Can I prevent Lr from deleting a photo (locking it)?

[ericgbirder]

Hi, I'd like to make it hard for me to delete certain photos in my library. For example, I'm a bird photographer, and sometimes I'll have two photos that are nearly identical, so I'd normally delete one of them, but sometimes the two photos show two different subtle features, so I want to keep both. However, if I'm later just looking for nearly-identical photos, I might delete one of them forgetting about the subtle feature. It'd be great if I could "lock" a photo and only be able to delete it once I unlock it to save me from myself. I can't any way to do this.

I did think of adding a special keyword and then writing a Lua plugin that deletes photos which are rejected unless they have that special keyword. Before I did that, I wanted to see if there was an easier way. Thanks, Eric

[AxelMatt]

As far as I know there's no way to lock a picture in Lightroom to prevent the deletion.

[JohanElzenga]

There is no option to lock images. Here's an idea: color labels are stored in a text field. So a red label shows the word 'Red' in that field. If you type something in this field that does not corresponds to an existing label color, like "Do not delete", then Lightroom Classic shows a little white rectangle on the image mount to indicate this 'missing' label. That gives you the option to label these images without having to sacrifice a real label color for it.