Here’s a question I got this week:
“I have many duplicates of photos on my hard drive and in Lightroom. If I click on All Photographs (or some subset) and sort by capture date, I can see the duplicates side by side, but I can’t figure out how to easily see which folder each of the duplicates are in, so I can decide which to delete and which to keep. I know I could right-click on a photo and choose Go to Folder in Library to jump to the folder, but I don’t want to jump to it, I just want to know what it is. Is there an easy way?” Kathy
Lightroom to the rescue!
For this type of work, I recommend displaying the folder name above your image thumbnails, along with file name, capture date and time, and copy name. Go to Grid view (G) in the Library module, then up in the menu bar, View > View Options. Set “Show Grid Extras” to Expanded Cells. Then down in the Expanded Cell Extras section, choose these four fields.
Now I can see that this photo is in my 11-04 Zion National Park folder, as well as what the file name is and the capture date and time:
If this photo were a virtual copy, I would see a “copy name” to the right of the folder name. For more on using the Copy Name field to document your virtual copies, see this post.
If seeing the folder name isn’t enough and you want to see the whole folder hierarchy, you can open up the Metadata panel (bottom right in the Library module), and hover over the Folder name field:
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Excellent tip, as always.
Thanks
Is there a way to change the format of the date displayed in the Library Module Grid View? Likewise, is there a way to change the format of the date displayed in the Metadata pane’s Date-Time fields?
The problem is the date is displayed as 10/7/10 9:19:07 PM. And I would prefer the display to be “07 Oct 2010” for the day portion, or even “07/Oct/2010”. Four digit year is preferred, as is words for the month value.
Thanks,
Steve
I am sorry that I just saw your question, Steve. I am not aware of any way to change these. Let me know if you have found a way!
Would this folder info in grid view facillitate locating missing files?
Can the info in the lower portion of grid view be displayed in black text like the top line rather than the hard to see light gray.
I don’t believe so, Jim.
Wow–I googled this and after trying to hunt my answer down in Adobe’s typical obscure gobbledegook, I found your wonderfully refreshing, straight-forward explanation. So simple!
Is there a known problem with sorting by Capture Time? It would seem to be the most basic of sort orders, but it doesn’t seem to be working properly in Lightroom 6 for me.
http://imgur.com/9wqpJpQ
Example screen shot. Note the capture date/times and the sort order.
Not that I know of Steve – I’d suggest posting on the Adobe Lightroom forum.