Moving photos, deleting unwanted folders

[Bobcat87]

Lightroom Version Number

Adobe Creative Cloud Photoshop Lightroom , 2015.8 release

Operating System

1. macOS 10.13 High Sierra

When I initially attempted to begin using Lr, I was advised to set up 3 topic-based folders. These folders have about 110 photos in them. Since then, I've decided to use a date-based system. I created folders for years within Lr and managed to move about half of the photos into the correct year. However, when trying to move the remaining photos, I get a message that they can't be moved because, for example, "...the file already exists at the destination (1) Teddy & Friends...." . These photos do not show up in the year folder in Lr, so I assume this might be a folder I created on my Mac within the Photos app? I would like to get these photos out of the topic folder and into the year folder in Lr so I can delete the topic-based folders. That leads to the next questions: 1) how do I get these remaining photos to show up in Lr in the appropriate year, and, 2)how do I delete these unwanted folders once completely emptied, now that I plan to use the date-based system? Thank you.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Remember that Lightroom only shows you photos it has imported. If Lightroom tries to move a photo to another folder, and a photo with the same name already exists in that folder (a photo that may not have been imported however), then you’ll get this error. This may indeed be a photo that was copied there by Apple Photos.

 

[PhilBurton]

Remember that Lightroom only shows you photos it has imported. If Lightroom tries to move a photo to another folder, and a photo with the same name already exists in that folder (a photo that may not have been imported however), then you’ll get this error. This may indeed be a photo that was copied there by Apple Photos.

Johan,

Agree completely. Those other files don't exist in the LR catalog. Unless the OP is still using Apple Photos, then those other files can be removed.

To the OP. You might find it useful to get a duplicate files locator program. Since I am a Windows user, I can't offer any specific suggestion for a MacOS program. However, using this tool, you might be able to clear out all duplicate files in one go.

 

[Bobcat87]

Remember that Lightroom only shows you photos it has imported. If Lightroom tries to move a photo to another folder, and a photo with the same name already exists in that folder (a photo that may not have been imported however), then you’ll get this error. This may indeed be a photo that was copied there by Apple Photos.

Thank you very much. So, if I select the pictures and then select Remove, rather than Delete from Disk, would they be removed from the folder that I want to delete in Lightroom?

 

[Bobcat87]

Johan,

Agree completely. Those other files don't exist in the LR catalog. Unless the OP is still using Apple Photos, then those other files can be removed.

To the OP. You might find it useful to get a duplicate files locator program. Since I am a Windows user, I can't offer any specific suggestion for a MacOS program. However, using this tool, you might be able to clear out all duplicate files in one go.

I appreciate your response.. I know that Lr has a feature that locates duplicate photos. Is this what you mean? Could Lr also locate duplicate folders?

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Lightroom does not have a feature to locate duplicates in the catalog. The only feature it has in this respect is the option not to import suspected duplicates. If you think you have duplicates in the catalog, then you will need a third party utility that can search for duplicates. Same thing for finding duplicate images on your hard disk.

 

[Bobcat87]

Lightroom does not have a feature to locate duplicates in the catalog. The only feature it has in this respect is the option not to import suspected duplicates. If you think you have duplicates in the catalog, then you will need a third party utility that can search for duplicates. Same thing for finding duplicate images on your hard disk.

Thanks for the clarification.