Today’s Question: Today I clicked on All Photographs [in the Catalog section of the left panel in the Library module in Lightroom Classic] to look at my map and saw that I had 231 images set as rejected. I would like to review those to be sure before deleting from disk. How do I do so?
Tim’s Quick Answer: You can review all photos with a Reject flag by simply setting a filter based on the Reject flag attribute while browsing the source folder or collection that contains the photos you want to review.
More Detail: When you are reviewing photos in Lightroom Classic to determine which are your favorites and which should be deleted, I recommend assigning a Reject flag to the images you want to delete, rather than deleting them immediately. This helps to maintain a more streamlined workflow and provides an opportunity to review the photos to confirm you really want to delete them.
When you’re ready to review rejected photos, first navigate to the folder or collection that includes the photos you want to review. This can include selecting the “All Photographs” collection in the Catalog section of the left panel in the Library module if you want to review all photos in your entire catalog.
You can then set a filter for only photos with a Reject flag, such as by using the Library Filter bar above the grid view display (choose View > Show Filter Bar from the menu if the Library Filter bar isn’t visible). Go to the Attribute tab and turn on the option for the Reject flag, which is the third icon to the right of the Flag label. Make sure all other filters are disabled so you’re seeing photos with a Reject flag assigned without any other options set.
You can then review the rejected photos to determine if you want to delete them. If there are rejected photos you don’t want to delete, you could change the Flag status to Pick (press “P” on the keyboard) or Unpick (press “U” on the keyboard). When you’ve reviewed all the photos you can select all those that still have a reject flag and choose Photo > Remove Photos from the menu. In the confirmation dialog I recommend choosing the “Delete from Disk” option so the selected photos will both be removed from your Lightroom Classic catalog and deleted from the hard drive.
