Workflow for saving photos and using Lightroom classic

[jsdutton7]

Here is my workflow. I load photos from my camera into my computer by memory card. I copy them onto an external hard drive into a named folder. I select import in lightroom and view the photos from the externalk harddrive folder I created within lightroom. I only import the photos I am happy with into lightroom by checking them and leaving the duff photos unchecked.  The trouble is now I want to delete those unchecked photos that i did not import into lightroom from the folder on my external disc. Can anyone help me to do this because if I look at the folder on my external hard drive outside of lightroom I have no clue which photos were imported into lightroom and if I look at the folder within lightroom I did not import those duff photos so assume I cannot delete them from withing lightroo. Please help as this wprkflow appeals to me if there is an easy way to get rid of thos photos I did not import. I have used this method for around 20 folders this week, each folder had around 900 photos so now I have looked at them and imported the keepers into lightroom, I want to crreate space by deleting the duff photos I decided were not good enough to make it to lightroom. Hope this makes sense and would appreciate anyone who can help...thanks.

[JP Hess]

I think the easier plan would be to import all images into Lightroom and then go through the process of  culling them using Lightroom. You can mark them for deletion by pressing the X button and then do a Ctrl/BkSpc (or equivalent of the Mac) and choose to remove them from Lightroom or delete them from disk. I think it would be much quicker and much more efficient.

Importing the images to Lightroom doesn't really add the files to Lightroom. It only creates a record of where that image is on the computer. When you mark the images for deletion and then choose to delete the images that just clears the records out of the catalog. Then, when the catalog is backed up and optimized everything is cleaned up anyway. So you aren't loading down the catalog with a lot of extra images.

[GoldingD]

Alter your workflow per the reply by JimHess

[ManiacJoe]

The trick to deleting the files not under LrC control is to separate them into separate folders.

I do a first level triage of grade A and B files into separate folders outside of LrC. (The grade A files may get sorted further into subfolders.) The A files get imported into LrC, the B files get deleted outside of LrC.

If you want to keep the files in a single folder, you need to do the triage and deletion from inside LrC.

Since you already imported some of the files, you can do a separate import of the remaining files, giving them a keyword or collection or "copy to" a new folder, then have LrC delete the files from the catalog and disk using the folder/keyword/collection.