of my “goodshots”. On August 23, 2011, an earthquake damaged the Washington Monument. Somebody had to look for cracks.
This isn’t a real problem. This is “an old woman problem”. I know that. There are plenty of real problems out there.