Is there a way to delete photos before they upload?

[Sam PC]

I swear you used to be able to delete photos before they upload so that you could avoid uploading useless photos. 

I get that Lightroom CC wants to make all photos to be "undeleted" but I often take a lot of photos I definitely do not want to undelete. I'm talking blurry, accidental shots, hundreds of similar shots from burst mode. 

For example, I took 1000 photos yesterday and I'm being generous if I want to keep 100 of them so I don't want to wait hours for 900+ photos to upload just so I can wait 60 days from them to be deleted forever. 

So, is there a way to permently delete photos before they upload or will I have to add a new step into my workflow to delete most of my crap photos before I import into Lightroom?

[Sameer K]

Hi Sam,

Thanks for reaching out. That is a great question. Let me see if I can clarify that for you.

Could you please share the Adobe Lightroom version and the operating system you are working with? Are you directly importing all the images you have shot, or have you enabled auto-import?

Adobe Lightroom's sync can not be stopped entirely. However, it can be paused when you need it not to sync. You can click on the cloud icon on Adobe Lightroom mobile and desktop to pause the sync while importing and sorting which images to keep and which images to delete. Once you are past this process, you can enable sync and let Adobe Lightroom finish syncing.

Deleted photos get kept in the deleted section for 60 days until they are permanently deleted. This is to avoid accidental loss of images. You can recover or permanently delete images from Adobe Lightroom by going to the Deleted section and selecting the images you wish to restore or delete permanently manually.

Let us know if this helps,

Thanks!

Sameer K

[Timothy.Spear]

@Sameer K 

In the use case presented by the OP, and I also occasionally run into, we have thousands of images, of which only a few we want to keep. For example, I had my camera on high speed burst mode when taking a couple of BIFs last week. I rarely take BIF, so I lack the skill and as such take a large number of pictures. Of which I may only care about a very small number of images, and with a Sony A7R IV shooting at 61mbp the files are huge. The result, when I sync later this week, I know I am going to upload about 128GB of which I may keep 200mb. In this specific use case, I do not care about the 60 day recovery window, I just want them gone.

@Sam PC 

I forget the key combination, but there is one to permanetly delete an image not just move it to the trash. Anecdotally, if you just follow the directions provided by @Sameer K it will not work. You need the magical key sequence to permantetly delete the images. Which I have forgoteen, since I rarely need it.

1. Pause sync

2. import

3. Permantely delete images (this is critical, not just delete, but permantely delete)

4. Enable sync

I normally have a fast enough connection, that I do not bother with these steps. However, a nice how-to section along with the key sequences to permanetely delete the images (because I forget, and it is not easy to find in the manuals and is not in the menu), along with Adobe actually definitely testing the steps, would be nice.

Tim

[Sam PC]

@Sameer K I was using Lightroom 5.2 on a Macbook M1 Pro 14" running MacOS Monterey. 

@Timothy.Spear I'm glad I'm not the only one who substitutes quantity for quality! I think you have found the solution. I tried the following and it seems to have worked:

1. Pause synching from menu in top right (not just turn of wifi) 

2. Select images

3. Cmd + option + delete (on Mac, not sure what the equivalent would be on PC given ctrl + alt + delete is already taken)

4. Save your time and bandwidith.

[Timothy.Spear]

Alt-backspace.

Started another thread about short cuts, Adobe provided a link over to the lightroom queen's website(Victoria B.)

Tim