Previous photos in lightroom

> Okay. Thanks for your reply. I get the point now. 
>My workflow is editing my photos and then export. End of this 

>\Next time: Open lightroom - import my new photos - editing and now get confused because of all the >precvious photos that I thougt would be deleted when I did the export after the previous export. 
>

>So what do I do to clean the table after doing an export when finished my editing?

If my understanding is correct, you have several versions of the same image in Lrc which represent a sequence editing sessions.  This was due to you exporting the image after each edit session (creating a new image on disk) and then importing that version (creating another entry in Lrc).  

Here’s the problem:   Each iteration of this cycle captured different edits to the image.  Let’s make a timeline.   

1. You import the original image from the camera and edit it in LrC.  Let’s call this image-v1.   The Lrc catalog points to Image-v1 on disk and in the catalog retains that first round of edits. You export the image creating image-v2 on disk
2. Now you import image-v2 into LrC and make futher edits.   The imported version has the edits done in step 1 baked into the pixels of image-v2.  So, in LrC the ‘starting point’ for image-v2 is what you exported in step 1 and the further edits are saved in the catalog.  You then export image-v2 creating image-v3 on disk.  This image has the edits done in step 1 as well as the further edits done in step 2 baked into the pixels.
3. Now you import image-v3 into LrC and make a 3rd round of edits.   The imported version has the edits done in steps 1 & 2  baked into the pixels of image-v3.  So, in LrC the ‘starting point’ for image-v3 is what you exported in step 2 and the round 3 edits are saved in the catalog.
4. for the sake of brevity, let’s stop here although you may have continued for an unknown number of addtional repetitions

Here are some options….

1.  You could take image-v3 and make it the top of a stack containing Image-v1 and image-v2.  This would maintain a history of your round 1, 2 and 3 edits and when the stack was collapsed would hide all but image-v3.
2. You could just delete image-v1 and image-v2 leaving only image-v3. The image in LrC would show the round 1, 2, and 3 changes but those from round 1 and 2 would be baked into the pixels as the starting point of image-v3.   This would reduce clutter of old images but would lose the history of exactly what you changed in round 1 and round 2.  This is probably the best choice
3. You could go back to Image-v1 in the catalog and manually re-do the round 2 and round 3 edtis.   Then delete Image-v2 and Image-v3 leaving only image-v1 which would contain all 3 rounds of edits.  This is the most technially accurate as the ‘original’ is still the version that came from the camera and you have a history of all your changes applied to that original.   But, it’s the most tedius to do.  
4. A vairant on C where rather then re-doing the round 2 and round 3 edits you copy the settings from image-v2 onto image-v1.  Then you copy the settings from image-v3 onto image v1.  now you delete images v2 and v3.  This will retain the state of the image represented by each version of the image but you won’t have the specific steps in history of what you did in round 2 and round 3. 

I know this is a bit complicted for a new users but see if you can make sense of it and ask for clarification if  need be.

Ok, sounds like a fundamenal misunderstanding of how LrC works.    

LrC is what is called a “non destructive editor”.    Here’s how it works.  When you import an image, an entry is made into a database they call “The catalog”.  Think of it as a row in a spreadsheet.  The cells or columns of this row contain all the the formation about the image.  This includes all the information from the camera (date. time, exposrure settings, camera/lens models and serial numbers,  etc.).  It also contains informaiton you provide like keywords, titles, captions, star ratings, copyright info,  etc.  All in all there are 200 to 300 pieces of information saved in the catalog for each image.  Collectively this is called the “Metadata” of the image.  

What is NOT included is the image itself.  The original image stays on your computer system in some folder as it was when it was imported it into Lrc.  But, in this row in LrC is a pointer to the image on disk (the full path starting with drive letter (Win) or drive/volume name (Mac) as well as the image file name.  As LrC is a ‘non destructive editor’ (except for a few exceptions) the original image file on disk is never altered by LrC.   

A second thing that is kept in the catalog for the image is a history of all the changes you’ve made in the Develop module to the image.  Each time you move a slider or use some tool to change something affecting the appearance of the image, LrC creates an entry in this history list.  You can see this in the Develop module, in the left panel group in panel “History”.  Along with this, for performance reasons, Lrc also keeps a small JPG version of your image which includes all your changes which they call a preview.  In fact, when you look at an image in Lrc you are actually looking at one of these previews.  

With this architecture there is no need to ‘save’ an image after editing as all the changes are logged in the history as you make them.  When you come back to an image later, LrC shows you a preivew which contains all the edits and it builds new previews automatically as needed replacing the old previews.   If you want to see how the image looked previously you can just hover your mouse over an older step in the history panel and the image will change to show what it looked like at that point in time.  If you click on that history step it will set that step as the ‘current’ version of the image and will igore other changes previously made after that one.  New changes you make will be added on from that point.  

So, your notion that is is ‘saving old copies of images’ is not really accurate.   It’s not saving any copy of the image.  Rather it saves (in the catalog) a list of changes to the original image and the original image is still sitting there on disk unchanged from when you had originally imported it. 

Does this make sense?

Okay. Thanks for your reply. I get the point now. 
My workflow is editing my photos and then export. End of this

Next time: Open lightroom - import my new photos - editing and now get confused because of all the precvious photos that I thougt would be deleted when I did the export after the previous export. 
 

So what do I do to clean the table after doing an export when finished my editing?

> How comes that my “old”/previously edited photo is still present in my lightroom? When I have imported my new photos I can still see my previous photos. 

I don’t know what you are asking but I think you may be using a uncoinventional workflow.   Let’s say you import image “V1” and edit it.   Then what do you do?  If you “Export” the image creating image V2 and then tomorrow come back to LrC and Import image V2 then you are not using LrC correctly as you will have a whole seires of image in various states.   

Assuming that is similar to what you are doing, do this instead.   Ather editing V1, just close LrC.  Tomorrow your edited version of V1 will still be there ready for more work - you don’t have to do an export to save your edits.  If you ever want to go back to a prior edit state (say from last week) you can do that using the History Panel in the develop module.  

If my presumption of what you are doing is incoorect, please explain your workflow in more detail.

If you only wish to see a specific new selection of images, and do not wish to see anything else, you might wish to check out Adobe Bridge. If you download a group of images into a folder, and select that folder in Bridge, all you see are those images.

For enhancing images, you’ll need Photoshop. When you have Photoshop installed, it will also install the plugin of Adobe Camera Raw. Enhancing an image in Adobe Camera Raw is (mostly) identical to working in Lightroom. (Lightroom Classic is Adobe Camera Raw with a database.)

Also, as ​@dj_paige aludes to, if you place all of your new images into a folder, all you will see in Lightroom Classic are the images in that folder. As you move from one folder to another, you will ONLY see the images in that folder.

The primary difference then between LRC and Bridge is that ALL of your images are readily available in LRC, while Bridge does not keep any collection of your images, you just open the folder you wish to look at in the Finder or Explorer and look (and work) at them with Bridge, ACR, and Photoshop.

Actually, what you are seeing is the way Lightroom Classic is designed. All of your photos (current and previous) are shown in the Lightroom Classic Library module when All Photographs is selected on the left under Catalog.

You can just view the current import, on the left of the Library Module under Catalog, there is an item that says “Previous Import”, click on that. There are other ways to limit the photos shown in the Library Module, such as selecting the folder that the photos are in, or filtering by capture date, and probably other methods as well.