Today’s Question: When importing catalogs into a catalog [in Lightroom Classic] is there an easier way of avoiding duplicate files of the same photos to be imported?
Tim’s Quick Answer: No, you don’t have the option to not import suspected duplicates when merging catalogs in Lightroom Classic. However, in this context I wouldn’t recommend skipping duplicate images when merging catalogs.
More Detail: If you have more than one catalog in Lightroom Classic and want to merge them into one, you can use the “Import from Another Catalog” command. However, you don’t have control over how duplicates are handled when merging catalogs.
First off, if the two catalogs contain references to the exact same files with the exact same filenames within the exact same folder, they won’t be imported twice. The duplicates in this context would not be imported, but that’s simply because the files in question are already being managed by the destination catalog. So this is exactly what you would want to have happen, although there is an option to choose which metadata takes precedence between the two.
If, on the other hand, you have more than one copy of the same photos in different locations, the duplicate photos would be imported as part of the process of merging catalogs. However, that’s exactly what I would recommend doing since merging catalogs is part of a process of streamlining your workflow and cleaning things up.
If you were to skip duplicate images when merging catalogs, you would still have duplicate files taking up space on your hard drive, they just wouldn’t be references within your catalog. I therefore think it is best to import the duplicates, and then work on identifying which images are duplicates, which among the duplicates should take precedence, and clean out the duplicates accordingly.
