Deleting photos from BOTH the catalog and the HD

[Duffersdad]

In the Library view, I have selected a number of photos that I want removed from both the catalog and hard drive. Once selected, I go to the PHOTO pull down, select Delete Rejected Photos and the command is executed without the confirmation of also removing the photos from the hard drive (in fact, the photo count does not change). In the same scenario, if I select Remove Photos from Catalog, the command is executed (again without the confirmation window for removing them from the hard drive) and the photo count is reduced by the number of photos selected. As you can tell, I am merely trying to 'clean-up' both my catalog and hard drive of un-wanted images. According to Kelby's book (p. 47), I should be getting this confirmation window, even if I select the photo and merely press Delete.

I'd appreciate your thoughts on this please. Version 1.4.1 (haven't made the upgrade yet)

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Are you in Folders or Collections? It behaves differently, with photos being deleted from folders (and from the hard drive on request), but being only removed from a collection.

Also, from memory, check in the preferences for a 'reset warning dialogs' button. You may have checked the 'don't display again' warning at some time in the past.

 

[Duffersdad]

Victoria:

I am in the Library module; not in Folders or Collections, in Grid view with a number of images flagged as Rejected. When I attempt to Delete, the Warning window about deleting from the Hard Drive does not display. I have reset all warnings in the Preferences, but still when I attempt to Delete, the photos disappear from the Library, but not necessarily from the Hard Drive. Kelby's book is very descriptive of this scenario, but I just do not get the Warning Window.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

If you're not in Folders or Collections Duffersdad, where are you? Grid view could be anywhere, and it's fairly crucial information. What do you have selected? All Photographs? A Folder? A Collection? A Keyword? What's determining which photos you're looking at?

 

[Duffersdad]

Well, let's see, I'm in the Library, with Colonel Mustard and I have..no, wait a minute. I am in the Library, the left panel has a number of Keywords and I have selected a Keyword which opens up the Grid view. [Therefore, I cannot be in Folders view or Collections]. I then select a number of images to discard (both from the Catalog and the Hard Drive) and when I expand PHOTO from the pull down, I have two choices at the bottom of that menu: REMOVE PHOTOS FROM CATALOG and DELETE REJECTED PHOTOS. If I select REMOVE PHOTOS..the image is gone from the catalog but still on the hard drive. If I select DELETE..the image is gone, but the image count remains the same; plus, I do not get the confirmation box that I am also removing it from the hard drive. I have reset all warning dialogues. This cannot (should not) be this difficult: I merely want to select a photo and discard it from the catalog and the hard drive.

 

[DonRicklin]

You have to use the keyboard shortcut we call "splat-delete" -- it's Alt-Ctrl-Shift-Delete on Windows, or Opt-Cmd-Shift-Delete on Mac.

Don

 

[Duffersdad]

That worked! Thank you! (I need a little more dexterity).

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Ah gotcha. Yep, keywords work the same as collections.

 

[dogmamom]

New - similar question

Sorry to butt in but I can't figure out how to begin a new thread on this forum. How do you delete a catalog? I just bought Lightroom 2 and Scott Kelby's book. I tried putting all my pics in one folder, then import, but it counted 16',''' images. I left it importing, went to sleep, woke up 8 hours later and it was only 18% through it and most the pics were junk anyway, and the program was bogged down. They didn't go into subfolders as I'd hoped (and thought I'd clicked) but dumped into one place.
This seems like a bad idea for me so I want to start over, be more choosey for Plan B (whatever that is), but don't know how to delete the catalog without deleting the photos from my harddrive. Yes, I have a lotta pics for a hobbiest (I use a Nikon D-8' FWIW). Any tips? Thanks in advance

God bless
Ginny T.

 

[Mark Sirota]

Ginny, welcome to Lightroom Forums.

To delete a catalog, you just need to delete the .lrcat file from your hard disk, and you'll probably also want to delete the previews database that sits alongside it.

I'd suggest renaming it first, just to be sure you're not accidentally deleting the wrong one. Once you're sure that everything's okay, go ahead and delete it.

 

[dogmamom]

Thanks

Thanks for the tip and the welcome!
I'll hopefully find things smooth sailing from there. I did pretty well on the 3' day trial but hadn't dealt with the library part yet.

God bless
Ginny

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Hi Ginny, welcome to the forum!

When you say it dumped them all in one folder, you may have had the import dialog set to Copy or Move the files to a new location, in which case your photos may be duplicated in an images folder next to your catalog. Do double check that they're duplicates before deleting them.

Next time round, you could set it to 'Add photos to the catalog at their existing location' to leave them exactly where they are, or set it to copy or move to a new location and select a dated folder hierarchy.

 

[dogmamom]

Thank you, Victoria. Nice to e-meet you and I'm happy to have discovered this forum.
I've started over, little bits at a time....but reading your post just made my heart sink: I hope I didn't do that - will go check settings - because it took me as much time to delete from my harddrive as it did to import. Ugh. I'm going to be pretty annoyed if I've deleted a chunk of my database accidentally.
I'm more than a bit frightened of the importing process at this point! I caught on to the "Develop" section fairly well during the trial but this "Library" stuff has my head spinning.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

I promise it's way easier than it sounds Ginny.

Tell me what you're aiming for as an end result, and I'll tell you how to get there.