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marlam17956950
New Participant
December 23, 2018
Answered

How to delete files from disk in lightroom

  • December 23, 2018
  • 3 replies
  • 26175 views

Hi there,

I'm a new Lightroom CC user after having used Lightroom 5 for many years. I am really struggling to figure out how to delete rejected photos not only from Lightroom CC, but from my computer hard disk as well.

My usual workflow is to flag the photos I wish to delete as 'rejected', then go to All Photos, filter for 'rejected', then delete.  I assumed it was deleting the files on the hard drive as well (like Lightroom 5 used to do), but that is not happening as all the files are still there.

Is deleting from disk possible with Lightroom CC?

Please help, my hard drive is filling up fast with files!

Thank you,

Marla

      This topic has been closed for replies.
      Correct answer adamm56746402

      I might have found the answer (after several hours of searching). Looks like when you "add" photos to Lightroom CC, they're automatically uploaded to the cloud at full resolution. It doesn't simply reference a file on your computer like Lightroom Classic CC. So, when you "delete" the photos, it's deleting them from the cloud, not your computer. So in essense, I don't think you can delete them off your disk through Lightroom CC.

      My current work around is this. I add all the photos to Lightroom CC and do my normal "reject photos" process. I then delete all the rejected photos so I have my keepers. I then download the keepers to my disk in a new folder at full resolution, and delete the original folder which contains all the rejected images. Incredibly annoying, I know.

      I discovered this at the end of Step 2 in the following article: Adobe Creative Cloud

      3 replies

      H
      hesphoto
      New Participant
      October 6, 2020

      Sadly I think you all are right. My workflow at the moment:

      1. Import files into Lightroom Classic to be able to browse and reject swiftly.

      2. Delete files from Lightroom and disk.

      3. Import remaining files into CC

       

      I wish CC had similar function as well. 

        M
        mutimear@gmail.com
        New Participant
        April 3, 2022

        I have "Adobe Lightroom", not Classic or CC. So I don't know the nuances but the bottom line looks like we are captive in order for us to fill up our storage allotment with images we don't want, and have to pay for it! I hope I'm wrong because I have only ever used Lightroom and don't want to start over on another system, never mind abandoning 12,000 images!

        There must be a work-around, surely! Oh, and one more thing, the LR icon has disappeared from the dock which is also worrying, I have to Google search Lightroom each time I open my computer!

        @paulshutter.

        A
        adamm56746402Correct answer
        New Participant
        March 8, 2019

        I might have found the answer (after several hours of searching). Looks like when you "add" photos to Lightroom CC, they're automatically uploaded to the cloud at full resolution. It doesn't simply reference a file on your computer like Lightroom Classic CC. So, when you "delete" the photos, it's deleting them from the cloud, not your computer. So in essense, I don't think you can delete them off your disk through Lightroom CC.

        My current work around is this. I add all the photos to Lightroom CC and do my normal "reject photos" process. I then delete all the rejected photos so I have my keepers. I then download the keepers to my disk in a new folder at full resolution, and delete the original folder which contains all the rejected images. Incredibly annoying, I know.

        I discovered this at the end of Step 2 in the following article: Adobe Creative Cloud

          J
          Jao vdL
          Community Expert
          March 11, 2019

          I might have found the answer (after several hours of searching). Looks like when you "add" photos to Lightroom CC, they're automatically uploaded to the cloud at full resolution. It doesn't simply reference a file on your computer like Lightroom Classic CC. So, when you "delete" the photos, it's deleting them from the cloud, not your computer. So in essense, I don't think you can delete them off your disk through Lightroom CC.

          This is correct. When you use Lightroom CC instead of Classic, when you import/add images, they get copied to a temporary space on your hard disk. They then get uploaded to the cloud. After a while, and only when you have reached the local storage limit set inside the program it will delete the local copies in the temporary storage but the original files that you imported from are never deleted by Lightroom no matter what you do in the program. There is no link with the files that you imported from originally.

          My current work around is this. I add all the photos to Lightroom CC and do my normal "reject photos" process. I then delete all the rejected photos so I have my keepers. I then download the keepers to my disk in a new folder at full resolution, and delete the original folder which contains all the rejected images. Incredibly annoying, I know.

          Your workflow would be much better served by using Lightroom Classic than Lightroom CC.

          casparg61306211
          casparg61306211
          New Participant
          June 28, 2019

          So there is no possibility then to remove them from Lightroom CC and hard-disk through LIghtroom CC?
          You'd have to swap to classic?
          Would be a lot easier and faster if you could simply delete rejected photos in lightroom CC and have the option to remove them from your disk as well. Instead your backtracking constantly.

            A
            adamm56746402
            New Participant
            March 8, 2019

            I have the same question and it's driving me INSANE! I know there are two options, "Delete photo" and "Remove photo". When I click "Delete photo" I get the scary modal saying it will permanently delete the photo from everywhere, but it doesn't! The original files are still in my DropBox folder.

            In a possibly similar event, if I manually delete the photo from my DropBox, it actually still shows up in Lightroom. I can still edit and download it, as if the file is still there. It makes me think Lightroom is creating duplicate files, but I can't find any import options to stop it from doing that.

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