Updating library folders: showing a new subfolder

[mycc]

Hi,

I created a subfolder outside Lightroom (Windows). But how can I update the folder view in the library to show this new folder? 

Thanks!

mycc

[dj_paige]

Put a photo in this folder, and then import the photo into Lightroom Classic.

[mycc]

Thanks, but there is only this workaround?

[TheDigitalDog]

Hi,

I created a subfolder outside Lightroom (Windows).

In the future, you may want to do all this inside of LR so it 'knows' what is what. So file naming, folder creation and renaming, deleting images etc. Anything you can do like this outside LR, you can do inside it as well.

[mycc]

I created a subfolder outside Lightroom (Windows).

In the future, you may want to do all this inside of LR so

By @TheDigitalDog

yes, I know. But this was a special case. And updating the folder structure should be a stadard feature of LR – as it is standard e.g. in Dreamweaver.

[TheDigitalDog]

And updating the folder structure should be a stadard feature of LR – as it is standard e.g. in Dreamweaver.

It updates folder location, not automatically.

There is the "Update Folder Location" command for this.

[dj_paige]

Lightroom Classic is not Dreamweaver, it is a database. It is also not a file browser like Windows Explorer or Mac Finder. It doesn't know about new folders unless you create the folder in Lightroom Classic, or unless you import photos from that folder using ADD.

[JohanElzenga]

---

@mycc wrote:

I created a subfolder outside Lightroom (Windows).

In the future, you may want to do all this inside of LR so

By @TheDigitalDog

yes, I know. But this was a special case. And updating the folder structure should be a stadard feature of LR – as it is standard e.g. in Dreamweaver.

---

Why should Lightroom be able to do everything that Dreamweaver can do? These are totally different beasts. Lightroom can also not make coffee, even though my coffee machine can do that.

[mycc3]

Good to know, DW is not LR!

But LR has a file/folder menu, too. And no option to update this file/folder listing as it is possible not only in DW.

We live in a strange world – digital and analog.

THANKS & BYE.

[TheDigitalDog]

But LR has a file/folder menu, too. And no option to update this file/folder listing as it is possible not only in DW.

By @mycc3

What file/folder menu? And want makes you believe that means it should do anything like you think it should automatically.

Again, LR has a command to locate missing folders and update all this. And it works. You just need to understand how it works, why it works and when to use it.

[richardplondon · Accepted solution]

There is an option "Add Folder" which makes a given folder visible that would not otherwise show, as a result of the locations of the imported images. That might be useful if you then plan to virtually drag-drop images' locations within Lr Classic Folders panel, whereupon LrC instructs the operating system to implement those moves for real.

The catalog holds "as recorded" file path information for all the imported images, and that is what the folders panel is referring to - you are effectively seeing the output from a database query. The actual file storage is NOT the source for what this panel shows; that storage does not even need to be currently accessible.

At root the way to alter what the folders panel shows, is to update what file path information the Catalog has got recorded against the respective images. Importing images causes new images plus their containing folders to show, but folders will not otherwise show merely because they exist on disk (unless with a manual "Add Folder", or "Show Parent Folder"). Images will never show, if they are not imported. When the arrangements of the storage are externally changed behind LrC's back, then this introduces a mismatch. That mismatch can be cleared up by informing the LrC Catalog of that external change.

Analogy: say you move house but don't tell anyone, people and organisations will continue to (try to) contact you at your old address, and in good faith will continue to list you as still living there, knowing no different... until you inform them of the change. That is in the nature of records.

To the extent we can understand and treat the Catalog in these terms - as paperwork ABOUT all these images and folders, rather than a view of those directly - so much the better, and the more intuitive.

[Norman5C56]

What you are saying is correct and valid. I would also argue that many people use LRC as a photo cataloguing instrument, and it's not an unreasonable ask for it to monitor folders. Bridge works this way, and then defaults to Photoshop for editing; LRC is a trange hybrid which wants to do boh cataloguing and editing - but only to an extent.

The fact that it allows for keywords, or tagging, changes to the folder structure, moving and copying of files, etc., would suggest that it might indeed work - or ven should indeed be working - like explore, finder, Bridge, et al.

You can skip LRC altogether and use Bridge and Photoshop, but in so many ways, LRC is more convenient. IF they added this one feature - which they clearly could - it would be even more convenient.

For instance: I open a file in Photoshop, then export a copy to a jpg folder. I then have to import that to LRC if I want to find it via that program. (Or, r-click th efolder and say "Sync") I'd love to at least see the *option* within LRC to have it automatically sync some or all folders of my choice.

[richardplondon]

If the Catalog monitored folders and worked the same as Bridge etc do, then for as long as you had an external drive disconnected, everything within your image library that depended on that drive would disappear from view. 

Lightroom (Classic) exists as a product, and has a Catalog-centric paradigm, in part so that such dependencies will not arise. Offline imported images are just as easy to organise and manage as online imported images are, when that management is virtual in nature.

And non-imported images designedly 'do not exist' so far as the Catalog is concerned. Displaying them would be a 'blank check' to deliver in practice, the way a Catalog works. An indefinite and accidental plethora of OTHER images would need to be continually and proactively 'imported' and 'removed' in some sense, as they appeared and disappeared; when there might be no intention or benefit to seeing each one inside the Catalog, the Catalog can't know the difference. Often there's a very good practical reason for NOT seeing them there, for example if these are just exported derivative copies. And the user has already taken that decision not to see them inside LrC, by not reimporting them at the time. 

If you want to use a file-centric Adobe methodology which does automatically track change in the wider file system then this has always been and continues to be available:  Bridge + ACR + PS.

The reason that workflow cannot match the fluidity and nimbleness of the Catalog approach, is precisely because of its file-centric nature. This is all inherent, IOW. 

[dj_paige]

As you say, Adobe certainly could write code to monitor folders. The reason that Adobe has not put this code into LrC is because they don't want to — it doesn't fit within the catalog paradigm. They have had almost 20 years of Lightroom/Lightroom Classic to write this code, and they haven't done so. It is not going to happen.

And so if you are going to use LrC, you must adapt and use the catalog paradigm, and not the Bridge paradigm.