Where does NLP2 folder with .xmp files belong?

I screwed up. I found a folder called NLP2 on my hard drive and stupidly put it in the trash. An hour or so later I checked my trash before I was going to empty it and looked in the folder and saw the .xmp files and realized I should probably keep these files. Now I want to put them back but I don’t remember where they were. Where do they belong? On my user level (ie same as desktop, documents…) or in documents or someplace else? Cheers.

You can fix this in one of the following ways:

  1. NLP’s settings are stored in Lightroom’s catalog. If you open the folder with the images you worked on before you moved the folder to the trash, you should be able to get all those settings back and save them again using Lightroom’s Metadata menu or with the keyboard shortcut command-S (on Mac).
  1. .xmp sidecars normally sit next to the files they belong to. The .xmp files have a name like e.g. IMG_1234.xmp. Search for files IMG_1234.ext (ext being CR3, NEF, TIF,… you get what I mean?) and put the .xmp files back into the folder where IMG_1234.ext resides.

Method 1. is suited for cases where all images are in one folder (not a collection), while method 2. also helps in cases where the files are scattered over several folders.