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Hi there! I have been uploading files into Lightroom Classic for over a year, so I have over 1,000 files uploaded. Recently I started to create catalogs for my files. Now I can't exit or quit a catalog to locate the files that are NOT in catalogs. When I quit LC and then open LC, the same catalog automatically opens up. I don't want the catalog(s) to open, I want to open and view the files that are not in catalogs. Thanks!
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I am confused. Lightroom Classic catalogs only show the photos that have been imported. The files that are not in a catalog have to be found by your operating system.
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Thanks! So how do I exit the catalog so that I can view the OS files again?
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File->Exit.
I still don't know what your goal is here. Do you want to Import the photos that are not in your catalog into the catalog? Is that what you are trying to do?
If you have only a single catalog, and are brave, you can synchronize folders and then photos that are not in the catalog will be imported. (I say "if you are brave" because synchonize will remove photos from the catalog if they are no longer in the folder as shown by the operating system). And this method has major drawbacks if you have more than catalog (which is usually not a good idea anyway).
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The files that I am trying to locate are not in a catalog that I created. For the past year (1,000 files +), I would attach my card reader to the MAC and upload the files into LC...but not into a catalog that I created. I can't locate the 1,000 files. I recently learned how to create catalogs. Now I have a catalog open. When I exit, and then open LC the same catalog appears. I don't want the catalog to appear, I want to be able to view the other files (1,000 + files) that are not in catalogs.
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...or how can I view ALL the files that are uploaded into LC...not just the ones in a catalog?
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When you use the word Catalog do you really mean a Collection?
I suggest you STOP whatever you are trying to do in Lightroom Classic and take some time to Learn exactly what the LrC catalog is, How LrC works and how to Properly work with LrC.
Lightroom Classic tutorials | Learn how to use Lightroom Classic
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"...or how can I view ALL the files that are uploaded into LC...not just the ones in a catalog?"
Files IMPORTED (not uploaded) into Lightroom Classic are in a catalog somewhere. There is no such thing as a photo imported into Lightroom Classic and not in a catalog.
"I would attach my card reader to the MAC and upload the files into LC...but not into a catalog that I created."
It is in a catalog if you IMPORTED (not uploaded) the photos using Lightroom Classic.
Is your problem really that you don't know how to find the other catalog(s) that might exist somewhere?
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Ok... how do I view all the catalogs that are in my Lightroom Classic? For the first year...I guess LC automatically created a catalog for me??? If so, how can I view that catalog?
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If you do have multiple catalogs, you really ought to combine them into one larger catalog. This has a bazillion benefits, okay maybe a bazillion and twelve benefits, one of the most important being that it is much much simpler for the user. But I guess we can discuss that after we find them.
If you have just a few, in Lightroom Classic go to File->Open Recent and they will be listed there and you can select any one you want and open it and see what is in there. If there are many more than a few (I don't remember what the limit is for File->Open Recent) then you really ought to use your operating system to search for all files on all disks whose name ends with .LRCAT (might be lower case). To open each one you find via your operating system, double-click on it.
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The first thing to try is to go to the Catalog panel in the upper left corner and click All Photographs. That will display all photographs ever imported into this particular catalog. If you can't see this, choose Window > Panels > Catalog to reveal it.
If this shows you all the photos you could not see before, that answers one question: All the photos you imported are actually in this catalog. Now you can use the Folders panel farther down to select individual folders you want to look at. If you see a photo in the grid but you have no idea where it is located in Lightroom Classic, select the photo and choose Photo > Go to Folder in Library. If you want to see where it is on your computer choose Photo > Reveal in Finder/Explorer.
It’s likely that this is the only catalog you have, because if you don’t know how to open/close/locate other catalogs, chances are that every image you have imported so far has gone into the one default catalog that gets set up at the beginning without you having to do anything. Even if you don't think you've been using a catalog, you have, because you can import images only when a catalog is already open to import into.