Taking photos out of lightroom

[spinningstill]

Can I remove photos (archive) out of Lightroom and still keep the develop settings?  By example have a couple of years of older images that I don't really need to see anymore, would rather take them out but don't want to loose the develop settings.

[JP Hess]

The images are not "in" Lightroom. They are in folders on your computer's hard drive. If you remove the images from Lightroom then all of the adjustments that you have made to them will be discarded. Probably the best solution would be to add an external hard drive to your computer and use it for all of your images.

[spinningstill]

Hi Jim.  Thank you for the reply.  I am aware that they are not in Lightroom and would loose all the settings.  I do have them on a external.  Would like to remove and keep develop settings.  I asked this about a year ago, but haven't received a response to be able to do this.  Even if I have them on an external, they still show up and perhaps would have an exclamation point stating they are missing.  Looking for a solution to archive and keep settings.

[JP Hess · Accepted solution]

To keep all the settings Lightroom has to have access to the images. You could archive the images to a DVD, and then point Lightroom to the images on the disk. Then they could be moved from the external hard drive. You want to make sure that the DVD has the same folder structure as the external hard drive. Another alternative would be to add another EHD to hold all of your older images.

[spinningstill]

I see.  Sound like there really isn't a way to save them on a HDD and keep the settings.  Rather not use DVDs.  I am already using a EHD, so seems like that isn't the solution to remove them and keep settings.  Wonder how I put a feature request into Adobe?

[JP Hess]

Can you not add an additional EHD? All you need is another USB port. Or, can you add an additional internal hard drive? I have two additional internal hard drives and two external hard drives attached to my desktop computer at all times.  Lightroom and the catalog and other associated files are on the main drive which is SSD. I have my images on the two other internal hard drives. Then I have my catalog backed up to one of the external hard drives. I also have software that I used to do weekly backups of all of my images to the other EHD. My main hard drive crashed recently. Well, at least Windows 10 went berserk. So it was necessary to reinstall all of my software. I restored a catalog backup which pointed to the images on the other hard drives. And I was back in business.

At any rate, as I said previously Lightroom must be able to point to the images somewhere in order to associate the catalog settings with the image. The images can be any hard drive connected to the computer. But how would you expect Lightroom to retain all of the settings if you removed the images? Knowing how Lightroom works you should understand that the catalog is the primary file, the only file that Lightroom opens. If the images aren't available then there is nothing to tie the adjustments to.

There is one thing you could consider. If you feel that you are definitely finished working with these images and just want them on a hard drive somewhere and not part of Lightroom you could export copies. Those copies would have all of the adjustments as part of the file. Then the original images could be removed from Lightroom and even deleted if you are certain you don't  plan on doing any additional work on them.

[Just Shoot Me]

If you check the option to Auto write changes to XMP and you copy those XMP files over with the original RAW files the Edits you have made won't be lost if you reimport them into LR or view them in Bridge/ACR. But the only way to preserve all the edits is to export the image as a TIFF file. That TIFF file will include in all the edits you made to them in LR and can be viewed with any image viewer program.

[spinningstill]

Thank you shoot me, that seams like a more viable option, will have to experiment.  Jim, its not about adding another HDD its wanting to keep the develop settings.  I have plenty of space.  I would want to keep the settings, I had someone inquire about an older image a while back and wanted to ensure it was optimally processed, so would like the ability to keep and perhaps, refine the processing if need be later.

[JP Hess]

So if you have plenty of space, and want to keep all of the settings, what is the problem with just keeping the images in the catalog? If you do that  then you can always have access to any collections, keywords, etc. It's just the easiest way to keep things organized, in my opinion.

[Just Shoot Me]

I agree with Jim on this. You could create a folder someplace on one of your drives called Archived. In LR Move all those older images you don't want to see to that Archive folder. The only time you would see them is if you selected the All Photographs link in the Catalog section of the Library module and even then they would be at the very bottom of the grid or film strip if you set the A/Z-Z/A option to Z-A. That would display the newest image at the top of the grid or the left hand side of the film strip. Then again if you organize your images into folders of some type they would only be visible if you selected that Archive folder.

[spinningstill]

Thank you Jim.  I had done that but wanted to go a step further.

[dj_paige]

The whole idea of taking photos out of Lightroom just so you won't see them anymore is extra work with high likelihood of user errors, that really can be done a whole lot more simply, and with very little possibility of user error.

One very simple possibility is to sort the photos by descending capture date, and now you won't see the old photos unless you scroll WAY down.

Another possibility: if you don't want to see these photos in Lightroom, assign them five stars, and then set Lightroom to only show those photos that have four or fewer stars (which shows all un-starred photos and photos with 4 or fewer stars). Of course, you can turn this filter off if you ever want to see the very old photos.

[ManiacJoe]

If you are willing to work with two catalogs, you can "export as catalog" the older images you don't want to regularly see any more.

After verifying that the new catalog correctly contains your edits, you can delete those images from your main catalog.

If you rename the exported catalog to something like "archive" you can easily keep them straight.

After the first time you "export as catalog", every time after that, you will need to "import from catalog" into the "archive" so that all your old photos are in one catalog and not multiple yearly ones.

[spinningstill]

That sounds like a good idea as well.

[spinningstill]

Lots of great suggestions, thank you everyone.  I like the star option too.

[spinningstill]

And it looks like if you save all the metadata prior to removing (not deleting) from LR it keeps the settings.  Reimported and the settings are still there, just experimented with making one of the photos black and white.  Looks like the catalog option is def good as well.

[Just Shoot Me]

Saving Metadata, Ctrl/Command + s, is the same thing as using the Auto write changes to XMP. It creates a XMP file if there isn't one or saves it to an already existing XMP file or write the edits to the actual image file in a special area for DNG, JPG, TIFF and I think PSD.

But those edits can only be viewed in an Adobe program like LR, Bridge or ACR. If you open/view them with any other image viewing or editing program the edits aren't displayed.

Just wanted to point that out.

[JP Hess]

Not to seem stubborn or anything, but that is precisely the reason I think they should be kept  in the catalog. The catalog is a database. Makes it easy to retrieve images in a number of different ways. I organize my images in folders by year and then subfolders within each year. Older years are collapsed so that I only have a single listing in the catalog. But the images are always available when I need them. I really don't see a need to have multiple catalogs. If you do that then  it's easy to become confused about where images are located. But everyone has their own way of doing things. There is no right or wrong way. Just the way that works best for each individual.

[spinningstill]

Hi Joe,

I have a question.  After I have exported the catalog (no previews to be found since I haven't opened them in some time).  When I go to remove from my working catalog, do I delete from disk?  Or remove from LR?  Seems I would since it put everything in the other catalog?

[ManiacJoe]

At this point we probably need to be really careful about the words being used here.

Before doing anything, make sure you backup the catalog.

In your main catalog, you selected some files and did an "export as catalog"?

Did your export as catalog include copying the actual files?

After doing the export as catalog, open the new catalog and make sure it looks as you expect.

Folders, collections, image counts, edit history, etc.

If you like it, open the main catalog and select the same files and delete them from the catalog (but not from the disk).

If you exported everything, you did it the hard way because all you did was copy the existing catalog, which you could have just done as that.

[spinningstill]

I did export as catalog and get three options.  It does copy everything, including the images, makes a stand alone catalog.

[spinningstill]

[ManiacJoe]

OK, so if this is your first "archive" catalog, open that catalog in LR and verify that all is good.

Then open the main catalog, select the same files as you did when you exported them into the new catalog, and delete them from the main catalog.

This will leave you with just the "current" images in the main catalog.

[spinningstill]

I did the export from the folder, didn't select images.  Example is I photograph flowers and named this folder "Begonia."  I also watched a video on Adobe's site.  It says "all" will be exported.  Gives the example of passing the images to someone else to finish processing, hence full images and previous processing.

I am gathering that it is a full copy.  At least that is what I am seeing on my end.  So a full delete would be in order as I can see, hope that makes sense.

I am using current versions.  Except on the iMac, no macOS yet. 

[spinningstill]

And if I remove the folder, it only gives me the option to take it out of lightroom, it leaves the two files on disk CR2 and xmp.