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Participant
November 11, 2021
Question

Clearing Lightroom

  • November 11, 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 178 views

Help! 

I loaded all my photos from hard drive to Lightroom before being properly organised 

In his book Scott Kelby tells how to sort folders FIRST then upload.

Can I clear all my images from Lightroom then start again???

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

dj_paige
Legend
November 11, 2021

Honestly, there are many ways to organize, and Scott Kelby, in my opinion, doesn't really present great choices and does present a poor choice.

 

Instead of organizing folders, another choice is to organize within Lightroom Classic, using Lightroom Classic tools such as keywords and other metadata. Then, it doesn't matter what the folder structure is, because you do all your searching via keywords and other metadata. This has a major advantage over folder organization, because most photo libraries (maybe even yours) don't fit nicely into a folder organizatoin scheme, as photos can be in only one folder, but might logically belong organized into several categories (think of a family vacation to the beach, the photos need to be organized into "Vacation" and "Beach" and by people in the photo, and by geography) all of which is easy to do with keywords and other metadata, but nearly impossible with folders.

 

The only thing I use folders for is storage locations. I import photos into folders named by capture date. All other organization is done inside Lightroom Classic using keywords and other metadata.

richardcymro
Participant
August 27, 2023

Hi everyone, I am also very new to Lightroom and have basically been 'fiddling' with it with little thought or structure. I now intend to follow one of the many on-line beginners courses. There is notrhoing of any value in my lightroom files and I desperaterly need a 'blank canvas' to follow the courese. So I reeally do need the answewr to the question, 'how do I remove all existinbg files/photos from my pdrogframme'?

 

dj_paige
Legend
August 27, 2023

File->New Catalog

 

Although when someone says that they need to start over, I'm usually skeptical. You can just use the tools in LrC to re-organize what you already have in LrC; normally I don't agree with the need to start over.

Community Expert
November 11, 2021

Before you clear all and start again take a look here:

How do I rearrange existing photos into a new dated folder structure? | The Lightroom Queen

 

If this doesn't help I wouldn't clear all images from an existing catalog. I would start with an new catalog. So you can at every time you like go back.

Be aware: I you'll start again with an new catalog or clear all images from the existing catalog you'll loose all your editings that you've done. 

My System: Intel i7-8700K - 64GB RAM - NVidia Geforce RTX 3060 - Windows 11 Pro 25H2 -- LR-Classic 15 - Photoshop 27 - Nik Collection 9 - PureRAW 6 - Topaz Photo AI