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Deleting images in Lightroom 2020 Classic

Community Beginner ,
Dec 04, 2020 Dec 04, 2020

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The following applies to use of Lightroom Classic 2020 on a Mac.

 

I sometimes have to delete large numbers of image when they are redundant.

 

I select the 'Delete from Disk' option to free up space on the HD, but although the files disappear from Lightroom and are not visible in Finder,  the space they occupied is not recovered, and they don't appear in the Mac trash bin.

 

I can recover the space by the following:

 

Close Lightroom

Use 'Spotlight' to access 'Disk Utility'

Run 'First Aid' on the disk on which the images were located.

 

The deleted files will now appear in the Trash and emptying the Trash will recover the disk space.

Is there a better way, or there a setting in Lightroom that I have missed, or is this a bug.

 

Thanks

 

Ian

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LEGEND ,
Dec 04, 2020 Dec 04, 2020

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I do not think this has anything to do with LrC.

 

It is something in the OS or a problem with the drive the image files are located on that is causing this to happen.

 

AFAIK there is No system In LrC that takes control of what files are moved to the Trash system of OS X. It is OS X that handles this.

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 04, 2020 Dec 04, 2020

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But it only appears to happen in Lightroom.

 

Anything I delete through 'Finder' or through other applications such as 'Word' goes straight to the Trash.

 

Another quirk is that if I have deleted things through Lightroom, that are not showing in trash, but then I use 'Right click - show in Finder, within Lightroom.  Then delete any file.  All the missing files appear in Trash too.

 

Perhaps Lightroom's 'Delete from Disk' is not flagging correctly with the operating system so the deleted files are left in Limbo until located by some other procedure

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 04, 2020 Dec 04, 2020

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Ah.  I just tried deleting from a catalogue on the internal drive, and this went straight to Trash.  So it is external drives where the problem lies.

 

I don't normally use the internal drive for storage as I have 18TB of images (I am a professional photographer)

 

However, I have 10 external drives which are normally all connected, and the same problem occurs with all of them, so I still think that it is a Lightroom flagging issue.

 

Ian

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LEGEND ,
Dec 04, 2020 Dec 04, 2020

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I that external drive a NAS or a RAID Array box of some type? As there are No single 18TB external drive that I know of.

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 04, 2020 Dec 04, 2020

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Hi JSM,

No, it's 10 x 2TB drives.

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Community Expert ,
Dec 04, 2020 Dec 04, 2020

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Being unable to delete files in the normal way makes me wonder if there is a file access permissions issue on removable volumes. If you are running one of the most recent versions of macOS where Apple tightened file security (I think that’s macOS 10.15 and macOS 11), it’s worth making sure that Lightroom Classic has been given access to any types of volumes where you store images or the catalog:

  • It’s probably a good idea to give it Full Disk Access as shown below on the left, so that it will have no problem working with images and settings files from any location.
  • In Files and Folders as shown below on the right, at least make sure that it’s given access to Removable Volumes, since that applies to all of your external drives.

 

Lightroom-Classic-macOS-System-Preferences-Security-permissions.jpg

 

I’m not sure if that’s the solution, but it’s a good thing to try.

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 04, 2020 Dec 04, 2020

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Ah, Conrad, I think you are right.

 

I just checked my permissions and they are not as shown.

 

I am in the process of reinstalling it, now, to see if that fixes the issue.

 

Thank you.

 

I'll let you know how it goes.

 

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Community Expert ,
Dec 04, 2020 Dec 04, 2020

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Conrad is correct - I have had to solve this issue for a number of others and with my own external drives on which I store photos.

 

With Mac OS, everytime you add or update software, you need to check the Security and Privacy settings and give them full access so the computer and the application work as expected.

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 04, 2020 Dec 04, 2020

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Yes, I am sure this is theproblem now.

 

I tried to change the permissions, but could not find a way of editing them.

I have reinstalled Lightroom Classic but the permissions  are still not as pictured.

 

Currently I have 'Full Disk Acces's checked

But In 'Files and Folders' I only have 'Full Disk Access' mirrored. 

I can't see a way to add 'Removable Volumes' etc. or edit the entry.

 

Do you know how to achieve this?

 

Thanks

 

Ian

 

 

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Community Expert ,
Dec 04, 2020 Dec 04, 2020

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This is a tricky thing, because how Apple is doing it is not obvious. Those options appear only after being approved or denied, but that doesn’t happen until access is needed to one of the areas that macOS now guards more tightly. I don’t think options like Removable Volumes, Desktop, Downloads… appear until the first time the application tries to use them. So if you want them to come up, you have to make the application use them for the first time.

 

For example, my guess is that to get Removable Volumes to appear, you have to have the freshly installed Lightroom Classic try to connect to files on your external drives for the first time. If macOS decides Lightroom Classic needs your permission to access those areas, macOS should display an alert asking you to approve access to Removable Volumes. If you click the button that takes you to System Preferences/Security and Privacy to fix this, when you get to the Security and Privacy panel it should now have a Removable Volumes option to enable.

 

There are applications in my list that only have a few enabled because, for example, I have never made those applications open or save anything in the Desktop or Downloads folder, but if I did, and granted access, those folders would be added to the access list as enabled.

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Community Expert ,
Dec 04, 2020 Dec 04, 2020

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The other thing is that if you’re installing Mac software, always remember to look out for those macOS permissions alerts when they come up. I think one or two times they have come up while I had switched to some other task, so I might have clicked on the wrong button by not paying attention, then later having to try to figure out what I did and where to fix it. The correct answer (for any software you trust) is to click the button that goes to System Preferences so that the right permissions option can be enabled. Yes, it’s a hassle.

 

I don’t mind Apple making it harder for malware to get a foothold in this privacy-conscious era, but it’s like they say, security and convenience are always in conflict…

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 05, 2020 Dec 05, 2020

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Hi Conrad,

I didn't get any permission requests when installing Lightrrom.  Nor did it ask for permission changes when I first accessed one of the external drives.  The program has no problem in accessing and manipulating images on the external drives, it is just the deleting which seems to not complete correctly.  Maybe it isn't the permissions after all?

Thanks

Ian

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Community Expert ,
Dec 05, 2020 Dec 05, 2020

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Maybe not. I wasn’t sure if that would fix it, which is why I said that in the last line of my original reply. It’s just been a common cause of this type of problem, as we can see by the other replies.

 

And it occurred to me that I hadn’t actually tried to delete anything from one of my external volumes using Lightroom Classic lately, so I just did, and…now I see the same thing you do!

  • If I use Lightroom Classic to delete an image located on one of my external volumes, it never appears in the Trash even though the deletion warning says it’s going in the trash.
  • If I use Lightroom Classic to delete an image located on my MacBook Pro internal volume, it does go in the trash for possible recovery.

 

Looks like I’m just as stumped now…will have to try more things and ask around…

(Lightroom Classic 10.0, macOS 10.15.7)

 

Also, I was not the one who marked my earlier reply as the Correct Answer, but I have un-marked it until we find out what is really going on here.

 

Update: I used Lightroom Classic to delete a few images from a test folder on an external volume. They did not appear in the Trash. Then I decided to do the same thing in the Mac Finder just to see if it was still working normally. I closed Lightroom Classic, put a Photoshop file in the same test folder on the external volume, and used the Mac Finder to delete it (File > Move to Trash). Then the strangest thing happened: The files that did not appear in the Trash when Lightroom Classic deleted them from the external volume, all suddenly showed up in the Trash! Because this weird behavior happened when Lightroom Classic was not running, I wonder whether we are actually dealing with a macOS bug related to file deletion.

 

More info for the techies: This behavior has now been observed on both ithrelkeld’s external volume formatted as Mac OS Extended, and also on my external SSD formatted as APFS.

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Community Expert ,
Dec 04, 2020 Dec 04, 2020

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When using external drives, one thing to make sure is that you reformat them before use to be hfs+ (or APFS if these are SSDs). Anything else is asking for trouble. Not sure if this is related to your issue but thought I'd mention it as most external drives come formatted in a windows format, usually NTFS and you need a third party driver to be able to write to those disks.

 

I use an external RAID with Classic on my Mac and I have never seen this issue. Don't often delete images though so I might have missed it.

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Community Expert ,
Dec 04, 2020 Dec 04, 2020

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I too use an external RAID with SoftRaid software from OWC for my image storage. I have deleted images in the past with no problems. And yes, making sure the drive is formatted correctly in the first place does seem very important.

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 05, 2020 Dec 05, 2020

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Hi KD,

Yes, the drives are all Mac OS Extended.  So I guess it's not the issue.

Thanks

Ian

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 05, 2020 Dec 05, 2020

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Hi Jao,

 

Thanks for that.  They are all Mac OS Extended.

So I guess that's not the issue.

 

Ian

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New Here ,
Jul 07, 2022 Jul 07, 2022

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THANK YOU!!!! This worked for me. Out of the blue today I couldn't delete files from LR. Very odd, but this fixed it.

 

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Community Expert ,
Jul 07, 2022 Jul 07, 2022

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Glad it did.

Can you please tell us WHAT specifically worked for you?

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