Lightroom help, again, please....

[sparker]

Good morning,
I hope someone can help. I have been using Lightroom Classic for about a week now and, I have to say, I'm struggling! I purchased it because I thought it would be easier to use than Darktable but now I'm beginning to wonder.
Last evening I copied all my files onto an external hard drive, now when I try to import images from my computer into the Lightroom Library, I get the box box below appear. What have I done? Is there a fix? Many thanks in advance.
Simon

 

[ecoleman]

That’s not really a LR problem. You need to look at the permissions for that drive or folder within your OS. LR is telling you it does not have permission to write to that drive or folder.

 

[Brentor]

It is best to move the photos to a new location using Lightroom rather than copying using Mac Finder or Windows Explorer, but as Elliot says you need to sort out permissions. Is the new drive formatted correctly for your PC/Mac?

 

[John_L]

If I understand your post correctly, you have decided on an external location where you want to keep your images and now want to add those images to the LR catalogue.

There is no need to move the photos from your preferred location, the catalogue does not hold the images themselves, just information about their location and any edits you have done to them.

In LR, select "Import" and then make sure you have selected "Add" as below.



Use the "Source" panel on the LHS of the screen to navigate to the folder on your external drive where the images are stored,





select the images you wish to add to the catalogue and import them. LR will then add the file information to the catalogue, creating folder records which reflect those on the hard drive and adding image records to the appropriate folder for each added image.


It is worth thinking about how you want to structure your image storage on the external hard drive before you start, since this folder structure is what will appear in your library. Files and folders can be moved subsequently (always within LR so the catalogue gets updated correctly), but it is easier to start off in the way you want things to be organised for the future.

If you still get the non-writable message when you attempt this, then there is certainly a permission problem somewhere.

It would be worth trying the process out for just one or two files until you feel confident about the process. You can always remove images from LR, but be careful to notice the distinction between the choices you are offered at that time i.e "Remove from LR" (which just deletes the data about the image from the catalogue) and "Delete from disk" (which does exactly what it says!)

Hope this helps.

 

[sparker]

Thank you @ecoleman @Brentor & @John_L

What I was trying to do is copy my images to the external hard drive, in case I ever had a problem and couldn't access them, leaving the originals on laptop. How ironic!

 

[sparker]

All sorted, thank you @John_L , I just had to click on "Add"

 

[the black fox]

When importing into LR I use the date/ day..month..year it keeps everything very neat and you can back up daily ,weekly or monthly etc