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Create a Lightroom Classic Master Catalogue while retaining the Original Catalogues

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
August 19, 2021
4 replies
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Hello Community,

I like to create a new Catalogue for every photo shoot but it would be nice to have a Master Catalogue for searching purposes, however I would still like to retain the individual shoot Catalogues - Is this possible?

Kind Regards,

Graphicalman.

Windows

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Correct answer JohanElzenga

@Graphicalman wrote:

Hello Community,

I like to create a new Catalogue for every photo shoot but it would be nice to have a Master Catalogue for searching purposes, however I would still like to retain the individual shoot Catalogues - Is this possible?

Kind Regards,

Graphicalman.

Yes, that is possible. Create your Master Catalog and then use 'Import from Another Catalog' and import each individual shoot catalog. Do not check the option to move images to a new location, just import them. Do remember however that Lightroom has no between catalog interactions. If you edit an image in the master catalog, those edits will not appear in the individual shoot catalog. And if you edit an image in an individual shoot catalog after you have imported that catalog into the master catalog, then those edits do not appear in the master catalog (unless you import the catalog again). You could (partially) solve this by using 'save metadata to file' / 'read metadata from file', but not everything is written to XMP.

JohanElzenga

Correct answer

Community Expert

@Graphicalman wrote:

Hello Community,

I like to create a new Catalogue for every photo shoot but it would be nice to have a Master Catalogue for searching purposes, however I would still like to retain the individual shoot Catalogues - Is this possible?

Kind Regards,

Graphicalman.

Yes, that is possible. Create your Master Catalog and then use 'Import from Another Catalog' and import each individual shoot catalog. Do not check the option to move images to a new location, just import them. Do remember however that Lightroom has no between catalog interactions. If you edit an image in the master catalog, those edits will not appear in the individual shoot catalog. And if you edit an image in an individual shoot catalog after you have imported that catalog into the master catalog, then those edits do not appear in the master catalog (unless you import the catalog again). You could (partially) solve this by using 'save metadata to file' / 'read metadata from file', but not everything is written to XMP.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

GraphicalmanAuthor

Participating Frequently

Hello Johan Elzenga,

Thank you so much for your reply - just the answer I was seeking.

I have tried your suggestion and it works perfectly.

Once again, thank you.

Kind Regards,

Graphicalman.

DdeGannes

Community Expert

I also agree with DJ-paige, however if you wish there is a series of Articles at The Lightroom Queen forum beginning with one at the link below.

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/merging-catalogs-overview/

Regards, Denis: iMac 27” mid-2015, macOS 11.7.10 Big Sur; 2TB SSD, 24 GB Ram, GPU 2 GB; LrC 12.5,; Lr 6.5, PS 24.7,; ACR 15.5,; (also Laptop Win 11, ver 24H2, LrC 15.0.1, PS 27.0; ) Camera Oly OM-D E-M1.

JP Hess

Inspiring

What do you feel would be the advantage of having a master catalog along with the individual catalogs? It would be necessary for you to use the option to write metadata to file in all of the catalogs. And then whenever you use the master catalog you have to ensure that you activated the option to read metadata from file on the entire catalog to ensure that the master catalog was up-to-date. Otherwise the master catalog might not show all the Adjustments that had been done in the individual catalog. In my opinion, you are just asking for a big headache. A single catalog with collections for each shoot would be much easier to manage.

dj_paige

Legend

There are a bazillion advantages and very very few disadvatnages to having one catalog, and then getting rid of the original catalogs. There are much fewer advantages and many disadvantages to having one master catalog and many individual catalogs. (One disadvantage is that you have to keep adding photos to BOTH the individual catalog and the master catalog, that is you have doubled the work compared to one master catalog and no individual catalogs).

So don't do this. Go with one master catalog, and no other catalogs. Why do you want to retain the individual catalogs, anyway?

GraphicalmanAuthor

Participating Frequently

Hi dj_paige,

Thank you for your reply.

I fully understand the reasons for and against creating a Master Catalogue while retaining individual Catalogues but my "Archive Workflow" requires the Catalogue to only contain the data and images from that photo shoot.

Therefore, I still would appreciate some advice to my original question - "Create a Lightroom Master Catalogue while retaining the Original Catalogues".

Kind Regards,

Graphicalman.

dj_paige

Legend

My advice: don't do this.

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