Add photos

Launch Lightroom.

Add photos from a camera device

Connect the camera or card reader to your computer. If necessary, view your camera manufacturer's documentation for instructions on how to connect it to the computer.

Select the Add Photos option at the upper-left corner of the window. Alternatively, choose File > Add Photos... from the menu bar. From the context menu that appears, select the camera. 

Your images will be available for review before being added to Lightroom. 

Add photos from a hard drive folder

Select the Add Photos option at the upper-left corner of the window. Alternatively, select File > Add Photos... from the menu bar. A dialog to select files from a local folder on your hard drive appears.

In the dialog that appears, do any of the following:

• Navigate and choose a folder containing the image files that you want to add. Then, select Review For Import (Mac)/Choose Folder (Win). 
• Navigate and choose one or more image files that you want to add. Then, select Review For Import. 

You're looking at previews of your images. In this screen, you can select the images you'd like to add to Lightroom.

Select photos for import

• To select a photo for import, move the pointer over that photo and click the gray circular overlay that appears at the upper-left corner of the thumbnail. A blue check mark in the upper-left corner of the thumbnail indicates that the photo is selected for import.
• To select all the thumbnails appearing in the import screen, check the Select All option at the upper-right corner.  
• To deselect any photo, click the blue check mark in the upper-left corner of the thumbnail.

Duplicate photos

While adding photos, Lightroom automatically detects 'duplicate' photos. In the import screen, a Previously Added text overlay on a thumbnail indicates that you've already added that photo in Lightroom. You can't add photos that are identified as duplicate.

If you think that a photo has been incorrectly identified as duplicate, you can work around this issue by renaming the photo in Explorer (Win)/Finder (Mac) and then adding it in Lightroom.

Add photos to an Album

Select the Add To Album drop-down list and choose any of the following:

• To add the selected photos but not as part of any Album, choose None. 
• To create an Album and add the selected photos to the new Album, choose New.
• To add the selected photos to an existing Album, choose any of the Album names displayed in the drop-down list.

Select Add Photos.