Questions from a newbie

First, are you using the Lightroom Classic Import window expanded, or collapsed? When expanded, some of the options you are asking about should be visible.

1. To prevent the SD card from being ejected, deselect Eject After Import.

2. I don’t know of a way for Lightroom Classic to hide imported images. (What grays out images is having Don’t Import Suspected Duplicates enabled in the File Handling panel.)

3. Can’t answer because I always import raw only.

On keywording: If your goal is to apply different keywords to various image sets from the card, you don’t have to go through multiple imports or find your way around grayed-out files. After you import, notice that the images initially appear in the Previous Import collection (virtual list) under the Catalog panel. Previous Import contains only the images cataloged during the most recent import. So instead of going in and out of the Import dialog box multiple times, you could just import the entire card, review the entire card’s contents in Previous Import, quickly select ranges of images and apply keywords as needed, and then move on. The next time you import, that import will replace what’s in Previous Import.

There are many other reasons why you would want to keyword post-import. Doing so gives you the full range of keyword tools. For example, if you keyword after import, you can use the Keywords list, keyword sets including Recent Keywords, the metadata painter tool (load it up with metadata and click images to apply), drag-and-drop keywording, and more.

If you are doing multiple imports because you want to work with discrete sets of images to keyword, then import the whole card, organize the import into Collections or folders, and work with the image sets that way. Collections are virtual lists, so they use almost no storage space, you can include an image in as many collections as you want, and you can always go back to any of them later.

1. When there are many different keywords to be assigned to the photos, doing this at Import is probably sub-optimal. Better to do it after import.

2. Lightroom Classic generally does not want you to import a photo more than once. Importing a photo more than once is generally considered to be a bad thing, which can lead to confusion and frustration (which we see here in the forum from time to time).

3. My preferred method is ... well, it doesn't really matter what I do, the point is that you have a choice of displaying in the Lightroom Classic catalog both the RAW and JPG, or just the RAW, whichever YOU prefer (not whichever I prefer). I believe there is an option in preferences that lets you choose. (I'm at work, I don't know the exact option right now)