Today’s Question: I have a lot of old poor quality photos I’d like to delete. When I reject them in Lightroom Classic and use the Delete Rejected Photos command, it says they cannot be moved to the trash. Why? Should I just delete them from Lightroom Classic instead of deleting them from the disk?
Tim’s Quick Answer: This is generally an issue with the hard drive format, but in this case I recommend deleting the photos rather than just removing them from the catalog and leaving them on the hard drive. Just be absolutely sure you want to permanently delete the photos first.
More Detail: In most cases if you’re not able to move photos (or other files) to the trash on a computer running MacOS, it is because the hard drive is not formatted with a file system that supports the trash. It is not necessary to make use of the trash, however, as long as you’re absolutely sure you want to permanently delete the photos. You can allow the photos to be deleted without going to the trash.
I do not recommend choosing the “Remove from Lightroom” option, as this will leave the source files on your hard drive but remove them from your Lightroom Classic workflow. That means they’re taking up space and adding clutter, but that you won’t ever see them in Lightroom Classic.
