How do I unburden my catalog from unused photos?

[lbeck]

Lightroom Version Number

6.14

Operating System

1. Windows 10

Over the years I've used the option [Remove from Lightroom] rather than [Delete from disk] because I may want the photos later. This has satisfied my deletion paranoia but I now find that I have a few thousand photos that I should've deleted instead of removed. I want to move these unneeded photos to a folder outside of Lr. I know that by using Windows Explorer I can go folder-by-folder and compare the Lr photos with the total photos in the folders. This works well and I've used "find all missing photos" occasionally to double-check. But with hundreds of folders this is a tedious task.

Is there an easier way? I have my catalog archived to another drive so I can experiment at-will without fear of making an un-reversible mistake. I have FreeFileSync, Advanced File Organizer, Find Duplicates 2 and a few other programs (mostly free) in case there is something that will help the process of trimming the fat.

Thanks for your advice and suggestions.

Lee

 

[lbeck]

Sorry. I found the solution but cannot figure out how to delete this post.

Lee

 

[lbeck]

Excuse my unfamiliarity with the forum rules, but I apparently went beyond my 10-minute limit to edit my post(s).

Here's my attempt to rectify my dilemma.

 

[lbeck]

Excuse my unfamiliarity with the forum rules, but I apparently went beyond my 10-minute limit to edit my post(s) and cannot post screen captures. But I'm still struggling to solve my concerns. I have some images but I get the reply :

2020-10-19 (7).png
You do not have permission to view this page or perform this action.

I'll continue to my attempt to post the images. Here's my attempt to rectify my dilemma.

• I go to my Lr catalog and choose "Synchronize"
• The resulting Graphic shows >71K photos to sync!!. Well, maybe I actually have that many unwanted photos in the 4668 that I have in my "pictures" folder
• I cancel as the photos continues to climb. I'd better rethink my procedure!!!

Before I consummate my deletions I need some confirmation that I'm not making a big mistake.

Thanks.
Lee

 

[lbeck]

Here are some belated images.... The one with the actual thumbnails is an image of my catalog. The one with the icons is what the "synchronize" folder presents.

 

[clee01l]

You need to run the Synchronize folders at the individual folder level to see which images are in which individual folder and should be deleted .
Once you have reimported into a specific folder, you can use the special collection "Previous Import" to immediately deleted these from the catalog AND the disk.

 

[lbeck]

Thanks.

Re: " You need to run the Synchronize folders at the individual folder level "

So I can't synchronize at the parent level? Note the image. I'm trying to sync the folder "Pictures". Do I need instead to sync "1998-01-02" and the other children individually?

 

[Johan Elzenga]

It looks like those images in your import dialog are dialog images from an application. That means that you have stored an application in your Pictures folder, and now Lightroom looks through that application and shows you all images that are inside it. If you clean out your Pictures folder first, and remove stuff that does not belong in there anyway, then you can synchronize the entire parent folder in Lightroom.

 

[clee01l]

It looks like those images in your import dialog are dialog images from an application. That means that you have stored an application in your Pictures folder, and now Lightroom looks through that application and shows you all images that are inside it. If you clean out your Pictures folder first, and remove stuff that does not belong in there anyway, then you can synchronize the entire parent folder in Lightroom.

If you do the top level folder, then the Last import will contain all new imports. I guess you could delete all in that special collection, but I personally would feel more comfortable deleting from individual folders So that if I make mistakes they will be small ones.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[lbeck]

Yes. the synchronize folder worked perfectly. I did sync by year which was slow but safe.

Thanks to you both for your help.

Lee