Today’s Question: In Lightroom Classic, what is the best way to move images in your catalog from one folder to another or from one hard drive to another? I know you’ve said to do it in Lightroom, but I don’t see how from either the import dialogue or dragging. Most of my images are on one external drive, but some are saved on my computer’s hard drive. I want to get them all on the external.
Tim’s Quick Answer: You can move folders or photos by dragging a folder within the Folders list on the left panel in the Library module, or move photos by selecting them and dragging the thumbnails to a different folder. You can also create a new folder if needed, including creating a new folder on a hard drive that isn’t yet being managed by Lightroom Classic.
More Detail: If you want to move folders or photos that are being managed by Lightroom Classic, it is important to move them within Lightroom Classic, not through the operating system or other software. Otherwise, Lightroom Classic will lose track of the location of the photos, so that folders and photos will appear as missing.
Instead, you can simply drag-and-drop photos or folders within Lightroom Classic. Simply drag selected photos or folders to a different location within the Folders section of the left panel in the Library module. If you need to drag the selected items to a level higher than the folders that are visible, such as a parent folder, you can right-click on a top-level folder and choose “Show Parent Folder” from the popup menu.
If you need to create a new destination folder, you can click the plus symbol to the right of the Folders heading and choose “Add Folder”. You can then navigate to the location where you want to create a new folder (including on a new hard drive that isn’t yet being used in Lightroom Classic) and create a new folder. That folder will then appear in the Folders list (even if it is on a hard drive that wasn’t previously being managed by Lightroom Classic) so you can drag folders or photos to that new folder.
In other words, you can work within Lightroom Classic in much the same way as you could work in your operating system in terms of creating folders, moving folders and photos, and even renaming folders and photos. The key is to perform that work within Lightroom Classic so the catalog stays up to date with the changes on your hard drives.
