Catalogue issues - copied rather than added

[acpoynts]

Lightroom Version Number

LR Classic CC v8.1

Operating System

1. Windows 10

Hi All,

So after a number of years of usage, I've just notice a large mistake in my workflow which i would like to correct;

I have copied the images over the years rather than added to the catalogue. So I now have duplicate images for over 40K images which are taking significant amount of disk space about 1TB (includes TIFF files modified from PS and why it seems to be so large). Anyhow rather than continue to waste disk space and actually recover a vast amount of it. As my total photo collection not in LR is approximately 147K.

I would like to keep those which have been edited or have caption comments approximate about 2K. I would rather not like to tinker with the current catalogue (ie delete anything) and provide a back just in case i make a mistake, with view to deleting at some point in the future including the LR photo copies, once i'm happy with the new version.

I thought of doing the following.

1. Export and create a new catalogue of only the images I have edited, have keywords (not so many), by selecting those via the attribute filter.
2. Export any smart collections (assuming it allows me not to import any duplicates)
3. over time 'add' images back into the collection from the folder structures i already have for all my images (not in lightroom)

Does this sound the best way, or can anyone suggest a better alternative?

Many thanks
Andrew

 

[Johan Elzenga]

I’m not sure why you want to make this so difficult. If I understand you correctly, you have 40K images in two locations, because these images were copied when you imported them into Lightroom. So all you need to do is trash the 40K images in the original location...

 

[acpoynts]

Hi Johan, sorry I've not stated the issue very well. As mad as it may seem...

1. I have an external HDD with 147K photos on where I import directly (without using LR) from the cards into dated folder structure (location A).
2. I have then imported some of these from location A into LR via the 'copy' function
3. As a result, LR has created another folder structure with 40K photos, only 2K have been edited (Location B). so similar to having duplicates to those in location A
4. LR catalogue reads the files from location B. ( I would like to delete this location eventually)
5. As part of the import process to LR the files have been renamed

 

[Johan Elzenga]

That is till rather easy to solve. Delete those photos from location A that were copied by Lightroom to location B. Because the copies were renamed, you can also do this later, when you are sure that everything went as planned.

Then drag and drop all the copied photos from location B into their respective folders at location A. Because Lightroom doesn't know location A, do this in Windows Explorer. Lightroom will now show these photos as 'missing'. To solve that, right-click on the 2016 folder in Lightroom and choose 'Update Folder Location'. In the dialog that follows navigate to folder 2016 in location A and select it. Do the same with the 2017 and 2018 folders.