Cleanup directory to match Catalogue

[bherring]

I have a directory with multiple sub directories that have all the raw files that are catalogued in Lightroom and, here is the rub, quite a few others which are duplicates which appear to have been re-named and others which are just there. At a guess these files were created by merging or importing catalogues when I knew even less about Lightroom than I do now. The question is how can I copy out (move) the files that are not in the Lightroom catalogue so that it reduces the number of files to those active and lets me check out the files that are not catalogued?

 

[trevorguy]

I’m not sure this is the quickest method but in a similar situation I exported my catalogue (having checked include negatives) to a new location and checked it was OK. I then made sure I had an up to date back of my original library and catalogue before selecting all the pictures in the in it and deleting from disk. This left all the files that were not in the original catalogue in the original folder structure. I imported these into a new library and evaluated them deleted the rubbish and then re-imported the original files using ‘import catalogue’ with the negative files from the temporary location.

This was time consuming and only needed because of my own laziness; I now have a key word “CRAP” which I keep filtered out and apply to anything I am not sure about that does not get deleted from disk on the first look after import (ie pictures of my own feet).