will deleting photos from parent collection also delete from child collection?

[Calvin1509]

i imported all of my timelapse photos into a single collection. I then went through that collection, selected a couple thousand photos, created a new collection and checked "add selected photos to collection." Instead of removing those photos from the original collection it seems to have duplicated them (not sure if its a referenced digital version or actually just straight up duplicated the file). Now that I have properly sorted all of the files from the parent collection into smaller collections, I want to delete the original collection and all of its files. Will this mean that it will delete all of the secondary collection photos I made?

[dj_paige]

No. Membership in Collection A does not affect membership in Collection B. In Lightroom, there really is no such thing as a parent collection with a child collection. (There are collection sets which can be parents, but you haven't described using a collection set).

[Calvin1509]

Okay, so when I created collection B as a subset of Collection A, then lightroom literally copied those files? I can delete collection A, destroy the files that are in it forever, and those stored in B are still fine?

[Rob_Cullen]

Are you referring to Collections or Folders?

There is a BIG difference in Lightroom language.

Folders are 'Physical'

Collections are 'Virtual'

Photos in Collections are not physical copies.

An image can be in any number of Collections and you still have only one file in a Folder.

I created collection B as a subset of Collection A

As stated by dj_paige​ "there really is no such thing as a parent collection with a child collection."

[Just Shoot Me]

Calvin1509  wrote

Okay, so when I created collection B as a subset of Collection A, then lightroom literally copied those files? I can delete collection A, destroy the files that are in it forever, and those stored in B are still fine?

NO. No actual images are copied or placed in any way into a collection.

Collections are LISTS of image names. Like writing down a list of albums or CDs you have on a sheet of paper. That LIST is not a physical copy of the albums or CDs.

Show us a Screen Shot of the library module with the Collections section expanded.

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

Calvin1509  wrote

Okay, so when I created collection B as a subset of Collection A, then lightroom literally copied those files?

Literally, no. Collections do not contain actual files. Collections are simply a list of photos in Lightroom's database, that Lightroom displays for you. Also, the name of the command provided by Lightroom in a collection is "Remove from collection", there is no command "Delete from Collection".

I can delete collection A, destroy the files that are in it forever, and those stored in B are still fine?

Removing files in collection A does not delete files. And it certainly does not delete them "forever".

Deleting the entire collection simply deletes the list of photos in that collection that lives in the Lightroom database. It doesn't touch the files.