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Gabor Lenart
Gabor Lenart
Inspiring
August 22, 2025
Answered

Please update 'Import from another catalog'

  • August 22, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 518 views

Hi!


Adobe should really reinvent the whole system of moving photos from one catalog to another because the "Import from another catalog" function just isn't working most of the time.

It is very hectic. Sometimes it doesn't even start importing and I have to restart Lightroom to even get it to work.

But my main problem is it always wants to copy everything and it doesn't recognise that the photos are already in the catalog I want to move into and I just want to update the settings.

 

So here's how I work:

I have a temporary "Editing Catalog" on my SSD.

But I have a final Archive Catalog on my HDD as well.

Of course my photos have to be backed up so when I arrive home with my SD card, I copy the files onto the SSD and I copy the files onto the HDD as well. And I import the corresponding files into both catalogs.

I import the files on the SSD into the Editing Catalog and I import the files on the HDD to the Archive Catalog.

Afther that I start to work on the Editing Catalog, I do all the culling, editing, everything. And when I'm done, I just want to import every setting and layers and all that to the Archive Catalog. So I open the Archive catalog and click on the "Import from another catalog" to import the settings you know.

So I pick the folder, and also choosing the option: I don't want to replace negatives, I only want to import metadata.

And then it is starting to copy to somewhere almost every time. But this is the funny part becuase not every time it does this, but most of the times....Totally random.

But basically I can not find a good folder structure solution for it to not create all the folders all over again on the HDD and copy and import the photos to that location.

And when you have 10.000 images to import it becomes really frustrating to copy everyting to the HDD all over again. These are 300gb and it takes hours to copy them to the HDD instead of a few minutes if it could properly copy only the metadata. It is super frustrating.


The quick solution to this would be if I could actually tell Lightroom where to copy the files and it would actually recognize that they are already in the Catalog and just needs to update the Metadata. And it doesn't need to create all these folders and everything.

 

I can not get it to actually copy into the folder I want ever, because it always creates a folder with my SSD's base folder name on the HDD and it always tries to copy everyting to there. 

Please fix this as soon as possible.

Correct answer drtonyb

@Gabor Lenart 

 

I tested your workflow and found that it worked just fine.

 

I created two identical folder structures on different drives ( Windows C and D ), copied the same photos to the two drives, created an Archive catalog on drive D and an Edit catalog on Drive C. I imported the photos from D drive into my Archive catalog. I imported the photos from C drive into my Edit catalog, then made some edits on those photos. Opened the Archive catalog - photos had no edits. I used Import from Another Catalog to import the edited photos from the Edit catalog into the Archive catalog with Add new photos without moving set and all other settings off.

 

Result: the Archive catalog shows the photos on drive D with the same edits that the Edit catalog had for the same photos that are on drive C.

2 replies

D
drtonybCorrect answer
Legend
August 27, 2025

@Gabor Lenart 

 

I tested your workflow and found that it worked just fine.

 

I created two identical folder structures on different drives ( Windows C and D ), copied the same photos to the two drives, created an Archive catalog on drive D and an Edit catalog on Drive C. I imported the photos from D drive into my Archive catalog. I imported the photos from C drive into my Edit catalog, then made some edits on those photos. Opened the Archive catalog - photos had no edits. I used Import from Another Catalog to import the edited photos from the Edit catalog into the Archive catalog with Add new photos without moving set and all other settings off.

 

Result: the Archive catalog shows the photos on drive D with the same edits that the Edit catalog had for the same photos that are on drive C.

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
Community Expert
August 27, 2025

@drtonyb Good to hear that this works too! I wasn't sure that the merge would recognize that the new photos in both catalogs were duplicates, and in a normal 'travel catalog' setup the new images would not be in the home catalog yet when you come home and use 'Import from Another Catalog', so I thought that might have been the problem. I'm surprised that you did get the option to import 'new photos' at all, because the photos were in both catalogs already, so technically there were only new edits, not new photos... I stand corrected on that part. The final conclusion is clear however; there is nothing missing in the 'Import from Another Catalog' option that needs updated. It should work fine if you use it correctly.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
JohanElzenga
Community Expert
JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
Community Expert
August 23, 2025

I think your problem is that you import the images in both catalogs. Try this: Only import them in the Editing catalog (you can of course copy them to the HDD for backup purposes, but don't import them into the Archive catalog yet). Then when you use 'Import from Another Catalog' you can simply import all the new images into the Archive catalog. That is how lots of photographers use a 'travel catalog' and a main catalog successfully. I have used this for many years without any of the problems you mention.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
    Gabor Lenart
    Gabor LenartAuthor
    Inspiring
    August 27, 2025

    No, unfortunately you are wrong. I tried what you said and it doesn't work like that.

    If I copy the photos onto the HDD and don't import them to the Archive catalog, then obviously the Archive catalog doesn't see them, so when I click the "Import from another catalog", it will think that the photos are not on the HDD and copy them so I'm doing dobule copying again....

    This is why "replace only metadata" option should exist, when the photos are imported already, it should just replace the metadata and that's it, bug for some reason it can't do it and always copying everything. It becomes really frustrating with 12.000photo/wedding which is 340gb for example...I don't want to double copy everyting because it is very very time consuming and that's why this function exist already, it just needs to work properly.

     

    R
    Community Expert
    richardplondonCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 27, 2025

    "Import photos and videos" will - if so set - carry out a file operation as well as a metadata operation. This might be moving the file, or copying, or copying and converting to DNG.

     

    But "import from another catalog" does not do any of that. It looks at whatever file location reference there is for a given photo within catalog "source", and makes a duplicate reference pointing to that same file location, within catalog "destination", as well as a copy of all the metadata alongside: editing History, virtual copies, collection membership etc as well as latest edits.  

     

    The only way I can think of whereby files may be duplicated in this workflow: the Export as Catalog command. Say you have catalog "source" open, and select a certain number of photos. Then you Export as Catalog and choose to include selected images only, and make a new temporary transfer catalog "intermediate", Then you Import from Another Catalog to merge the contents of "intermediate" into "destination". If when you created "intermediate" you had checked the option Include Originals, that will have duplicated the source files for those selected photos. So it is best not to do that, under this workflow. So there will only be one instance of each file on disk. These catalogs merely deal in editing etc metadata, associated with (shared) references that all point to this same single file.

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