Today’s Question: When I use the “Go to Folder in Library” command on one of the images that appears as a downloaded Smart Preview, it takes me to the Imported Photos folder. How do I confirm that I have the original source image other than doing a manual search, which would be tedious?
Tim’s Quick Answer: A quick way to confirm that the original (or a duplicate) file exists in Lightroom Classic is to select an applicable image, go to the All Photographs collection, and sort by capture time.
More Detail: Today’s question is a follow-up about an earlier question related to Smart Previews appearing in Lightroom Classic after having been downloaded automatically from cloud storage. As I explained in my original answer, this generally happens when you have changed which catalog is being synchronized to the cloud, and that as long as you’re completely sure you have the original images you can safely delete the Smart Previews. So, how do you confirm that you have the originals.
To get started, select an image you want to “test”, such as in this example a Smart Preview that downloaded automatically from the cloud, or an image you believe might be a duplicate. With that image selected, choose the “All Photographs” collection in the Catalog section of the left panel in the Library module. Make sure the Library Filter bar above the grid view is set to “None” so you’ll be viewing all images. Then make sure the Sort popup on the toolbar below the grid view is set to “Capture Time”.
At this point you can review images that appear directly before or after the selected image, to determine whether they are a match. In this case, for example, that would mean looking for the original capture (such as a raw image file) directly before or after the Smart Preview. Once you’ve confirmed that the Smart Preview does correspond to a matching original capture, or that an image is a duplicate that you don’t need, you can delete the unnecessary file while leaving the original capture where it is.
As referenced in today’s question, to determine which folder a particular image is stored in you can right-click on the image and choose “Go to Folder in Library” from the popup menu.
Note that this same process can be used to check for duplicate images in general, since sorting by capture time when browsing the “All Photographs” collection should cause any duplicates to appear next to each other when the sort order is set to “Capture Time”.
