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frogmike
Known Participant
November 22, 2021
Question

Can I permanently delete photos on my HD from within LR?

  • November 22, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 404 views

I want to free up a bunch of space off my harddrives so I have to go through all my Lightroom albulms and delete the photos I don't want. The only option I really see is "Delete # photos...", then it says it'll delete them "permanently" from the folder/albulm/shares after 60 days which is a little vague.

Obviously this is silly and I'd like to permanently deleter them from my hard drive right now. The only problem is I don't know which ones were edited when I look at them in Bridge/Windows Explorer.

Can anyone provide any suggestions?

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    1 reply

    JohanElzenga
    Community Expert
    JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 22, 2021

    Lightroom stores the images in the cloud, so it's doubtful that you will free up a bunch of space from your local hard drive by deleting photos from Lightroom. Do go to the Lightroom preferences however, and check the options for storing local copies. You don't have to do that, so if that option is checked, you can uncheck it.

     

    -- Johan W. Elzenga
    F
    frogmikeAuthor
    Known Participant
    November 23, 2021

    Thanks but I'm trying to delete the local copies. My online storage is full anyways. I have at least 50GB I'm looking to delete from my local hard drive. Again, I'd do it through Windows Explorer or Bridge, but I don't know which ones were edited and taking the time to painstakingly go through and compare each photo is just not practical when I have 3000+.

     

    JohanElzenga
    Community Expert
    JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 23, 2021

    Local copies are just that: copies. They are not managed by Lightroom and are not really needed. Lightroom can work faster if it has a local copy, but it doesn't need one. If there is no local copy, then Lightroom will simply download it if it needs it. That means you can delete them all. There is no reason to want to keep the ones that were edited.

     

    -- Johan W. Elzenga
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