Using Collections in Lightroom Classic 9.4

You might want to consider learning to use keywords. That is where the real power of image organization comes into play with Lightroom, in my opinion. And I wouldn't turn my back on collections either.

"I did some experimenting and it seems that I have to have the photos imported into LrC and then place them into collections that I have created. That works well, but I have a few thousand photos that I wish to place in collections so importing all these photos is going to take some time and the catalogue is going to become unmanageable with thousands of photos."

People have tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of photos in Lightroom Classic. The point is that Lightroom Classic provides many many tools (not just collections) to help you organize and find the desired photos, when you need them. These tools are keywords, captions, titles, other metadata, collections, etc. For these tools to be effective, you have to actually use these tools, and apply keywords, captions, titles, other metadata, collections, etc. to your photos — otherwise there is NO software that will help you make so many photos manageable.

"My problem is, if I delete the photos from the catalogue then the photos are also deleted from the collections as well."

This is the proper behavior for Lightroom Classic. Once you import, you apply the above tools to help you organize and search, and then you don't have to remove photos (and also, you should not remove photos once imported).

"Is there any way of keeping the photos in the collections without having the photos in the catalog?"

No. The catalog is necessary for organization purposes, it keeps tracks of your photos and your organization and your edits. If you remove the photos, then it can't keep track of them and your organization and edits are lost.

"I know I can select the option to show only the previous import in the catalogue but I really would like to keep the catalogue as small as possible."

This should not be a goal. Lightroom Classic has no problem with large catalogs, as stated above, it's a tool for you to organize your photos, and so no point keeping it small. I advise people that eventually you want 100% of the photos that you want to keep (that's 100%, all, every single one, no exceptions) needs to be in Lightroom Classic's catalog and organized, that's how you are going to find the photos in the future. (I realize that on day one, you will not have 100% of your photos impoted into Lightroom Classic, but that ought to be the goal)

"If someone can shed some light on the use of collections it would be appreciated."

In my opinion (which some people agree with and others do not), you do not even want to start with collections. You want to organize by keywords, captions, titles and other metadata. Collections are used for special purposes, like a slideshow, or a photo book, or other photos you want to keep together for some reason. But ... we see this all the time ... if your goal is to have small catalog and a few collections, then this really isn't the reason you would use Lightroom Classic, and possibly some other software would be better for you. If your goal is to organize 100% of your photos that you want to keep, then that is a better use and a more fitting use for Lightroom Classic. (And use keywords, not collections).

But it all begins with understanding what Lightroom Classic can do for you, and then moving in that direction. If you don't understand, or you want to move in a different direction, you would be better off using some other software. We see all the time the frustration (and sometimes anger) of people who want to use Lightroom Classic to do things that LightrooM Classic wasn't intended to do. We also see the opposite, people use Lightroom Classic for things that it was intended to do, and usually these are happy LightrooM Classic users (although not always).

I think you misunderstand what collections are and how to use them. Collections are like playlists in a music player, so a single photo can be in as many collections as you want. That is the power of collections and that is what makes them different (and so much more useful as means of organising images) than folders. Folders are physical storage places. Your images must be in some folder, but they can only be in one folder at the same time. Because an image can be in many collections, that vacation image of your daughter can be in a collection with your daughters name, and in a collection of that particular vacation, and in any other collection you want. You will still only have one image in Lightroom however.

You can add photos to one collection on import, but you can add them to other collections by dragging and dropping them. Do not try to import them again in order to add them to another collection.