What is "cleanup" folder in the web gallery menu?

[CLPSRQ]

All,

I can't figure out what the cleanup folder means in Lightroom web?  It is shown under my all photos menu when you open the carrot.  I have over 1k photos in this folder and I don't know why they are there or what to do with these images.  I can't find the definition anywhere.  Does anyone know what this folder was created for?

[PeterB2 · Accepted solution]

This is a Tech Preview-only feature in Lightroom Web that suggest a set of photos from your account that could be considered for removal for either quality or usefulness reasons.  Would be great to get any additional feedback on whether you find this feature valuable and if there are suggested improvements.

-Peter

[CLPSRQ]

Thanks Peter, from the photos that are in the folder the context makes sense.  If such a folder like this is part of the software it would be great to be able to set the parameters vs just having them appear.  For example, have it look for duplicates, focus issues, metadata conflicts etc.  The shotgun approach seems to be too generic and if it allowed for specifications then it would be useful. 

-Brian

[PeterB2]

Thanks for the feedback --  we will definitely consider as we move this feature forward.

-Peter

[brianc36133362]

It would be very useful to know _why_ a photo is in that collection--are they dupes? Does the AI just think them misfocused or misexposed? Some kind of tagging that indicated what the criterion/a was would be really helpful in knowing whether it's actually safe to delete the photo. 

[pp001887]

Its not useful to me in its current form.  I've been in the middle of a major family house move, including copying documents, and suggesting that receipts or other docs be removed is the exact opposite of what I want.  What would be useful would be a folder/collection that explicitly collected all the images that appear to be documents. 

The folder also contained a set of photos of furniture that we are donating to charity. I agree that these images are aesthetically useless, but they have important family and tax considerations. 

This folder also contained a lot of intentional camera motion images, and it contained the worst-exposed images in some exposure bracketing sequences.

Flagging these images is counterproductive for me.

[KostFan2]

Thank you for posting about this feature. Do you have any information you can post that describes it in more detail?  You mention: “considered for removal for either quality or usefulness reasons.”   As mentioned above, it would be useful if a tag was applied for possible duplicates.

Regarding duplicates, the interface should also include information on whether the image is in an Album.  The reason why is as follows:

If an image (Image A) was in an album and the copy (Image B) was not in an album.  It is likely the customer would want to delete the copy (Image B) that was not in an album.  If there is no album identifier then the Customer may delete the image that is in an album and, thereby, mess up the album.  This is particularly important if this is a shared album

[PeterB2]

Thanks for the continued interest.  Since this feature is still in Tech Preview, we are using it as an opportunity to learn both what you all want and how to best present it.  Pretty clear here that we need to present this feature more clearly at the point we officially launch it.

To answer your question more directly, the current feature does not support duplicate detection.  We have heard clearly that this is a desired capability.  Appreciate your thoughts on what would be important for a duplicate detection solution.

What the feature currently attempts to do is identify photos that are more likely to not be of long term value to keep.  That can be photos with bad blur, photos of receipts, or just complete misfires.  If there are cases that you feel we are missing (other than duplicates), it would be great to hear more.

-Peter

[KostFan2]

Peter:

Thank you for providing this opportunity for the community to provide input for the feature.

Also, by you providing more details and clarification, you avoid customers complaining about Abobe not meeting their expectations.  Your clearly stating that this tool will not have duplicate detection is a big help.

One suggestion.  It would be nice to have an icon appear if an image had Content Credentials” applied. I know customers have to go to “Verify” to see the credentials. However, it would be nice if there was an icon that would appear to designate the image has such credentials.

[michaels38808131]

This is an old thread but it does appear to be something that is still being considered.  Some feedback from me. In general, I actually found it mostly pretty useful. But a couple of changes would make it dramatically more useful.

1) It would be nice to be able to see the immediate context of the photo (i.e. photos taken around the same minute). The reason here is that I often want to keep a blurry or out of context photo if it is the only photo I have of something unique or important (as a jog to my memory more than anything), for example a particular species of monkey in the rainforest. Lack of this meant I wasn't confident deleting some blurry pictures from vacations because I didn't always know if it was the only picture of that species I had.

2) It would be nice to be able to mark a picture as "don't include in cleanup". I have Lightroom on my phone, and it auto-uploads photos, so my Lightroom catalogue gets polluted with random receipts, documents, etc. But sometimes I take a picture of a restaurant menu or something that I want to keep in Lightroom, either because its scenic, or just as a remembrance of a trip. So I don't want to exclude all documents, but I do want to be able to exclude certain items.

(This would also help with item #1 above, as I could just exclude rare things)

3) The cleanup folder doesn't do great with underwater pictures. I think the heavy blue/green tint makes it think things are more out of focus than they really are. In general it seems pretty solid at only picking "bad" photos, but I found a bunch of examples of decent underwater photos that got included in cleanup.

[PeterB2]

Thanks for the feedback!  You should be able to remove any items from Cleanup that you want to keep and they will not show up again.  Let me know if you are looking for something else.  For the underwater pictures, you can send a direct report from with the app and include your photos if you are willing to share them with our team.  If not, this is at least an area we can review when updating our logic, so thanks.  Also, for #1, completely agree that would be useful -- we will consider that for the future.

-Peter

[michaels38808131]

Peter,

I didn't realize you could remove items from cleanup because the UI wasn't that inuitive. My worfklow was to open a full screen view of the photo, and then go through one-by-one rejecting the photos I agreed I wanted to delete. I couldn't find an option on the full screen view to remove an item from cleanup. I have now seen the option on the "Select-multiple" view and it is exactly what I wanted. But one nice enhancement would be to make a "remove from cleanup" option somewhere on the single-photo view.

I'd be happy to share some photos where I think cleanup was "too harsh" but I don't see a way to do that from the web app.

[PeterB2]

Agree with you on adding Revmoe from Cleanup in that mode -- have asked the team to add that.  

In order to report an image, please go into "Give Feedback" and choose the sad face -- it will then give an opportunity to submit the photo so we can review it.  

Again, thanks for your feedback here - very helpful.

-Peter

[tomw91190698]

Point 1 by michaels38808131  is spot on. It's really important to be able to view the surrounding images before having the confidence to delete something. I also occasionally keep poor quality images because they are the only ones I have that remind me of the occasion. I am not a professional photographer, so my editing is often about keeping the least worst image. I need help finding the worst worst ones to delete 😅

[ColinMcD]

I'm not sure if you are still requesting feedback, as this is quite an old thread, however, I only spotted the cleanup folder today.

I keep a large number (over 5000) documents related to genaealogy, and it appears that the software identifies all of these as requiring clean-up. From the other posts I'm assuming that they resemble receipts (see attached image).

As it stands, this feature would not be welcomed by me.

[OzQE37593454gezc]

Thank you for the feedback, very helpful to hear about your photo needs.  I think what you might need is a way to not include documents in the Cleanup results.  Let me know if you think this could work.

-Peter

[pp001887]

I like being able to exclude files that appear to be docs--which should be easy to ID.  Coincidentally, I just inherited a stack of genealogy-related material, including photos of documents.  

Way back in the day, I used to use a desktop mgr called PaperPort (I still have a few propietary .MAX bitmaps lurking around).  LrC actually isn't so far away from it in its ability help track scanned docs. 

[ColinMcD]

I believe that would work, but it would depend on how it was implemented. Selection by Folder (and subsequent sub-folders) would be a requirement for me. I assume others might need individual image selection.

[clivemoss]

I just found this today. Totally useless for me in its current form. If it could categorize the reasons for suggesting that the image could be considered for removal it may have some. As it stands, totally useless.