Delete photos from one catalog while keeping them in another

[troyd91339639]

So what I am trying to do is to delete photos from one catalog while maintaining them on disk and in another catalog.    I am sure this is relatively simple but I cannot get it to do what I'd like.  I end up deleting from the entire catalog (in both places) and  have to do a restore.

Any help please,

[dj_paige]

All you have to do is delete the photo from one catalog, but not delete the photo from the hard disk.

[troyd91339639]

Tried that.  It deletes it from all catalogs and it remains on the disk.

[dj_paige]

Maybe you are using the word "Catalog" improperly? Are you sure these aren't collections or smart collections or the "All Photographs" view???

Could you be much more specific? Can you show us a screen capture of what is selected on the left hand side of the Library (or describe what is selected) when you do this delete?

[troyd91339639]

My apologies. . .You are correct, I was using the wrong word.  I did meant collection.

I am trying to remove roughly 50 images from one collection while retaining them in a different collection.

We had a photo shoot in which we shot about 1200 pics.  I did an import and of course they went into one collection. I want to split this massive collection into several smaller, more manageable collections.  So, I created a new collection and tried to move these 50 images into it. . .worked fine, but it copied them instead of moving them  Now I would like to delete them from one collection while keeping them in the new collection.  Or even figure out how to "MOVE" them instead of copy them.

Hope that helps. . .And that you have a brilliant solution. . .

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

In the one collection, select the desired photos to remove, and then right-click and select (I think) "Remove from Collection".

There is no such thing in Lightroom as moving photos from one collection to another. It is always a copy. If you want to really do a move, it is two steps, copy first, then delete from the original collection.

You really ought to use keywords for this purpose, instead of collections.

[troyd91339639]

You NAILED it!  Part of it had to do with using the wrong terms.  Catalog vs Collection. 

Thank you so much.  The copy the delete worked.

I have just started with using keywords in depth.  I had been using them kind of half hazard, but now I am using it more and more. . .Any good pointers you want to give there?

Thanks again for your patience and willingness to help.  I REALLY appreciate it.

[dj_paige]

Keywords (in my opinion) are the tool that enables you to find your photos, along with other useful metadata (whatever is useful to you). Keywords should contain the subject matter description, who, what, when, where, why. Keywords can be hierarchical so in your case, they replace collections, which (again, in my opinion) are less well suited for organization (although collections certainly can be used for organization). I only use collections when I want to create a "something" (book, website, slideshow) and then all of the photos for that "something" go into the appropriate collection for that "something".