MaryAO Loc: Florida

After downloading lightroom/photoshop, I started importing photos ...now I have over 10,000 and the folder names did not transfer over from Dropbox or Picassa. Is it possible to remove ALL photos from Lightroom and start over...following a tutorial video??? Do I just "export"????????
Thanks,
Mary Ann

dannac Loc: 60 miles SW of New Orleans

Yes ... wait for reply from Searcher or Gallagher, they are very experienced with Lightroom.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Mary Ann - You need to learn a lot more about Lightroom. The import function created a pointer within LR where the original file resides. It does not take nor make a copy of the file. You'll want to delete everything from the catalog. But, when prompted, you only want to remove from the catalog. DO NOT delete from disk.

dannac Loc: 60 miles SW of New Orleans

Mis-spelled ... that's Dngallagher.

lsimpkins Loc: SE Pennsylvania

LR can either Add, Copy, or Move your photos when you do an Import. The fix for your problem depends upon what option you chose on import. The most common option is Add which works as CHG-CANON indicated - it just puts a pointer to the photo in the LR Catalog.

In Windows you should be able to tell what you did by right clicking on an image and selecting Show In Explorer. If the picture file is in the original location, you did use the Add option of Import. If this is the case, you could rename the catalog file so that LR doesn't know about it. Record what its name is and where it is located just in case.

If you are happy with the file structure you already have, just navigate to it in the left pane of LR while in the Library module. Your directory structure (folders) are most likely under "Local Disk (C)" unless you have them on another drive. Then do an Import with the Add option folder by folder. This will start to create a new Catalog based on your file structure.

There may be a simpler way to do this, and I encourage folks to add to or correct my post.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Thx lsimpkins - I didn't know import could do other things as well ...

MaryAO Loc: Florida

Thanks everyone.
I imported with "COPY" ...mistake .....now I have all 4800+ pictures on the lightroom screen with no data....want to change to "ADD'. Can I do that or do I somehow 'get rid of the photos and start over.....Videos I have watched do not cover "mistakes"
Thank you,
Mary

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

No need to delete everything from your catalog. If you want to start over, just create a new catalog (File>New Catalog). It will have no photos in it. You can then add the ones you want the way you want.

I assume you have folders with your images in them such that the folders contain images with similar descriptions. I would recommend that when you import your images from a folder you add keywords to all the images. Keywording is an art to be developed. You have to add enough keywords to fully describe the image(s) but not so many that it takes you too long to enter them. I generally add the keywords common to all (or almost all) the images at import time. When I go through the images after import, I can then add (or subtract) appropriate keywords to individual images.

Having keywords is really useful down the road when you're looking for an image. That's one of the major advantages of having the LR catalog.