As much as I try to keep my workflow minimal and simplistic, sometimes there are other pieces of software that I’d like to use that don’t seamlessly integrate with Lightroom Classic. When you use a third-party program to edit a picture outside of Lightroom’s knowledge, it doesn’t have a chance to update the changes to the photo.
Maybe you created an external edit, maybe you created a couple different versions, maybe you even deleted them or moved them. Synchronizing folders helps you use Lightroom to track all those changes and versions that have been made outside of Lightroom.
Synchronizing also helps out with organization — especially if you’ve done an overhaul of the locations and file structure of where your pictures are stored. I’ve recently initiated a clean up and consolidation of all my photos and all my hard drives into one Lightroom catalog. While I was doing so, I ended up removing loads of duplicates — some of which were tracked in Lightroom as well, many of them weren’t though.
After removing the duplicates, I wanted Lightroom to update what changes have been made — what files when where, what files were removed and so forth. I’ve done this a few times in the years, so I figured others may also benefit from this.
Get your folders in sync
To get started, you’ll want to have Lightroom opened up and the Library module selected. If you solely use Lightroom to organize your pictures like I do, you’ll notice a million folders in the picture below. That’s the folder structure of how my pictures are stored on my hard drive. Go ahead and find the folder you want to synchronize, right click on a mouse or two finger click on a newer trackpad and select Synchronize folder.
Afterward, Lightroom will pop up a little message showing you an explanation of what synchronizing does, followed by a few check boxes. I’m going to leave all these check boxes on. If there were photos that have been removed from the folder outside of Lightroom, the third option would be selectable. This example doesn’t have any pictures that have been removed.
I’ve chosen the Show import dialog before importing option, which brings up the familiar screen we would normally see when you plug in a memory card — except with a major difference. After selecting the boxes, click the blue Synchronize button to bring up the import screen. That major difference is when Lightroom synchronizes, Lightroom only adds the photos into the catalog, leaving the original photo where it is on the hard drive. You can see that that’s the case at the middle top of the import dialog screen shown below.
A few things to notice and a couple things to take note of. On the top left of the import dialog screen, the source, in this case, a folder, is displayed. This is always good practice to notice, so you don’t find yourself confused with other folders.
On the right sidebar, I selected Don’t Import Selected Duplicates in this case. Normally this functions well, although I had a encountered a bug in my recent overhaul where the dialogs would say I’d have roughly pictures to add, but they wouldn’t add or show up in my catalog unless I had this box unchecked — so keep that in mind if things aren’t going you way. Click import, and you’re done!
With the macBookPro (Sonoma), I use an external volume for LRC. Except for a few images -(I have over 14K images)-, these are not stored inside the folders (folder structure is YYYYMMDD) these belong; the reason for this is the file name was renamed ‘untitled’ after editing it in Photoshop 24. The file name contains the date, and ‘untitled’ does not match the folder name.
I could move these in Finder to the folders where these belong but, I know I must do this within LRC…. I do not have an idea how to do this.
Please, help.
Thank you.
Hi Rival, I’d move the files to the place where you’d like them to live in your folder structure. Then, if the folder or parent folder is already in the Lightroom Catalog, in LRC’s Library pane, browse to the folder where those files live, or the parent folder (if the folder was just created), right click it and choose Synchronize Folder. Or, alternatively, you can select those images and drag them into the Lr icon in the dock and use the Import dialog to move those images to a folder in your catalog. Make sure you select Move and not… Read more »
I appreciate your prompt respoinse.
Your text instructs me I should use Finder to place these files where they should be; the folder already exists; all i need to do in LRC is to synchronize these folders.
If that is no right, please drop me a line; I created a lot issues with the catalog, i want to make sure
Thank you so much
Rival