Catalog file structure
I'm currently going through my images from the last three years and deleting ones which I don't want to keep. All of them are in a catalog which is organised by date the photo was taken. Last night I selected "Remove from Catalog" instead of "Delete from Disk" for 600 photographs. Is there a simple way to identify which ones I should now actually delete or will I have to delve into the catalog file itself and extract the filenames which it has to see which ones I should physically delete (i.e. if the filename isn't in the catalog then it can be deleted)? If it's the latter then is the internal structure of the catalog file available anywhere?
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You could check the Trash.
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Hello Mark and thanks for your comment. This came about because I'd used "Empty Catalog Trash". Then chose "OK" and was then presented with the option to "delete from the drive or just remove them from the cataog". Unfortunately I chose the latter option so it looks like it empties them from the trash but leaves them on the disk but outside the cataog (unless I'm not understanding how it works correctly).
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Well, if the files are still in the directories then you could try using the import function, hopefully if C1 does not have any idea about these files any more then import will identify the files missing from the catalogue. You don't have to import them of course but it may at least identify them for you. Once you know the files then you can delete manually. I have not tried this before so not sure if it is going to work, but worth a try.
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That would work but there are 600+ of them! However, using your idea I could create a new catalog and import the deleted ones into that removing them from their original location then delete the new catalog with the files.
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So, my plan didn't work exactly as I wanted. I imported the files which had been removed from the catalog (by specifying "Exclude duplicates" and searching all sub-directories). Sadly, I was unable to select "Erase after copy" but I do now have all the files I want to delete in one directory and so can use the filenames to locate the same one in the location and delete them. It'll take a small script to do that but at least I have achieved what I wanted to do.
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I found that synchronize and throwing in verify catalog or session goes a long way at fixing missing files. I spent some time learning the hard way but ultimately what I did was create a dummy catalog with subdirectories that mimicked by real catalog, and putting some duplicates in there and then testing the various ways to screw or or not screw up a catalog. LOL. In the end, Synchronize worked well, and verifying the catalog until it comes clean, was also a good thing to do.
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This one was fighting you, but hopefully you get there in the end.
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