Remove from Collection vs Delete from Disk and Remove from Lightroom

Question

I am working on Windows 10 and have been a Lightroom user and Adobe CC user since the beginning. I have over 200,000 raw files imported into Lightroom. When "Collections" was added I immediately added unique collections to my Lightroom image structure and workflow. I always include at least one collection (Date / Country / State / City) in every import. I have been doing all of my editing directly in collections ever since. This includes rating my pictures. The good thing is that I see the lightroom edits in my DNG files regardless of where I am viewing them from. The frustrating thing is that I can delete files from the disk or remvoe them from the library in both the disk location and library location in Lightroom. However, I cannot delete from the disk when editing or reviewing files from my collections. I can only remove them from the collection. This has left thousands of unwanted DNG files on my disk.

Is there a way to simultaneously delete files from the disk when removing them from a collection.
If there is not, plaese, please, please ADD IT.

Because I keep both the RAW and DNG when creating DNGs I already maintain 20 terabytes of disk space. I really do not want to buy more, larger hard disks.

In addition to adding the ability to delete files from collections, it would also be nice to be able to delete both the DNG and its RAW equivilant at the same time. (just a thought :-))

I look forward to your answer to my firs bullet above.

Jim Palik

dj_paige · Accepted Answer

When you are in a collection, and you want to remove the photo from the Lightroom Classic catalog, and from your hard disk, you can use the "Splat Delete" which is (on Windows) Ctrl-Alt-Shift-Del

Please note: there is no warning dialog box that could serve as a prevention from accidentally deleting the wrong photos. When you do the Splat Delete, the photo is immediately and without warning removed from Lightroom Class and from your hard disk. So if you select the wrong photo, and then Splat Delete ... sorry, it's gone, no sympathy from us, you need to use this with extreme caution (or, in my opinion, don't do Splat Delete at all, delete from the All Photographs view).

Jan_Kozlowski · Answer

I know this topic is 3 years old already... But in case it helps anybody I think also a not ideal, but probably good option in most cases is to select target photos in collection view, then go to any sub- or mother folder containing the photos and hitting Delete.

I can fully agree that deleting photos from Collections View may be very frustrating despite the convenience of using Collections.

What is good though, you can switch between viewing photos from a Collection and folder, so it's basically one click away to view selected photos from a folder, and then just click Delete to trigger the dialog window, then choose "Delete from disk".

Hope that helps anybody out there : )

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