Mountain of trash "Collections" starting to pile up and don't know how to delete, what should I do?

[Ken Nielsen]

I recently started to work with DxO PhotoLab and NIK collections just to add editing capabilities to my work. Whenever I'm done editing in these external programs and when I send them back into Lightroom, first, I will need to 'synchronize folder' so that the editied versions appear in the Lightroom image filmstrip of thumbnails, but I also notice that on every edit a new 'Collection is added to the list under 'collections.' Why does this happen? This has never happened before with outsided edits say, for instance Topaz software. I don't know how to delete these 'collections' or even if I should as it might cause problems? I need helpful advice from somone who knows what is going on with this. Should I just ignore? What would you recommend? 

TIA,

Ken

[drtonyb · Accepted solution]

@Ken Nielsen 

Are you using an external application, say DXO Lab to edit, saving the edits, then openning LrC and Importing the edited files or are you opening DXO Lab as a plugin from LrC, editing, then saving back to LrC? In the latter case, DXO Lab is likely creating the Collection; there might be a preference in DXO Lab to turn it off. For the former case, check that in the Import you haven't got Add to Collection checked, but I think that is unlikely.

In any case, you can delete collections without affecting the photos imported into LrC; the collection is removed, not the photos in it.

[Ken Nielsen]

Thank You, I'll do some detective work as this must be checked somewhere to do. PhotoLab does not open the selected image through Lightroom 'plug-in extras' like it should so I just make note of the filename and open directly from within PhotoLab then export back to Lightroom. Thanks for your response and the main thing is I can delete collections (maybe by right-clicking on the collection) and not worry about losing anything.

[drtonyb]

Yes, right-click on the collection for the context menu.

[Ken Nielsen]

Thank you for first-class help.

[Rob_Cullen]

@Ken Nielsen  FYI You might be interested to read this forum thread from 2022 with the sme problem.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/integration-with-dxo-pureraw-2/m-p/1298...

[Ken Nielsen]

Yes! Very good and thank you!