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preview-extraction-20130501.26.zip
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My “Preview Extraction” plugin for Lightroom 4 (and Lightroom 2) allows you to extract JPG preview images from a catalog's image cache.
This might be of use if you have lost the original master images, or don't have them at hand.
Note: this plugin can not work in Lightroom 3; for that, consider other options.
After installing, select the thumgnails for the images whose preview you want to extract, then invoke via File > Plugin Extras > Extract Preview Images.
I have no need for this myself, but I wrote it because I thought someone, somewhere, at some time, might find themselves in a pinch having lost their original image files, and might want to extract what they could from Lightroom's image cache.
I hope you never need this plugin.
Other Options
Rob Cole also has a plugin that might help. Rob's works with Lr3 and later.
Marc Rochkind's has a still-available but unsupported LRViewer tool that might also be handy.
Availability
This plugin is free. Hope it helps.
(Gifts, if you want to send them, are appreciatively accepted here.)
Version History
(
Update Log via RSS
)
| 20130501.26 | Update for Lr5 |
| 20130209.25 | More build-system maintenance |
| 20130206.24 | Tweak for my registration system |
| 20130201.23 |
Upgraded to the embedded copy of ExifTool to version 9.15. |
| 20130129.22 |
Fixed a bug that showed up on Windows Show scrollbar while extracting. Upgraded to the embedded copy of ExifTool to version 9.09. |
| 20121009.21 | Added some debug logging. |
| 20120907.20 |
With some behind-the-scenes help from Adobe, resurrected this plugin from the dead for Lr4. Still works in Lr2, but it does not (and can not, so please don't ask) work in Lr3. If you want to recover previews from an Lr3 catalog, upgrade the catalog to Lr4 and in theory you can then use this plugin to extract the previews. |
| 20100829.18 | Made the revalidation process much simpler, doing away with the silly need for a revalidation file. |
| 20100819.17 | Discovered a bug in my plugin build system that caused horribly difficult-to-track-down errors in one plugin, so am pushing out rebuilt versions of all plugins just in case. |
| 20100625.16 | Yikes, shaking out some more build issues. |
| 20100624.15 | Discovered a nasty build bug; pushing a new version in case it affects this plugin. |
| 20100316.14 | Yikes, a typo broke some operations for some Windows users. Fixed. |
| 20100315.13 |
Completely changed how the one-click upgrade applies the newly-downloaded zip file, in the hopes that it'll work for more people. Rather than unzipping over the old copy, it now unzips to a temporary folder, then moves the old folder out of the way and the new folder into place. Prior versions' folders are now maintained (with the version number in the folder) in case you want to revert a version; you may want to clear them out from time to time. Of course, it won't take affect until you try to upgrade after having upgraded to or beyond this version. Wholesale changes that attempt to honor the user's locale settings for numeric display (e.g. Europeans writing 3,14156 for pi). I've probably missed some spots, so let me know if you find some. |
| 20091022.12 | This plugin does not work at all in Lightroom 3 Beta, so this update has it at least mention that if you try to load it there. |
| 20091022.11 | Note that this plugin doesn't work in LR3. Sorry! (UPDATE: it does now, in later versions) |
| 20090714.10 |
Enhanced the one-click upgrade stuff quite a bit, now detecting ahead of time when it will fail because the plugin is installed where Lightroom can't write (if Lightroom can't write to it, it can't update itself). I also added a progress bar, and now download in smaller chunks to avoid 'out of memory' errors on the larger plugins. Do remember that this new functionality becomes available after you upgrade to or past this version, when you then upgrade with it. |
| 20090521.9 | Fixed a "loadstring" error some users got. |
| 20090510.8 | Added a link in the Plugin Manager to the plugin's update-log RSS feed. |
| 20090510.7 | Replaced the "Extract to" text with an edit field. Cleaned up the dialogs a bit. Added a link to Marc Rochkind's LRViewer application, because it can extract previews as well (and much more). |
| 20090425.6 | Tweaked how the plugin tries to update itself during the one-click upgrade process, to hopefully get things working for those few Windows users that have never had it work. Crossing fingers. We'll see. |
| 20090331.5 |
Added scroll-one-line arrows to the top and bottom of the scrollbars, to allow fine-grained
control of scrolling very long lists. (I've been programming for almost 30 years, but this
is the first time I've ever built a graphical scrolling system from scratch, so I may
be a bit slow on the uptake at times Also, I'm sorry to report that the thumbnail orientation stuff added in the previous version doesn't actually work on Macs. Dunno why yet. Sorry. |
)| 20090325.4 |
Fixed a plugin crash if you tried to have it extract to a folder that doesn't exist. Also, if extraction can't be started (because you haven't told it where to extract to), it not actually tells you why it can't be started. Discovered and worked around a LR bug that sometimes caused the "Size in Lightroom" to report a value with the width and height swapped. Removed the plugin expiration. This kind of plugin will likely gather dust on someone's drive until one day they suddenly need it, so it'd suck if it didn't work then. Upgrade the scrollbar stuff to something that actually looks and works like a real scrollbar. The thumbnail is now displayed in portrait mode if the image in Lightroom is in portrait mode, landscape if in landscape. There's no way for the plugin to know whether the rotation is proper (that is, it may appear upside down, for example), but you can now click on the thumbnail to rotate it. In case you've flipped the image in Lightroom since the preview was made, you can right-click on the thumbnail to flip it horizontally. These flips and rotations are just in the display of the thumbnail; the extracted preview on disk remains as it was extracted. |
| 20090129.3 | Small housekeeping update for the new locales supported by Lightroom 2.3. |
| 20090127.2 | The "in Lightroom" size reported was pre-crop. It now reports the post-crop size, to better match up with preview-size expectations. |
| 20090126.1 | Initial public release. |
Spiffy! I’d rather have the ability as a lightroom plug in than a stand alone. Happy to try this out. Thanks!
This is totally a LIFE SAVER!!! I had photos I took at a funeral reception, I ended up being the only one who took pictures, everyone wanted them, then I stupidly used the setting “Import from Disk”….. which means, the moment I used my camera to erase the photos from the card, “poof” the images were gone forever… except for the cached photos… THANK YOU FOR WRITING THIS CODE!!!!!!!!!!
I’m glad it could be of help, but “Import from Disk” can make copies as it goes… are you sure they’re not on your hard disk somewhere? Also, even if you’ve formatted the card, you might be able to recover the originals, with PhotoRec. Good luck! —Jeffrey
This looks exactly like what i have been missing, as i have my catalogue on my mac and images on external disk, so i need to use the cached photos for email or web sometimes that i dont have access to the harddisk, i wondered why lightroom couldnt simply allow email with a cache version, the size i perfect
Thanks a lot
Solsang
godblessyou!!!
Thank God for brainiacs.
Thanks ever so much for this Jeffrey, you’re a real life saver!
I had all my photos on a RAID5 array, unfortunately the logic board failed and I lost a lot of data (1Tb ish), thankfully I had the catalogue on my machine with some full renders. I now have at least some memories of the last 3 years of photos
One thing i did notice is that it exports by the original file name, which causes problems if you have multiple files in your library with the same original file name. So, My D200 is set to number them by card (DCS_0001 can occur multiple times) so the export overwrites the image when it next exports. If it could give you the option to to that, or just count from 1 and increment for each export that’d be great.
Thanks for this great plugin!
Dave
Oops, didn’t think about that. Will fix. Sorry to hear about your terabyte(!) —Jeffrey
Thank god for you!! For the first time ever I deleted photos from our family vacation without backing up (a Monday morning when I had run out of coffee) and while they were just family photos, I was still really upset! Stumbled on your plugin after I couldn’t get another program to work and it was so easy!!! Not only did I save my vacation photos, but after a few minor adjustments in Photoshop, I was even able to blow most of them up to an 8×10 size (not bad for preview images, eh??)
I am writing from California and grateful for all of your wonderful plug-ins! I am having a bit of trouble figuring this one out. I am on a Mac, but when I go to export, it isn’t an option for images whose original file is missing. So if I go to File, Plug-In Extras, Extract Previews, the box opens up, asking for extraction location, which I enter, but at the bottom, I only have the option to select cancel, the begin extraction button is grayed out, not functioning???
Any help is much appreciated, THANKS AGAIN!
Hmmm, if the begin-extraction button is grayed out, I’d think that a message should be showing telling you why. I’m away from my build computer at the moment, but I’ll look into it and get back to you. —Jeffrey
Thank you for this, Jeffrey. Is it Mac compatible?
Should be, though for LR2.x only on any system. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeffrey, writing from Minneapolis. I did something dumb, and then something even dumber. In July I decided it was time to split up my catalogue into multiple catalogues to improve LR performance. Everything seemed to be going smoothly. I created different catalogues on external disks, verified that the photos were on the external disks, and then deleted them from my internal drive. 2007 – Fine. 2008 – No problem. 2009 I was going to keep on my internal drive. But I somehow erased all of my 2009 photos and emptied the trash. It was a week before I realized what had happened.
Then I discovered your plugin. I tested it and it worked beautifully to recover a sample of my photos and I thought I would do the rest overnight. Then I upgraded to Lightroom 2. In LR2, at first the previews were visible, then they weren’t. I did something, I don’t know what, and they came back again, and then shortly afterwards they disappeared again. Since then I haven’t even seen the previews, just grey boxes with question marks. I do have the original preview lrdata files, one with 4.7gbs of info in it, and one with 1.55gbs of data. But somehow in upgraded and moving catalogs around, the catalogs don’t seem to be linking to these files.
Your beautiful plug-in only works through an active catalog with visible previews. How can I re-link a catalog to a preview file so I can use your plugin?
I lost 10,000 pictures and feel like 7 months of my life are missing! And the worse thing is I did it to myself!
Sorry to hear about your woes! Check out LrViewer… I think it can work with whatever previews you aim it at. If it can recover your stuff, please consider sending the guy a gift consummate with the level of life you got returned….. and consider a better backup plan! (I’ve heard good things about Backblaze.com.) —Jeffrey
You saved me from losing my anniversary photos. I already tried the web gallery trick but, as you know, max size is 2070px that way. Luckily I did full preview on photo import, so now… JPG only, but still full res!
Thanks a lot from Italy. I’ll spread more than a word in my Lightroom seminars about your plugins
Glad to hear it was of some help. You might want to talk about good backups, too
—Jeffrey
Jeffrey, just wanted to say a huge thank you for this plugin. I’m normally a judicious storer and backuper, but as I was migrating my LR catalogue to a new computer I realized that a couple of years ago (on an overseas field shoot and juggling several storage media) a batch of great photos had apparently gone missing. No idea where, just poof . LR still thinks they’re there, but no dice on the HD. Searched for them high and low, and even with 3 backup hard drives they are nowhere to be found. Anyways I mercifully found your plugin (I already had your Smugmug plugin which I love) and ran the previews through it. Lo and behold I now have a batch of decent size Jpegs. Not my NEF’s, but still better than the swift kick in the pants I had before! THANK YOU for putting out great freeware like this.
John – Ottawa, Canada.
You are a life saver!
Jeffrey, Thank you very much for this plugin. I’m sorry you were sick and all when you made it, but it is very helpful and a lifesaver to some. I’ve been re-organzing and cleaning up old files from the past few years and apparently, accidentally deleted my RAW original file. It’s still in lightroom, so at least I’ll have the JPG from it. Thank you!
Jim
You saved my life!!!
Jeffrey,
Thank you so much for this great plugin. You helped me to recover all of my photos (about 8000) in full quality (I’m so glad I used 1-1 previews) when my external drive failed while I was transferring everything to a new computer.
Thanks again!
Darshan (London).
THANKS!!
Hi Jeffrey,
Thanks for this great tool! (although I have not used it yet)
My begin-extraction button is grayed out also… using LR2.2. My hard disk unfortunately crashed after 1 year, to the point beyond recovery, so desperately needs to extract the photos. Tried LRViewer, it’s good but does not give me 1:1 previews. Hopefully this bug can be fixed asap… will definitely recommend my friends and donate to your blog!
Why on earth are you using Lr2.2 when Lr2.7 is out? Sorry to hear about your crash, but I doubt this plugin will be able to extract anything that LRViewer does not. The previews don’t necessarily include 1:1 previews. Be sure to enter a valid folder in the “Extract to” box… if the “select an extraction destination” message doesn’t go away, pick another location. —Jeffrey
I think I love you man…
Lost all my original files upon a bad RAID restore… lost 10 months, my son is 6… hopefully my catalog wasn’t on the same drive.
keep up
Does this work on LR 2.7? I have downloaded and installed as per normal for plug-ins and the plug-in manager tells me it is installed and running, but I cannot find it anywhere. Not in the presets, not in export—where can I find it?
Not sure why I didn’t mentioned it on this page before, but I’ve added the note about how to invoke it that should have been there from the start. —Jeffrey
got an old lightroom 2 catalog, all the previews are visible when I open the catalog in lightroom but when I run the plug-in it tells me “no preview available”. When zooming in I have a nice 1:1 preview, but neither this plug-in or LRviewer can ever seem to find the previews themselves to restore from. Any ideas? And what’s the “Web gallery trick” that Paolo mentioned above?
I’m not familiar with the “web gallery” thing, but if there are no previews available, I’d guess that either there weren’t any previews and your 1:1 were being generated on the fly (and that you’d have previews after that), or a bug in the plugin. Hard to debug this one from afar. —Jeffrey
Thank you so much – recovered pictures of Mum’s 60th birthday party that would otherwise have been lost to the ether.
I downloaded the plugin for LR3.2, however I receive an error message that says “An internal error has occurred. ?:2: attempt to call field ‘?’ (a nil value). Please help! I will be more than happy to donate for your services! I must find the files. Thank you!
Sorry, see the end of the first paragraph of this page. —Jeffrey
Hey Jeff, will you marry me? You seriously saved my ass(for the second time… 2 weddings, 1 big back up mishap!). I’ve attempted to use LRviewer a few times and it never opens properly for me. Your plug-in is fantastic. Lots of good karma for you! Keep up the great life saving!
Jeff,
I am having issues. I unzipped the file, and went to lightroom plug in manager. I have Lightroom 2.0. Well when I went to the folder I had unzipped the plug in manager couldn’t locate a file within the contents of the entire folder or sub-folders to be used a plugin. It would not let me just select the main folder. I am not sure what I am doing wrong. Your help is appreciate. Thanks.
Kayti…
After unzipping, you’ll have a folder named preview-extraction-jfriedl.lrplugin. That is the plugin, and what you need to point the Plugin Manager at. But if you’re running Lr2.0, you should avail yourself to the free upgrade to Lr2.7. I haven’t tested with 2.0 in years. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeffery, I have had a fatal disk crash and am desperately trying to find out how to export the cache previews from Lightroom 3.2. I have tried using LRviewer but it says tha database is locked. Can you help in nany way?
Thanks, Josh
You’d have to ask LrViewer’s author, but perhaps there’s a lock file lying around that you can delete to let you have access? I have no experience with it myself, so best to ask LrViewer’s author. —Jeffrey
Hello Jeffrey,
Just wondering if your plug in can extract .CR2 files into raw files not just jpeg? I’ve tried “LR viewer” software mentioned above because it’s not a plug in, & because my situation is kinda unique where my hard drive crashed I was using LR2. When copying I didn’t get all of my raw files, & didn’t know this at the time. I have since installed a LR3 trial & in going to see the images I found that most were missing. I have the original LR2 cat. I just don’t have the raw images & jpegs. The other unfortunate thing is I was never able to edit them until now, & they really need to be raw to come out ok.
When viewing them in the “LR viewer” I see they are .CR2 images, raw, correct? My question is, is there a way to extract the raw images from the catalog with your plug in, if I reinstalled LR2? If not now, could it be done & or will it be possible in the future?
Thank you for your time, & your plug in!
Kindly,
Stacey
Sorry, but the master CR2 raw files are not kept in the Lightroom catalog, so the best you’ll get from the catalog are the previews, if any. I think there’s a separate, unrelated ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) cache somewhere on the computer, but I don’t know where or what form that data might be in, and if you hadn’t edited the missing photos recently, that cache would not have any data anyway. I’m sorry for your loss. You might try running PhotoRec on the drive. Good luck. —Jeffrey
Hola Jeffrey,
After arveling 10000 miles from Venezuela I visited my son in Jerusalem, and I dropped down his hard disk and lost his pictures (no backup, even I told him a thousand times).
He’s using LR3,. Is it possible he loads his catalog in LR2 and then use your plugin?
Speak to me, I can’t even sleep.
Gracias
I’m sorry, no, the catalog data is completely different. For Lr3, use the LrViewer program linked above. If the disk is physically able to run, even if the data is corrupt, you can probably recover everything using a low-level scan such as with PhotoRec or the like. Good luck! —Jeffrey
You and your plug in are amazing! Thank you Thank you Thank you!!!! I couldn’t get LRViewer to work and thought I was screwed but then YOU happened! You get extra awesome points from me!!!!
I can’t seem to get lr view or other programs to work… yours appears easy to use and install… but I have LR3… will you support lr3 soon?
No, never. As I’ve said in comments above, what I did with this plugin simply can’t be done in Lr3. —Jeffrey
I JUST HAD THIS HAPPEN TO ME, HOPE YOUR SOFTWARE CAN SAVE THE DAY LR3, FILES MISSING, CARD FORMATTED AND RE-USED…WISH ME LUCK..TRAE
My plugin doesn’t work in Lr3, sorry. Even if you formatted and reused the card, you can likely extract images unless your “reused” filled the entire card, so give PhotoRec or the like a try. And as for extracting from your Lr3 catalog, check out LrViewer. Good luck. —Jeffrey
Thank you for this plugin!
Even though I have a backup, it does not include the latest 200 pictures. Now I at least have them as JPEGs. Will try to retrieve the remaining pictures from the CF Card.
I’m glad that at least I will have the pictures in JPEG format, even if I cannot retrieve anything from the CF Card.
T H A N K Y O U S O O O O O O O O M U C H,
I was using LR trial. I uploaded some images, and I accidentally deleted the images from my laptop. My question is, if I were to purchase LR will the images I uploaded during my trial be available once I enter my serial number?? I am hoping they are so I can use your plug in to retrieve my images :/ Please any information will be greatly appreciated!!
The cached previews might be available… they might be full size, or might be much smaller, or might not be there. No way to tell without looking. If Lightroom no longer works because you exceeded the 30-day trial, you’ll have to buy it in order to launch the plugin, but the plugin page lists other methods that might allow you to recover previews from outside Lightroom. —Jeffrey
I have the error ““An internal error has occurred. ?:2: attempt to call field ‘?’ (a nil value)”, which you said look a the second paragraph. I can’t find the answer, advise please. I really want this to work : )
Thank you very much
At the time, the 2nd paragraph said that the plugin could not work in Lr3. (That’s now the 3rd paragraph). If you’re in Lr4 and getting that error, please send a log. —Jeffrey
Hi champ I have just trashed and then clears trash of over 5000 photos and now have a tech working on recovering them for me which they are confident of doing but just on case can this plug in help me. The photos are in Lightroom just not accessible due to the original file missing. I haven’t slept or eaten for 2 days I’m in serious trouble if I can not resolve this problem and would love some advice. I’m using LR4 thanks for your time I’m in Australia mate
Sorry to hear about your accident. The plugin should recover the previews from Lightroom, if it had any (it likely did), but I would recommend not using the disk where the images were until you have exhausted all recovery techniques. If you haven’t done much with the disk, I expect you could recover them all with PhotoRec or the like (as I did once from a corrupt memory card). The plugin works with both Windows and OSX. —Jeffrey