Photos wrongly showing as already imported but not in any collections.

[derek2870199199ab]

Fairly new to LRC and not everything is obvious or covered in tutorials. I'm having trouble adding photos to collections, with some photos unable to be imported and the message 'already imported', however the photo does not exist in any collection and in some instances has just been added to the hard drive.  This has also happened when I have exported an edited image from Photoshop, but can't import it into a collection. There must be something obvious I have overlooked or not learned. Thanks

[JohanElzenga · Accepted solution]

It sounds like you are trying to import a photo again in order to put it in a collection. That is not how collections work. A collection is like a playlist in Apple Music. You import the song only once, and then you can add it to as many playlists as you want. In Lightroom Classic, all you need to do is drag and drop an image onto a collection to add it to that collection. Smart collections populate themselves, based on criteria. https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/photo-collections.html

[derek2870199199ab]

Thank you - apologies for the slow response. You are correct, that was where I was confused and the process works. Thanks.