Laura Shoe's DVD set or Ben Wilmore's class at Creative Live. Neither one free, but IMHO worth the cost.

I agree completely. She has a very good teaching style and covers everything from A to Z. Her DVDs also identify the topics that are crucial to learn first as opposed to those that can wait until you gain some experience. Go to her website to view a couple of her freebies. That will help you decide if you like her style without making any financial commitment.

Not necessarily true. I have binoculars that have the same problem and they live on a chest level shelf in my family room. And we do use our air conditioning.

Nice shots. We've noted the same thing here. One or two around in early May, then nothing until the last week or two. Now we have visitors to our feeder several times a day.

I was in Banff last August and it was smokey then, too. I don't think a filter is going to have too much effect. You are seeing suspended particles in the air. Even if the filter could reduce the optical diffusion, it can't remove the actual particle pollution.

The Dehaze function in LR did help in pp, but you can only go so far before the results look far less that realistic. I assume other software has similar capabilities.

Going forward, turn that option off. The information will be in the exif data that can be viewed in several different ways. Others have given you suggestions regarding the removal of those that exist. The quickest is to crop it out, but that won't work for too many images.

Do you have the Import option "Don't Import Suspected Duplicates" checked in the right hand column?

It almost sounds like your computer hard drive is running out of space for the previews. I assume you have sufficient RAM.

More often from their phone or tablet.

I don't think they are gone. Their website has articles dated 8/17 and 8/16 among others.

Yes, small in market share, but not necessarily in reputation - Hasselblad, Leica, Pentax/Ricoh, Samsung, DxO. And now some higher end cell phones can also capture in dng format.

Still, if I were shooting other than Pentax, I would not bother converting a native raw file to dng unless the files from the camera were not supported.

I think you intended to respond to the OP, not quote MY response.

The Duplicate finder plug-in that I have ends up as a Collection. See the list of Collections in the Library Module. On any given image file in the Duplicate Collection you should be able to right click on it and select Show in Explorer.

I follow a similar process - Import to LR (a temporary dated directory) with Auto Tone and Key Words that apply to all. In Library, I identify ones that I want to post process with the Pick, those that are duds with an X. The bulk get neither. Then I delete from the Catalog and Disk all the X images, add more Key Words to the remainder and process the Picks. Then I move all of them to a specific Directory that I create based on subject matter and date (usually from our trips). I often ask my wife for inputs on Picks, but seldom on those to delete. Picks often end up in books or on our walls, so I am selective in how many get that flag.

Something you can try with the DNG files that you have already edited is to import the corresponding CR2 into the same Catalog and folder. Then in the Develop module, select the DNG file, make a minor change in the edited parameters (then change them back to their original setting if you wish). Without leaving Develop, select the corresponding CR2 file and at the bottom right of Develop, click the Previous button. That should apply the same edits that you made to the DNG to the CR2. I don't think there is a way to do this in a batch fashion and I have not confirmed that it works as I don't have files to try it on.