Updated for 2016: check out this video to learn everything you need to know!

Hello again Lightroom fans! Today, I want to tackle how we move and delete our images in Lightroom. Doing these both from within Lightroom helps us avoid catalog issues and errors.

Deleting Photos

There are essentially two types of deletions in Lightroom: deleting the file, and deleting images from the catalog. Today, I’ll help you make sure you know the difference and nail down how to do it.

First thing’s first: to delete images in Lightroom, you first have to select the images! You can select a single image, or multiple. To select multiple images, hold control [cmd on a Mac] – and click as many photos as you want to select. You’ll notice that it highlights multiple photos. We can also select one photo, hold shift, and click another image to select all images in between.

I clicked on the first image, then held shift and clicked on the fourth image to select all of the images in between.

Now, press delete on your keyboard – you can use backspace or the delete button if you have the number pad.

Lightroom will bring up a warning that reads:

Pressing “delete from disk” will delete the images from your hard drive, while “remove” simply takes the image out of the catalog but leaves it on your computer.

Let’s think about the difference here. If we “delete the selected master photo from disk”, that means that we are deleting the file from our hard drive and moving it to the trash bin. Poof, gone. 😀 However, removing it from Lightroom just takes it out of our catalog, but the file is still on the computer.

Clicking “Delete from disk” is going to send the photo to the recycling bin. Clicking “remove” will simply take it out of the Lightroom catalog, but leave it wherever it’s stored on your hard drive. These two deletes are doing different things for sure, but are pretty self explanatory. Make sure and read the menus carefully!

Moving Photos

Another option in Lightroom is to move images. If we need to relocate where our images are stored on the hard drive, we want to do it from within Lightroom so that Lightroom doesn’t lose where our images are stored.

I have to admit that moving photos to another folder in Lightroom is a little clunky, and not as full featured as I would like. However, it can be done from the Library module. On the left side of the program, you’ll see a file browser. You can drag and drop folders into new locations to move the entire folder.

To move folders with images, just drag and drop them using the file browser on the left side of the Library module.

Make sense? Any questions on how to handle deleting and moving photos in Lightroom? Leave a comment if there’s anything I can do to help you out!

Moving files around on your system can really throw Lightroom for a loop. However, have no fear! We can fix this error in just a few seconds.

First, a little background. After you get images in a catalog, Lightroom can’t follow your images if they get moved. You might hit this error message because you renamed a folder, moved it inside of another folder, or anything that changes the path of the files in Lightroom.

You’ll notice the issue when you see this message pop up in Lightroom:

This message will show when images get moved around on your computer and Lightroom can’t find them.

Easy fix, no worries. All that we need to do is show Lightroom where we moved the files to. In the Library Module, look down at the Film Strip (the row on the bottom with photo thumbnails) and click the small box over the thumbnail.

Click this little box to fix the issue!

This box pops up to let you locate where the photos were moved to.

Lightroom pops open this box to allow you to locate where the files are moved to.

Finally, show Lightroom where the photos are moved to, and click the same image that you are locating. Leaving the “find nearby missing photos” box checked will help the rest of the images automatically fix.

If you don’t know what you did with the files, that’s a little trickier. The best thing I can recommend is searching on your computer for those files. For instance, I could use Windows or Mac’s search tool to search for IMG_2266.CR2 for the example above.

Lightroom also has a super cool feature that lets you filter all of the missing images quickly. While in the Library module, just choose Library from the menu, then Find Missing Photo. Lightroom will show you all of the images that have broken links.

Using “Find Missing Photos” can quickly show the missing photos in your catalog.

Having issues with missing images? Check in with a comment if you need help.

Renaming photos is an important part of keeping my image names sane! It’s so much nicer to come out with “jones-wedding-01.crw” instead of DSC170439182342 when we’re finished. Sure, we can rename photos as we import them into Lightroom. However, how can we rename photos that are already in our catalog? Let’s take a look.

Quick note here: I frequently talk about the beauty of Lightroom not altering our original files. This is one of the tweaks that actually does alter your source files. Of course, just changing the filename is pretty harmless, but just thought you should know.

The beauty of renaming the files is that we basically give Lightroom a “naming scheme” and then it handles renaming them all for us. To get started, go ahead and make sure you’re in the Library module.

Next up, pick the photos that you want to rename. Typically, I’ll want to rename all of my photos, so I select all. Next up, bring up Lightroom’s rename option by pressing F2 on your keyboard, or choosing “Library” from the menu, then “Rename Photos”.

Now, Lightroom brings up a menu that lets us choose the way that we rename our photos. Typically, I keep it pretty simple and choose the option that reads “Custom Name – Sequence”. Let’s take a look.

Here, all that we have to do is enter our “custom text”, which is the text that appears in every filename. Then, Lightroom adds a number to the end of each photo in order. We can also start the numbering wherever we want, but I usually leave it at “1”.

But what if we want to get more detailed than that? We can create custom settings and naming schemes to build much more descriptive names. Instead of choosing “custom name-sequence” from the menu, now try opening “Custom Settings” on the File Naming menu.

Okay, this is one of the most complex parts of Lightroom but bear with me here. Basically, this is a small program within Lightroom that lets us build different naming schemes easily.

You can see tons of dropdown menus. This is one thing that takes a little bit of experimenting with, but the basic procedure goes like this. Those dropdowns have different naming options built in, and we chain them together to build our new naming scheme. What we can do is pick naming “bits” from those options and then “insert” them into our naming scheme.

I inserted four naming bits here. Let me walk you through them:

• Date (YYYY) – adds the date of the photo in the four digit scheme
• Date (Month) – adds the name of the month to the filename
• Date (DD) – adds the two digit date of the month to the filename
• Custom Text – includes the custom text option – we can make this whatever we want

Renaming photos can be really simple and straightforward, but Lightroom also has tons of options to build the rename scheme that we desire. If you need something simple, try out one of the built in naming schemes, but also check out the more complex options that can give you detailed names.

Do you do image renames? Feel free to leave a comment if you need more help or want to share you preferred naming schemes.

Hey again! Today, we’re diving into the debate of how many photographers cull. Two of the most popular ways that photographers cull in Lightroom is with flags (also known as “flag as pick”) or using the star system. Both of these are ways that we can make our picks about which in images. A reader sent me this email recently about which rating system to use:

Choosing flagging or rating with stars really causes some Lightroom users to question how best to handle their culling.

I just can’t choose between stars and flagging as picks while culling my images. I like flagging because it keeps it simple, but I love being able to jump to the best photos by filtering by stars. Help Lightroom Love! Tell me what to do!

Sincerely, Stars and Flags Forever

As is the case with many posts here on the blog, I can only share  my own personal preferences and opinions. For me, I prefer flagging photos while culling. In my workflow, there are only two types of photos: ones I will deliver to a client, and ones that I will not. And besides, deciding if a photo is a 3 star or 4 star effort is just a headache for me. I like keeping things straightforward.

However, I also see great use for the star system. I might 5-Star an image if I use it in Facebook sneak peeks or for promotional purposes. As always, don’t follow rules that don’t exist – no one says you have to use exclusively flagging or exclusively stars to cull images.

Either way, Lightroom provides us with the flexibility to filter images later based on if images are flagged or not, or by the star rating an image receives. We can also throw in color labels for a bit of complexity.

Let’s also use this as an open mic: which system do you use to cull? Check in with a comment – I’m really interested to hear what you’re doing.