Link images on drive outside of vault

What I’m trying to do

ello, I have some reasonably large images which are in a project folder, I have a vault in the project folder but the images are outside of the vault and referenced by other software, is there a way I can reference them in my obsidian canvas?

Things I have tried

I found this forum post on the topic Link to a file outside the vault on a - #2 by PlayerMiller In the post, moz says
I think I’ve find the best solution of your need. Simply drag and drop the file you need from your native file explorer while holding Ctrl on Windows/Linux or Command on macOS to create file:/// absolute links to those files.

I tried holding ctrl and dragging the files, but obsidian still creates a copy of the image in the vault, theres a lot of images, so doing manual file mark down for each one would take aages…

The solution to this thread, should still apply:

is the only solution to manually write the reference paths for them one by one? my main issue is that I have a folder with many images that I would like to reference

You could potentially write some javascript to generate the list for you. Do you know any coding? Are the files limited to a given folder, or folder tree?

On Mac, the key to create soft links is to select your file(s), hold alt/opt, then drag-move your selection.

Try to create a link and check if Obsidian sees your image (soft link)

the files are in one directory, I have some basic experience… worth considering for sure although im not sure where to start exactly with this problem, would it be an external script that just generates some links text? or something for obsidian specifically?

I tried this syntax, it creates a working link but doesnt show the image.
[imageName](file:D:\path\path\imageName.jpg)

In windows I tried alt / shift / ctrl dragging but each time it makes a copy of the image in the vault…

You need an exclamation mark infront to embed the image…

![imageName](file:D:\path\path\imageName.jpg)
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Pardon, it’s cmd+alt and drag, you’ll see a round arrow symbol aside your files.
Alt and drag is copy and you will see a green plus symbol.