Exclude photos exported from LR when importing

[Biscut]

After I export photos edited in LRC and move them to my iPhone, they appear as new on import. This creates a circular mess of sorting through photos to make sure they aren't imported again, and a large accumulation grows over the years.

Isn't there a way to just check a photo when in the import dialog and tell LRC to never import it?

[johnrellis]

How are you moving the photos to the phone?  Through a USB cable or a cloud service (which one)? Similarly, how are you importing photos from your phone?

[Biscut]

I usually AirDrop the photos onto the phone.

I always import from the phone to LRC by USB cable.

[johnrellis]

The photos edited and exported from LR and airdropped to the phone are JPEGs.  Unless you've changed the default camera settings on the phone, the photos imported from the phone into LR will be HEICs.

So when you import via cable from the phone, set the option Sort: File Type at the bottom center of the LR Import window. All the HEICs will be grouped together, and all the JPEGs grouped together. Select just the HEICs before starting the import.

* * 

Alternatively, install the LR Mobile app on the phone and configure it to automatically import new photos from the phone's camera roll. These will then automatically sync into LR Cloud and then down into LR Classic. In LR Classic, you can then add photos you want to see on the phone into the All Synced Photos, and they'll get automatically synced to the cloud and onto the phone in the LR Mobile app.

It will take you a bit to learn how to configure the sync settings on the phone and LR Classic, but once done, it will all happen automatically and be much faster than manually airdropping and importing.

[Biscut]

Thank you. It might take a bit to make sense of how that works. I hadn't thought of sorting the import into jpg and HEICs.

I have dabbled a bit with the LR app on my phone for certain specific uses, but it didn't seem to be the best option for me.

Right now I'm thinking it's preferable to use the native Photos app to organize everything on my phone. There are 100s of gigs of photos and videos on the phone already, though far more in my LRC catalog. I know you can select which photos from LRC you want on your LR phone app; still Photos works better for me I think.

So, think I'm just hoping to be able to (permanently) exclude certain photos on import, so I don't have to scroll down through the thousands of alternative versions of photos already in the LRC catalog every time.

In my system, I shoot with my iPhone and other cameras, edit photos in LRC, video in Premiere, and put select photos and videos onto the iPhone, and organize and view them in the Photos app.

[johnrellis]

LR Cloud may not be right for you, as you explain, but it's Adobe's solution for how to manage photos across multiple devices, and it avoids the particular problem of reimportation. So I think it's unlikely that submitting a feature request would have much influence.

[Biscut]

I see, thank you.