Moving Folders with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
I tutor a lot of photographers who have caused themselves trouble in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. I see a lot of smart people who have caused themselvess a needless hassle by moving photos around their computer without thinking about the effects of their actions on their Lightroom database.
My Photo Library External Disk
Months ago, I posted an article on how to move your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom catalog files over to an external hard drive. I am more convinced than ever that most photographers should store all of their photographs, and their Lightroom index files, on an external hard drive. In my opinion, this is one of the keys to maximum Lightroom happiness. You can read more about my storage ideas here.
It turns out though that moving your catalog file over to an external hard drive is pretty darn easy. Moving your actual images is a bit harder, but totally worth the effort. So for today’s video tutorial, I am going to show you how to move your photos from one hard drive to another without upsetting Lightroom. In fact, I’m going to make Lightroom do all of the “heavy lifting.” As a bonus, I’m also going to show you a little trick on how to create new folders from within Lightroom, and how to rename your folders.
My goal is to help you get everything over to your external hard drive while maintaining the integrity of your Lightroom database. As you will see in this video tutorial, there are some little tricks, but with Lightroom’s help moving folders from drive to drive is easy and I promise that we won’t loose anything.
Moving Folders within Adobe Photoshop Lightroom from David Marx on Vimeo.
Thanks to those who kept the pressure on me to this done. Thanks to all of you for your patience and support. I hope this helps.
Filed Under: Organizing • Tutorials
About the Author: David Marx has an extensive knowledge of digital photography and is an Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop and in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. David is a talented instructor and his entertaining teaching style works for students of all skill levels. He has been teaching digital photography and image enhancement with Adobe Photoshop since 2002. In addition, David’s sports and landscape images are often featured on the web and in outdoor sports publications.
In 2009, David Marx led digital photography programs for the 
Hey David. Thanks for making these great tutorials.
I’ve been working with digital photography for a while (Since my days at U.M. Missoula!) but have recently started using lightroom.
What threw me off at first was LR was such a different way of working compared to other applications. I was also a little unsure of how to handle and move my files. Clear now.
Now I just need to work on my import workflow discipline by making sure I edit and keyword.
Matt-
Thanks for the kind words. We sure appreciate the feedback– good or bad, but comments like yours tell us that we are on the right track!
best of luck,
David
Thanks so much for this tutorial. Exactly what I was looking for. Well done.
Nice to have found your site as well!
I found this VERY helpful, but my catalog(s) are a mess. I have the original LR on my MacBook Pro’s internal drive & LR2 on my 320gb external.
I now have a new 1.5TB external. Can I move everything to it?
Can I just “Drop & Drag” everything to the new external drive?
Thank you very much!
Dear Randall,
May I suggest another post that might help. I suggest reading My Photos Storage System: Two External Hard Drives. Not to toot my own horn, but you might find my advice on what I keep on my external disk very useful.
My advice is that:
1. You format your new hard drive properly before you load it up with important stuff. See Formatting an External Hard Drive for more advice.
2. You move your Lightroom 2 catalog onto the external disk and then use it to import (and convert) your existing Lightroom 1 catalog.
3. You use Lightroom to move all of your images over to the external.
hope this helps,
David
Hello David.
Just discovered your site today and the tutorials are great! Thank you so much for doing this!
I am getting ready to tweak my workflow in Lightroom a bit – going to move things to the external drive as you recommend. It’s all clear to me how to deal with the images themselves, but what would happen to the Collections? Will they get updated automatically? Or do I need to do something in order for the Lightroom to recognize them?
Thanks a lot!!!!
igor
Igor,
As you’ve noted, the images themselves and the Lightroom Catalog file are two separate entities. Any information such as Collections, flag status, history, etc is stored in the Lightroom Catalog file.
As long as you continue to use the same Lightroom Catalog, all of your Collections will stay up to date (as long as you can show Lightroom where the actual image files reside).
If you plan on moving your Lightroom Catalog, this post on How to Get your Lightroom Catalog onto an External Drive may help.
If you need a little more information on Lightroom Catalogs and Collections, check out this post on Catalogs vs. Libraries vs. Folders in Lightroom.
Best of luck,
Scott
Thanks a lot, Scott!
I’ve already watched How to Get your Lightroom Catalog onto an External Drive tutorial. Will watch the other one shortly and I think I am ready for the Big Move:)
Thanks again.
igor
Hi David,
Thanks for the tutorial, it is really helpful. I’m anticipating my harddrive to come in the next month and will move all my photos and catalogs as you suggested to the external.
But I have some questions about catalog(s). Would you recommend ONE catalog for ALL photos I have? or Separate catalogs for photos from different year(s). Would having hundreds of thousands of photos in one catalog slow down lightroom when I try to develop/edit photos?
Thanks,
Billy
david
i purchased a 1 TB external today and found this tutorial, thinking it would help. at about minute 10 in the video, i created the folder like you said, but on the right side menu for lightroom, it isnt showing the photos that are in HD and in external. it only shows “folders” and all the folders that have photos. any idea why its not displaying like you said ?
is it because i have version 1.3 ?
thanks in advance for your response.
daniel
@Igor: You’re welcome. Let us know how it goes.
@Billy: I’m sure David will chime in, but I think he and I agree that a single Lightroom catalog is the best answer for most photographers. Lightroom 2 deals with large catalogs quite well. You’ll want to optimize your catalog once in a while and check out some of the Top Ten Lightroom Speed Tips, but you should be fine. Multiple catalogs, though they can be useful (if not required) for some photographers, add lots of complication to your life and are best avoided…in my opinion.
@Daniel: You’re absolutely correct. The ability to show different drives is a feature new to Lightroom 2. Lightroom 1 just shows the giant pile of folders you referred to. More information on the new features released with Lightroom 2 can be found here. Check out this article for information on upgrading from Lightroom 1 to Lightroom 2.
Enjoy,
Scott
Dear Daniel,
The answer is partially yes. Features like “add parent folder,” are introduced in Lightroom v.2. That said you can still move folders by dragging and dropping one inside of the other.
While Lightroom v.1 doesn’t display the whole folder hierarchy and the name of the hard drive you can still figure out the folder tree by right clicking on a folder’s name in the right hand panel and selecting “show in finder”(Mac) or “show in explorer” (PC.) All in all I would call this a minor inconvenience for you but not a serious obstacle.
–David
Wow- looks like Scott and I are both answering questions at the same time.
If I might just chime in for you too Billy, I strongly suggest sticking to just one catalog. That Lightroom allows for multiple catalogs is a nice feature but one that gets a lot of photographers into trouble. Like Scott, I am a big believer that having a SINGLE database, meaning a single catalog, is absolutely the most efficient and least complicated way to go.
If you only have one catalog, and if that catalog indexes all of your photos regardless of file format, subject matter, or date created then it is easy to find all of the photos that you have about a single topic in a single search. I love this when I want to put together a portfolio that shows off all my best work, a web gallery which shows off all the things that I do, or a magazine submission that features both my digital images and my scans.
best of luck,
David
–David
Just discovered your site a week ago and… what a great site! Your tutorials are so good,indepth, on subjects that really matter for a photographer! And, cherry on the cake, after reading the comments and your answers, I think that you guys at LRLab are really kind!
Well that’s enough for the flowers, now the question.
I’m about to use an external hard drive to store my catalogs (sorry… I have to say that I have 2 catalogs… sorry, sorry, sorry!) and my picture folders but I have a question : will it going to slow down LR?
Thank you for your answer!
Dear Eric,
Thanks for the positive feedback. I sure appreciate it. Working with files and a catalog on an external drive might slow things down for you but then again it might not. Performance here depends on two things– the external hard drive’s rotational speed and the type of port that you use to connect it to your computer.
Hard drives, both internal and external, are spinning magnetic disks. The higher the rotational speed (rpm) the faster data can be read / written to the platter. Likewise, using a slow drive connection can create a performance lag even with hard drives that spin at a super fast speeds. Basically, the connector creates a bottleneck and slows things down.
My advice is to get the fastest external hard drive that you can afford and no matter what you pick to connect it via your computers fastest port. For Mac users the fastest port is usual the Firewire 800 option. For PC users eSATA is the fastest common port, followed by Firewire 800, then Firewire 400. USB 2.0 is slower than any of these other options but still a world faster than USB 1.0.
For more information please read this post on our recommended external hard drives.
Thanks again and good luck,
David
I have a number of folders of images in Lightroom 2 that show a question mark over the folder. If I try to develop these files I get a message that the file is missing or offline. I have done the right click and select find missing folder (using Windows XP). I then browse for the folder and highlight the location. The problem is that when I click “Ok” I get an error message that “The selected folder or a folder it contains is already in Lightroom” and it doesn’t re-establish the link! Any idea what is wrong and how I should deal with this? Thanks.
I found the problem. I had at one point moved the file of RAW images from one HD to another (before I read your article). The problem was that the folder name on the correct *new) hard drive was already in LR for some reason with only 1 out of the 280 images. Once I deleted this folder from the new HD in my catalog, I was then able to link up the existing catalog with the new folder location.
Dear Jason,
Glad you solved your own troubles. Those folder names will get ya! Thanks for sharing your experiences with us too. Very helpful.
Best wishes,
David
Great tutorial! I have twin external hard drives, and my master Lightroom catalog lives on one and gets backed up onto the other.
However, I got sloppy and started creating various catalogs on my internal drive. I decided to combine all of them, so I created a “master” catalog on my internal and then began importing (moving) image files into the new catalog and deleting the various old catalogs.
I got sloppy (again!) doing this, and accidentally imported a bunch of unrelated images in my “Montreal” subfolder. When I look at the folder structure in Explorer, I see the various subfolders under the Montreal folder, but Lightroom doesn’t show Montreal as having any subfolders. Can I move the subfolders out of Montreal with Lightroom? I can’t see how, unless I just move them with Explorer and tell Lightroom where to find them afterwords.
Cheers,
Will
William,
Are the images contained in “Montreal’s” subfolders in Lightrooom? In other words, has Lightroom indexed them, or is it just showing you any loose images that may be floating around in “Montreal” (but not in its subfolders)?
If none of Montreal’s subfolders are indexed then you could move them using Explorer with no errors in Lightroom.
Either way, though, you might just want to move those outside of Lightroom (with Explorer) and then tell Lightroom the new location(s) of the folders/files.
-Scott
i have been reading/viewing the tutorial/video on moving the catalog and photo-folders into external-drive..
now that i got my new bigger external-drive, i am ready to put together all my photos from internal-drive and 1 external-drive into a single-external-drive..
my question now is:
instead of moving the foldersout from the source(internal , external), can i just just them using Lightroom into the new external-drive?
thanks!
instead of moving the foldersout from the source(internal , external), can i just COPY them using Lightroom into the new external-drive?
Thanks!
Dear Arnold,
There is no way to copy folders from one location to another within Lightroom but you could easily do this using your Operating System and then you could associate the new files with their placeholders in your existing Lightroom database.
If you choose to go this route I think that you need to follow all of these steps:
0. BACK EVERYTHING UP. BE SURE YOU MAKE A SECOND COPY OF YOUR LIGHTROOM CATALOG AND ALL OF YOUR IMAGES.
1. Before you move anything launch Lightroom select all of your images and save your metadata down to the file level. In the Library Mode with all filters turned off go Edit > Select All and then Metadata > Save Metadata to File.
2. One everything has been saved go to the folders panel and right click on one of your folders. Click the “Add Parent Folder” button. We want Lightroom to show the name of your top-level image storage folder. For most Lightroom users this will be the “Pictures” or “My Pictures” folder.
3. Quit Lightroom.
4. Copy this entire folder to your external hard drive.
5. Restart Lightroom.
6. Right click on your top-level parent folder and then click the “Update Folder Location” button. Select the copy of your parent folder on the external hard drive. Lightroom will update its database so that all of the file path references now lead to this folder and its sub-folders on the external.
7. If I were you I would then delete all of the images in your internal top-level photo storage folder so that you get the drive space back and so there is no confusion.
Here’s the thing. This is a somewhat complicated process and in the end it doesn’t achieve anything that you couldn’t have accomplished by just moving the files from disk to disk from within Lightroom. It’s arguably safer since the files are copied rather than moved but for its complexity I don’t see how its anymore efficient.
best of luck,
David
David-
Thanks for the help!
I have moved all of my Lightroom catalogs and photos to an external drive, using the direction in your tutorials. Everything has worked slick so far, but I have one question: When I went to run my once-a-week back-up, Lightroom created a new folder on my hard drive and used that to store my new back-up. How do I change the location for my future back-ups?
Jen
Dear Jen,
Next time that the backup reminder pops up slow down. The reminder asks you every time where to place the backup file. All you need to do is guide it over to your external drive! Thanks for the excellent question and for taking the time to make backups. Please don’t forget though that the Lightroom 2 backup utility only protects your catalog and does nothing to protect your precious photographs.
For a more complete backup strategy please check out this post:
http://thelightroomlab.com/2009/05/my-photo-storage-system-two-external-hard-drives/
–
David
Hello David,
In LR, I have original files that I have developed. Now, I’d like to burn the originals onto CD because they are taking up much space and remove them entirely from my computer. (I don’t want to keep them on an external drive taking up space there because I already have what I need – the developed images and photoshopped finals.)
1) How do I do this without confusing LR?
2) If I do this, would the originals be deleted from the catalog? If so, is there a way to “track” their location onto the CDs?
3) Anything else I should know?
Thanks, das
Hi David, I have LR on two computers, my laptop and Macpro. I used a different hard drive on my G4 laptop this time and now my macpro LR doesn’t recognize the photos on that drive. How do I get both LR to use any drive even if it didn’t originally put it on that drive?
Thanks,
Jim
Dear Jim,
I am not sure that I understand your question. Do you have two separate Lightroom catalogs– one on the G4 and one on the MacPro– or do you have a single catalog that you would like to use with both computers but that is stored on the external disk?
If the later, one catalog on an external that you want to use with both computers, is the question then I would ask how is the drive formatted? In this case these articles might help. See:
http://thelightroomlab.com/2009/01/formatting-an-external-hard-drive/
http://thelightroomlab.com/2009/05/my-photo-storage-system-two-external-hard-drives/
If, on the other hand, you have separate catalogs on each computer then you need to import the files from the external disk into the Lightroom catalog on the MacPro. I am guessing that the MacBook index has no idea that you have another drive nor does it contain references for any of the files (photographs) that live there. If you need to import these files into the MacPro’s index use the “add photos to catalog without moving” option and be sure not to rename them. If you move them or rename them then the catalog references on the other computer will be all messed up.
I wish that I could give you a clearer answer but there are just too many options. What I can give is definitive advice. Lightroom is not a network program. Since it cannot run across a network, two computers cannot share a single Lightroom catalog–a single library of photographs–unless that index lives on an external drive. Again see this post for more advice:
http://thelightroomlab.com/2009/05/my-photo-storage-system-two-external-hard-drives/
best of luck,
David
Dear das,
What you are asking is simple enough but I don’t think you are going to like my answers. To put a copy of your files onto a CD or DVD do the following:
1. In Lightroom make a new collection.
2. Add all of these files into the collection.
3. Once everything has been added select them all and then hit the export button.
4. Select the “Burn Full Sized JPEGs” Lightroom Preset but before you hit export change a: the export location folder to the choice that says “Temporary Folder” and b: the file format to “ORIGINAL.” This second step is critical so that your files that get put on the disk retain their current file format.
5. Once the disk is burned label it carefully and put it away.
6. Now in Lightroom make sure that every file in your collection is selected and then hit the show “All Photographs” button in the Catalog Panel or at the top of the Film Strip.
7. Press the Delete key. When the delete dialog pops up select the “Delete From Disk” option.
8. Delete the now empty collection.
If you follow these steps your files will be burned to an optical disk and then removed both from your Lightroom index and from your hard drive once you empty your trashcan / recycle bin. So far so good….
The part that you are not going to like though is that Lightroom has no ability to track or record information about files that have been removed or burned to disk. These files exist outside of its index so it cannot help you find them later. Other programs like Microsoft Expressions have more options here but sadly this is one of Lightroom’s limits.
best of luck,
David
Hi David, thanks for your help.
Let me better explain- Yes I am using LR in two machines and I will use external Hard drives for both. Would like to shoot, import images thru laptop onto external drive, do some initial tweaks, naming, etc, there.
Then use that same hard drive with same images and connect that hard drive, separate from the laptop (ie- no network) and continue to work on those images on Macpro desktop.
Also maybe vis versa where I would do work on images as I travel that have been imported via the desktop.
Also thinking long run where I would have many external hard drives (backups, archives, etc).
How do I keep track of all that and not confuse the catalog?
Will look at your answers now as well.
Thanks,
Jim
Love your website, thanks so much! I’m a beginner at LR and having a very basic problem, that I don’t understand. I understand about the catalogue and location of my photos, etc. But when I right click on my pc to rename or move a folder within LR I get the error message, “The folder xxx could not be renamed or moved.” I am trying to get my old folders renamed to a better naming convention and organized. It does not happen with all folders, just some. Any input or advice would be very appreciated.
Dear Cbe,
I swear I wrote a response for you yesterday but it seems to have vanished. Apologies. I can think of three reasons why you might be getting this message. The first thing that might stop Lightroom from renaming a folder is if a folder with that same exact name already exists in the same place. Computers cannot store two files or folders with identical names in the same directory so in this case Lightroom might be doing you a favor. The second possibility is that your folders are locked or write-protected. You can find this out at the operating system level with a right-click and the “Properties” or “Get Info” commands. The third possibility is that there is a Lightroom bug preventing this activity. See http://www.lightroomforums.net/index.php?topic=2798.0 for more details.
In this case, you could rename the folders at the operating system level and then reconnect them with Lightroom using a right-click and the “Locate Missing Folder” option but I probably wouldn’t bother. Folder names are far less powerful and useful than adding meaningful metadata to each image. Likewise, collections are a far easier to rename and to use then folders.
–
David
Hi,
First great tutorials!
Just wondering if there is a way in lightroom to delete old volumes within lightroom that you no longer use? I have looked everywhere with no luck!
Cheers
Rob
Rob,
You can right-click on folders on that unused volume within Lightroom and choose “Remove” to remove them from view. Once all the folders on that volume are gone, the volume itself will disappear.
-Scott
Thanks for a great tutorial! It saved my life;-) and the appr 13.000 photos I have in a total mess at various places at my computer. Now I will just breathe in a little patience and start organizing everything based on your advice.
Thanks, Hanna
David,
I am am having a rather frustrating problem with LR2.
I have my images on an external drive. LR often looses track of the mappings to the folders, but does it arbitrarily in terms of which folders are no longer mapped. Also, in a seemingly healthy folder, i.e. no question marks, when I create a subfolder, it has a question mark and does not allow me to place anything within it.
(Note that I have not changed anything in the finder or external to LR since I know that will affect the mappings.)
Also, when I try to remap a folder (point to them with the locate feature), LR sometimes does not acknowledge it.
Note that I have reinstalled LR on the same system, and I have tried it on another system. I encounter the same issues regardless. Actually, I am surprised that I do not see many forums with these issues in them.
Do you know what is going on with regard to those issues? If you could help, I would be greatly appreciative.
BJ,
That definitely sounds like a frustrating issue. If it occurs as you described, rather randomly and without provocation, it may be difficult to diagnose in this forum. A couple of quick questions:
On Windows platforms, the drive letters (D:, E:, etc) for external drives can change when they are unmounted and remounted. This causes Lightroom to loose track of drive, folder, and image locations. Could this be what’s happening in your case?
-Scott
Dear BJ,
I don’t have an answer for you. I like Scott’s questions but am inclined to think that the problem is in the hardware. Are you are using a USB drive connection to this external hard drive? Does this drive have a robust cooling system? Again, I have no answers for you but I know that Lightroom moves files better via eSATA, or Firewire 800 than via USB. I have also seen lots of problems with external hard drives that lack adequate ventilation or a sizable cooling fan. Hope this helps.
David
Dear Hanna,
Thanks for the kind words. I’m glad my tutorial helped. As you bring those 13,000 photos in be sure to add lots of metadata. Metadata is the backbone of a well-organized photo storage system.
David
Hi david,
Great tutorials thank you! These were truly a lifesaver and very easy. I had one problem though- While during the folder move, my cat jumped up on the table and bumped the external drive! I got a popup about the ejected drive and the move froze. Since the cable didn’t come out of the firewire port fully, I just reseated and waited several minutes hoping it would come back. It did not and then Lightroom wanted to quit. Thankfully it happened in the beginning of the move and there are about 5 folders effected and don’t have many photos in them, but they are in purgatory. The first 4 folders and their contents copied over to the external but left an empty folder on my hard drive. The 5th folder however was halfway through the move so 4 photos are on the external and another 9 are still on my internal hard drive. The 4 photos that moved to the external hard drive are still ghosted on the internal hard drive. Do you have any suggestions as to what I should do?
Thanks for any help David! And again, the tutorials are super helpful.
Thanks
Jeff
Dear Jeff,
The cat did it! This could have been a major disaster. If we had talked before you started I would have urged you to make a complete backup of your photos. If something like this happens while moving the files can truly go to “purgatory.”
It seems though that you are a very lucky man. Here’s my advice.
1. Restart the computer.
2. Without Lightroom running move the existing files to the appropriate folders using drag and drop in the finder.
3. Launch the right Lightroom catalog.
4. In the Folders panel in the Library Module right click on the appropriate folders and use the synchronize button.
5. Import these files at their current location.
6. Kick the cat out of your office!
7. Backup everything again.
–
David
David,
Haha- yeah it’s like a bad excuse for not having your homework! Damn cat.
I had done a time machine of my hard drive previous to “the move” so I’m going to retrieve my lost photos. In the end I have 8 damaged photos but everything else moved over. Which is pretty good considering I have 8000+.
Thank you so much for your time and knowledge.
Jeff
FYI…retrieving/re-syncing the damaged photos from time machine couldn’t have been easier. Thanks again for all your help, David!
Thanks so much! very helpful! keep the tutorials coming!!
David -
I found your excellent tutorial – but too late! I am a brand new Lightroom user and after importing a couple of hundred photos, I realized my organization was a mess. So I (sob) renamed and reorganized the folders on my drive, instead of in Lightroom. I don’t have too many photos and restoring the correct paths is not working easily for me. Is it better for me just to delete all the photos and re-import them into Lightroom? Or will this further confuse Lightroom (and me)? Many thanks.
- Jillian
Dear Jillian,
If I were you I would do the following assuming that you have not created a lot of Virtual Copies, Pick / Reject Flags, or Collections:
1. In your existing Lightroom Catalog select all of your photos and go Metadata > Save Metadata to File.
2. Delete your existing Lightroom Catalog.
3. Watch all of our tutorials and read our articles on getting started right with Lightroom 3.
4. Create a new catalog hopefully on a properly formatted high-performance external hard drive.
5. Set up all of your Preferences and build an Import Preset.
6. Import your existing folders.
My advice basically is start over but this time set yourself up for long-term success.
–
David
Thanks, David. You’re a great resource.
-Jillian
Hi David,
My problem is similar to Jillian’s and I want to be sure about the instructions. I’m pretty sure I renamed folders in a finder window, not in LR. If all file metadata gets saved and transferred to external hard drive catalog, what is procedure to reimport with new subfolders named correctly? My MAC HD single catalog has 6577 images–will this work for all of them at one time? Any other key points?
Thanks for the wonderful tutorials and helping us all stay on track.
Mark
Dear Mark,
If you renamed a folder using operating system that was already connected with your Lightroom index then the files should appear as missing and the folder in the Library Module’s Folder panel should also have a question mark. Fixing this is easy though. Just right click on the missing folders name and use the “update folder location” button to reconnect things. Done!
Moving forward though I suggest that you make any changes like this from within Lightroom. Anytime you want to change the name of a file that’s in your index, change the name if a folder that has been indexed, or move files / folders from place to place do it in Lightroom and save yourself the extra work.
–
David