Move files in Lightroom Classic CC by keywords

[fechalk]

I am rearranging all of my photos in Lightroom Classic CC. Is it possible to move these files from the old folder to a new folder by using keywords? Is it safe to delete the old folders/files after moving files to the new folder? What is the best, most convenient way to accomplish this? I have over 40,000 photos and am trying to better organize.

[john beardsworth]

There's no automatic way to do that. My advice - leave the idea. Leave the photos where they are, make sure they are backed up, and put the  time that you will save into adding more keywords and other metadata. Folders are just for storage and physical safekeeping, use keywords and other metadata for categorising and analysis, and make use of collections for arbitrary gathering and grouping of your photos.

[dj_paige]

I almost never disagree with john beardsworth​, and I'm not going to now.

Organizing by moving from folder to folder is the weakest form of organizing, and suffers from the drawback that photos can be in only one folder at a time. By contrast, photos can have dozens of keywords if you want, a much more powerful way to organize. So yes, leave the photos where they are.

[john beardsworth]

Disagree all you want . But we do usually agree, as do many others.

[Just Shoot Me]

fechalk  wrote

I am rearranging all of my photos in Lightroom Classic CC. Is it possible to move these files from the old folder to a new folder by using keywords? Is it safe to delete the old folders/files after moving files to the new folder? What is the best, most convenient way to accomplish this? I have over 40,000 photos and am trying to better organize.

Is it possible to select and move image files from one folder, or multiple different folders, to another folder using keywords? Sure it is.

If all your images have a keyword assigned to them, or none do and you are starting to add keywords, if you select a keyword in the "Keyword List" section only the images that have that keyword will be displayed. You then Select All of them and then Drag them to whatever folder you want them in. If the folder doesn't already exist then you first need to create it by using the option to Add Folder in the "Folders".section of the left hand panel of the Library module.

But no matter what folder, or folders, those selected images are in, could be one folder or multiple folders, all of them will end up in the one folder you dragged them to.

But as others have point out you really don't need to do this. That is unless you really want to.

[Tony_See]

Yep I'd be using the Filter tool exactly as above.