Lightroom Classic- Remove nested jpegs and leave only raw files?

[marcmandy]

Hello,

I am using LR Classic on a Macbook Pro 16" with Catalina both in their most current iteration. 

For many years I have been shooting *and* importing RAW+JPEG. With rare exceptions, I don't use the JPEGS. (I will use them when I'm doing a time lapse and want a preliminary quick look-see, but that's about it. 

I now have a hard drive filled with useless JPEGs taking up much space and would like to remove them from the drive.

I looked at the metadata info over the image in Grid mode and it says NEF+JPEG, so the images are nested together and display as a single image.

I went into Preferences/General and checked off the box "Treat JPEG files next to RAW files as separate files" under Import options (it was unchecked). I shut down LR and restarted it, but as I expected, it changed nothing since it's an import option. (I'm now leaving it checked for future imports.) 

I then did a limited test on one folder with a dozen images and deleted the JPEGs in FINDER and then shut down and restarted LR. The folder seemed unaffected, but the images still said "NEF+JPEG". Since it was only a test, I restored the files in FINDER and then restarted LR again. No change occurred in LR.

In another thread a suggestion was made to d/l "Jeffrey’s “Extended Search” Lightroom Plugin" which I did. I set the parameter for "JPEG file (has related JPEG)" and hit search. Ideally it would have found the JPEGs. It worked fine, except it selected all of the images, because each photo says "NEF+JPEG". oh well...

So, this leads to 2 questions-

1) Most desirable: Is there any way to change the display options to "Show JPEG files next to RAW files as separate files" so that I can then sort by file extension and delete them? I don't see anything like that.

or

2) Contrary to the standard rule of doing ALL file work and removal inside of LR,  if I were to simply go into FINDER and delete all of the unwanted JPEGS in each folder, would I do damage to the LR library?  or would it do what I want with no consequences?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you very much!

marc

[Todd Shaner · Accepted solution]

With "Treat JPEG files next to RAW files as separate files" try right-clicking on a folder and select 'Synchronize Folder.' I haven't tried it, but I'm guessing it will import the matching camera JPEG files. If you've deleted the JPEG files with Finder I would suspect it will simply remove the NEF+JPEG designation. Give it a try.

[marcmandy]

MAGIC!!!

and such simplicity!!

It worked precisely as you said. The sync got rid of the NEF+JPEG designation and replaced it with NEF.

Thank you very much!

marc

[Todd Shaner]

Glad to hear that worked! You can speed the process by checking 'Show Photos in Subfolders in the 'Library' menu tab. Select the highest top-level folder that you want to sync and it will sync all of the files below that level. Just make sure you want ALL of those subfolder files inside LR because the all will be synced (i.e. imported).