Going forward, I'm sure this issue could be solved by a workflow change, but for now, I have a small problem:
I shoot a ton of images (20,000+ per year) and process in Lightroom. I have a workflow where I export my .CR2 originals as DNG for archiving to an external drive, to free up space on my local drive. Once they're copied over, I delete the folders from my Mac's hard drive via the Finder, which leaves the previews still searchable within Lightroom. This is great for searching and referencing archived stuff that I don't necessarily need to re-edit.
However, when I do need to re-edit something, once I copy the folder from the exernal drive back to its original location on my local HD for editing in LR, Lightroom doesn't recognize the files automatically since they now have a different file extension. I must click each thumbnail's question mark and point it to the file in question. Lightroom will not apply this same action to nearby photos.
Any thoughts on how to speed this up rather than addressing each image, one-by-one?
Thanks in advance for any insight.