Lightroom only automatically organizes photos (for example, into dated folders) while importing. But if your existing folder structure is a mess, you can tidy it up manually by creating, moving, renaming and deleting folders and photos. While Lightroom doesn’t care where the photos are stored, it does make it easier to back up and move Lightroom. So, how do you reorganize your Folders panel?
To create a new folder
To create a brand new folder, go to , or press the + button on the Folders panel and select New Folder. Navigate to the location of your choice.
On Windows, right-click and select New then Folder and type the name of the folder, then press Enter and select the new folder, then press Select Folder.
On a Mac, press the New Folder button in the operating system dialog. Give it a name and press Create. Your new folder is created on the hard drive and automatically selected in the operating system dialog, so press Choose to add it to Lightroom.
If the new folder already exists on the hard drive, but you want to add it to Lightroom, go to and navigate to the folder, then press Select Folder (Windows) / Choose (Mac). If the folder is empty, it’s added to the Folders panel. If there are already photos in the folder, Lightroom opens the Import dialog. In this case, you’ll need to import at least one photo to add the folder to the Folders panel.
If you’re creating a new subfolder, and the parent folder already exists in the Folders panel, it’s even easier. Right-click on the parent folder and select Create Folder Inside *. Enter the subfolder name and press Create. If you have photos selected at the time, you can automatically move them to the new subfolder by checking the Include Selected Photos checkbox.
To move a folder
Moving folders into other folders is simply a drag-and-drop operation, just like Explorer (Windows) / Finder (Mac). Select the folders in the Folders panel and drag them onto another folder in the Folders panel. The destination folder is highlighted in blue, showing where the folders will land when you release the mouse.
Selecting a parent folder automatically moves all of its subfolders too. To move multiple separate folders, Ctrl-click (Windows) / Cmd-click (Mac) to select individual folders or Shift-click to select a series of folders, then drag and drop as normal.
To rename and delete existing folders
If you right-click on an existing folder, you’ll find additional options such as Rename and Delete.
When you rename a folder, it’s also renamed on your hard drive. Deleting an empty folder also deletes it from the hard drive. If you try to delete a folder containing photos, it removes the photos from your catalog (losing all the work you’ve done in Lightroom), but the photos remain on the hard drive.
To move photos between folders
Moving photos between folders on the same hard drive is also a simple drag and drop operation:
- Select the photos
- Grab them by the thumbnail (not the gray border)
- Drag them and drop them onto a folder in the Folders panel
(This works very well for rearranging photos on your hard drive, or moving just a few photos to a new hard drive. If you’re moving large numbers of photos to a new hard drive, I’d recommend these instructions instead.)
If you’re moving photos into a dated folder structure, Lightroom won’t do it automatically for photos that have already been imported, but it can help. How do I rearrange existing photos into a new dated folder structure explains how.
For extensive information on Lightroom Classic, see Adobe Lightroom Classic – The Missing FAQ.
If you have the Photography Plan, then as well as Classic you have access to the Lightroom cloud ecosystem including the mobile apps and web interface. For more information on these apps, see Adobe Lightroom – Edit Like a Pro.
Note: purchase of these books includes the first year’s Classic or cloud-based Premium Membership (depending on the book purchased), giving access to download the latest eBook (each time Adobe updates the software), email assistance for the applicable Lightroom version if you hit a problem, and other bonuses.
We also have a special bundle offer for the two books. This includes Premium Membership for the first year as described above for the whole Lightroom family!
Originally posted 5 June 2017, updated October 2019.
I dragged one folder to another a few days ago.without a problem. however, the next day, the moved folder had completely disappeared. I was able to retrieve the files from my backup drive and re import them, but in the process all my edits were lost. Why? Is there a way to get my edited files back?
Also, on a slighty different subject, I accessed today a folder that is a year old and noted to my horror that most of my edits had disappeared–not all but most. Again, why? Is there any way to retrieve them?
That sounds like you’re opening an “old” catalog Robert. Go to Edit menu (Windows) / Lightroom menu (Mac) > Catalog Settings to check the name/location of the current catalog, and in the same menu, go to Preferences > General tab and see which catalog you’re opening by default.
When you say the folder of images had disappeared, had they disappeared from Lightroom or from Explorer/Finder? If it’s from Lightroom, I’d guess that’s also part of opening the wrong catalog. If it’s from Explorer/Finder, I’d be going looking for viruses.
thank you for your prompt reply. I don’t think that I am in the wrong catalog. the files in question seem to have disappeared from my folders’ que. That is to say, from my catalog. Nor am I able to locate them in the finder. I have located them, however, in my backup hard drive, although I have to say that a few seem to be missing even from that. What do you think?
If you can’t find them in Finder either, you either deleted them from Lightroom, or something else deleted them, or they were never copied to the hard drive in the first place. Post on the forum and we’ll help you troubleshoot.
Victoria, could you, pls, share your Lightroom folder structure in general? I see you have some mix with local Mac HDD and remove NAS. What is your strategy here? What do you store locally and what remotely? How do you organize folders inside these devices?
Most of my photo archive lives on an external drive, which is replicated on the NAS using Chronosync. That way I can access the original photos when I’m using my laptop (link to the NAS) and on my desktop (link to the external drive for speed).
There’s a couple of things I keep on my main internal drive:
I have Lightroom mobile photos set to download to the internal drive because at times I may be using LR when the external drive or NAS is disconnected, and I want to know exactly where they’re going.
I also have a bunch of demo files in the Lightroom Queen folder in Dropbox on my internal drive, which I can access wherever I am.
And finally, if I just need to import something temporarily, like a photo someone’s sent me to check, that’ll get imported to the desktop or downloads and then removed again when I’m done.
Beyond that, I have a very simple dated folder structure inside Lightroom Photos, using a YYYY/MM hierarchy.
I’m curious about your catalog strategy in the set up you describe with a photo set on your external drive and a duplicate on an NAS. Do you use one catalog? After both drives are synced is it a manual process to import any new photos into the LR catalog?
I import photos into Lightroom sending them to the external drive in the Destination panel, then Chronosync runs a scheduled backup to the NAS.
In Lightroom Classic, I have two folders both with the same name. Each points at one unified year-month-day directory structure on an external drive, constituting my entire catalogue, but with certain years, months, days listed in one or the other. There are even cases where different photos from the same day are split between the folders. How can I combine them?
It is not a matter of dragging one to the other as the actual files are already in the one hierarchical structure.
This has been happening for quite a while, though one of the folders contained the vaste bulk of my catalogue and the other only a relative smattering. However, after importing my old Aperture library into LR using the supplied LR plug-in, it is much worse.
It sounds like you have what we call “the capitalization problem”, but to be sure, we’d need to see a screenshot. Post it on the forum (link on the menubar) and we can get you fixed up.
In Lightroom classic, I have a folder in my Macintosh HD which shows zero photos. this folder is greyed but it’s not missing as far as I understand – there is no ? point. I have imported the photos from this folder into my Lightroom catalog since I can find this folder in my Macintosh disk, but once I am in the Lightroom I cannot see any photos under this Mac HD folder, despite they are contained within the catalog. Do you have any idea why this happens and how to solve it?
Hi Joana
Are you on Catalina? Check the permissions for Lightroom, that causes this. Details are on the Catalina blog:
https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom-macos-catalina-compatibility/
I have 4000 birds in my birds folder (way too many). I have created subfolders under the birds folder. One is Alligators, one is bears, etc. I want to move the shots that are not birds, but were taken on birding trips to the appropriate subfolder. I can just click on the photo and slide it to the subfolder. BUT, now it is in the subfolder AND the bird folder. If I delete it from the catalogue in the bird folder, it also deletes the pic in the subfolder. How do I do what I am trying to do?
This is due to the parent folder simply displaying everything in and under it.
Untick Library > Show Photos in Subfolders and you will only see photos in the specific folder you have selected in the folders panel.