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Hi all.

I'm writing with a dreadful Lightroom problem. I have a corrupt catalog. I have read a bunch of blogs and help forums on how to deal with this. They all focus on using a backup catalog and trashing the corrupt one. Here's the dreadful part of my problem: I stopped backing up my Lightroom catalog a looooong time ago because it was taking a long time and because I mistakenly thought it was a backup of the actual photos, not the Lightroom adjustments. Since I carefully back up all my photos, I didn't think I needed the catalog backup. I now realize how wrong that was.

Any suggestions for what to do? I already tried creating a new catalog and importing a few folders of images into that new catalog to see if the labels and ratings and -- most importantly -- the exposure and color balance adjustments would somehow stick to the files. They did not. The only images that retain all my work are the jpegs. So at least I have those. But is there any way to rescue the raw files? Can I try exporting each folder individually as original files to a new catalog and testing the integrity of the catalog all along the way? I'm working with a catalog of more than 120,000 images. A good chunk of those were from before I switched to raw in the summer of 2007, tho. So it might not be quite as bad as that number seems. That said, a big chunk of the raw files are work for which I've been paid. So that's bad.

I'd be most appreciative for any and all suggestions.

Thanks,
Jen