Removing photos directly from SD card on Macbook Air

mia-birding · Jul 5, 2024

Hi everyone,

What is the best way to delete photos directly from my SD card when I am viewing them in my Macbook Air? I am using Finder to view them however if I want to remove a picture I have to close the file, go back to Finder and then remove the file which seems like a lot of steps as I have over 15k pictures to go through and a few thousand of blurry images to delete.

I know another way is to download the SD contents to Lightroom and then remove the unwanted photos but I am looking to select the best ones directly from the SD card using my Macbook Air. Removing them from my camera is not an option as the screen is just too small for me to sort out the best photos. Any suggestions please?

Thank you!

snowbear · Jul 5, 2024

Welcome aboard. My flow is to import everything to the computer using Lightroom for editing, but I'll also copy them all onto my hard drive and archive to a .ZIP file. I don't take as many as I'd like to so I'll do thois once a month, or so (dual cards so they don't fill up very fast). Once the cards get's fairly full or I want more room, I'll just format the cards in-camera. I also swap the cards. I need to pick up another pair so I can do 4-way swaps, like rotating the tires on your car.

In Lightroom, I just go through the catalog, pick the one's I like to tweak/edit, and ignore the rest. You can, if you want, select a group and delete. Can you set a "preview" in finder?

DigiFilm · Jul 7, 2024

Speaking as someone who comes home with thousands of photos from almost every outing, you're really doing it the hard way.

Upload the photos to the computer > cull > format the card.

When you delete photos on a card from the computer, you're risking the rest of the photos on the card. It messes with the card's directory, and you could end up with a corrupted card, meaning the only way to use the card again is to format it and lose the images.

There's a free program out there for reviewing and culling called FastStone. Once you get used to it, you can cull in a hurry. I had a light day yesterday, brought home about 1600 image files. I had them culled, processed, uploaded, and filed by 2:00 this afternoon. The same process used to take me a week. The one step I add is to upload to a portable SSD instead of the computer, and I work from there. The culled files are saved to a folder on the SSD until I'm done processing. Once they've been processed and I know I'm done, I delete the culled files and move the RAW and processed jpegs to my hard drive.

JoolsW · Jul 7, 2024

Cards are so cheap nowadays we can fill 'em up, keep them there, and just put in a new card. Then you have the pics which you can access on the computer, or put the card back into the camera and you have them there.
(Or did I miss something?)

zombiesniper · Jul 8, 2024

JoolsW said:
Cards are so cheap nowadays we can fill 'em up, keep them there, and just put in a new card. Then you have the pics which you can access on the computer, or put the card back into the camera and you have them there.
(Or did I miss something?)

The one thing you missed is now you only have one copy of the photo in one place. If the card with your favourite photo gets corrupt.....it's gone, House fire, stolen, gone etc.

Always have at least two physical copies of a file one at home, one elsewhere. If you can also have a server based or cloud copy as well.

DigiFilm · Jul 8, 2024

JoolsW said:
Cards are so cheap nowadays we can fill 'em up, keep them there, and just put in a new card. Then you have the pics which you can access on the computer, or put the card back into the camera and you have them there.
(Or did I miss something?)

I'm using Type A Express cards, not cheap by anyone's account. I can buy a 2T SSD for less. Also, I need high-capacity cards. I have filled a 260G card at a shoot and had the camera switch to the second card. On top of that, I do a lot of bursts and I really only need the best one of the burst, so why keep shots that I'll never use? Free is cheaper than cheap. Using up space for no reason has never appealed to me.

I do agree with the comment about backup, though. I keep a copy in three locations. Internal, portable SSD (updated regularly), and portable HD (updated a few times a year), the latter being kept in a safe.

A card is the most likely of all to become corrupt due to the file system and people deleting individual files instead if reformatting.
Needs differ from person to person.