Import Problems

[kevinw80362460]

Hi I have just spent a while importing all my photos from my external hard drive and the settings in LR was set to ADD but i want them on my Mac's Hard Drive but it will not let me import again. I have already worked on most of my photos on my old PC so I don't want to re-work them again.

Any help with this Please

[JP Hess]

If you are using the same catalog that you used on the old computer then images don't have to be on the internal hard drive. As long as the catalog points to the images on the external hard drive all adjustments will remain in place. If you really feel that you must have those images on the internal hard drive then use the operating system to copy them all over the internal hard drive. Then open Lightroom  and right-click on the topmost parent folder and update the folder location. Point them to the parent folder on the internal hard drive, and everything will update..

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

Unless there are space issues, your photos are better off on the external HD.

IMPORTANT CONCEPT: Never import photos a second time. This is not only the wrong solution (it does not solve the problem), but it sometimes makes the situation worse.

[kevinw80362460]

Thank you for that info I will work off my external drive I guess that when I import from my camera I will save them to the external drive.

[johnboy19865]

Hi, my name is John Gallagher, I'm trying to help out a friend who has lightroom installed on his PC.

He's got an external hard drive with all his photos on, so he wants to copy them from the external to the laptop and then import from where he saved them (i think it's the desktop).

I helped him on the phone with some basic copying and pasting, it sounded like he worked out a way to import the files from the desktop and then to clear up space he deleted the files from the desktop (i'm not sure it that was right) because lightroom has now made a link to the desktop, is that right?

Now he re copiied the files from the external after deleting them and he tried importing them and he's been having problems.  Now when he inserts his external hard drive lightroom reads the photos from the external hard drive and not from the desktop.

Would anyone know what might have gone wrong there?  Thank you

[dj_paige]

Okay, johnboy19865​, there's no need to create your own thread with this subject and also post it into some other relatively unrelated thread. So I'll put the answer in your other thread.