Today’s Question: You discussed why it was better to delete photos from the hard drive than to just remove from the Lightroom Classic catalog. Is there anything you can do retroactively to delete photos that I removed from Lightroom Classic but now realize are still on the hard drive and taking up room?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can add the photos to the Lightroom Classic catalog again using the Synchronize Folder command and then delete them using the Previous Import collection.
More Detail: When you remove photos from Lightroom Classic you have the option of only removing them from the catalog or also deleting them from the hard drive. In most cases I recommend using the option to delete the source files, because otherwise you’ll have photos taking up space on your hard drive that aren’t reflected in your catalog.
If you know you have removed photos without deleting them, you can bring them back into the Lightroom Classic catalog and then delete them. Start by right-clicking on a folder that you know images were removed from without being deleted and choose Synchronize Folder from the popup menu. In the dialog that appears, turn on the “Import new photos” checkbox and the “Show import dialog before importing” checkbox. Turn off the “Remove missing photos from catalog” checkbox (if it is enabled) and the “Scan for metadata updates” checkbox.
Click the Synchronize button, then configure the settings you want to use in the Import dialog and click the Import button. Once the import is complete the images that were added will be in the Previous Import collection in the Catalog section of the left panel in the Library module. Go to that collection, review the images to make sure you really do want to delete them, and then select the photos you want to delete (possibly all of them). Then choose Photo > Remove Photos from the menu and click the “Delete from Disk” button. That will cause those images to be both removed from the catalog and deleted from the hard drive.
