Since referenced images can now be stored on volumes that are remote to the computer, there are times that the data will not be immediately accessible. These are offline volumes: DVDs not in the drive, Firewire drives not connected, servers not logged into, and the like. Images with a referenced master stored on an offline volume have a badge like these:

So it is easy to see that the master is not available. But where to get it? I cannot edit the image because the whole adjustments panel is grayed out. The metadata is no help because it just tells me what I know: that this image is in the Vacation project of my Blog library:

And attempting to consolidate the masters for this project gives me this unhelpful dialog:

But connect what? Which disk do I put in? There are two ways to find out. The quickest is to control-click an image and select Show In Finder:

That will get a dialog box with the missing information:

Alternately you can fire up the referenced image manager. This is a better option if you have lots of offline images because you can select them all at once and get information on all of them in one go:

The volume name of each referenced file is in the list:

And it also shows the detail for each item in the list you select so you can be sure of what you are looking at:

Bringing the volume back on line immediately restores the online status and the badges change back. Any offline image displayed in the viewer is updated too.

It is also possible to filter images on the basis of their online status. Just select File Status from the + menu on the filter panel:

and pick the option you need:

The Show In Finder trick will open the enclosing folder with the image master selected now that the volume is online. But if multiple selections are made, it will only select the primary selection, so you cannot use this to do much more than find where the masters are stored.

The loupe still works, but gives a warning that it is not working with the master:

It is using the built-in library image in this case. Once reconnected the warning goes away and the magnification is greater because the master has many more pixels than the built-in image:

I would have expected that the high resolution preview (if generated) for the image would be available to the loupe when the master was offline, but this is apparently not the case. Another missed opportunity for previews.

Offline images can still be rotated in 90 degree steps, but once any rotation is performed, the loupe gives up and will display only gray until the image comes back on online.

And of course rating and rearranging works as expected. You can move offline images between projects too. And exporting a project with offline images gives an option to consolidate into the exported project, so ensuring that all the masters are really there and portable:

Management of online and offline images is well done and pretty comprehensive. That referenced image manager, however, will need another whole article to explain.