Today’s Question: I’m trying to export copies of all photos in my Lightroom Classic catalog. So I go to All Photographs, set the filter to None, and choose Edit > Select All from the menu. But on the filmstrip the number of photos shown as selected is smaller than the total number of photos. How can that be if I’ve selected all with no filter set?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Based on your description the most likely cause of not all photos being selected is that you have stacks of photos that are collapsed.
More Detail: When images have been stacked in Lightroom Classic, and a stack is collapsed, that stack only counts as a single photo. As a result, if you select all photos when there are stacks collapsed, the photos “hidden” by the stack will not be included in the selection. So, for example, if there is a stack of ten photos and it is collapsed, nine of those photos won’t be selected when you use the Select All command.
To resolve this issue, you simply need to unstack all stacks before selecting the photos. So, for example, you could navigate to the All Photographs collection in the Catalog section of the left panel in the Library module (or any folder or collection). Choose “None” from the Library Filter bar at the top of the grid view so no images are excluded based on a filter. Then go to the Photo menu and choose Stacking > Expand All Stacks. You can then choose Edit > Select All, and you will truly be selecting all the images.
Note that when you aren’t seeing all photos, such as when there are collapsed stacks, there will be an indication of this on the filmstrip. For example, you might see something like “3264 of 3548 photos / 3264 selected”. This tells you that while there are a total of 3,548 photos in the current location, you’re only seeing 3,264 of them, and all those 3,264 images are selected. But by expanding all stacks you’ll see that you are browsing all photos, without excluding those that were hidden by being collapsed in a stack.
