Help with Organizing Catalogs in Lightroom Classic

[davidi87723608]

Hello

I am helping a friend with Lightroom Classic on an Imac (Monterey 12.2.1), managing to transfer 7500 RAW files to a “Library Catalog” on an 2TB external hard drive and freeing up a lot of his internal disk space.  

However I am essentially “flying by the seat of my pants” here.  I’m wondering if there are some good training resources that cover the finer points of Lightroom Classic organization - creating multiple catalogues, importing and exporting between catalogues, hard drive setups, etc.  Not only just how to do it, but what is the optimal setup for one’s particular workflow.  I’m more of a reader than a video person so that would be my preference.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[JohanElzenga]

Do not create multiple catalogs. Lightroom is designed to use one single catalog. You can organize the images using keywords, collections and smart collections.

[davidi87723608]

OK I can put everything in one catalog. This guy has at least a half dozen
old catalogs rattling around in his system. Can I just delete them?--
Photography Galleries: http://davidinman.smugmug.com

[dj_paige]

This guy has at least a half dozenold catalogs rattling around in his system. Can I just delete them?--Photography Galleries: http://davidinman.smugmug.com
By @davidi87723608

We don't know what is in those catalogs, so we can't say if you can delete them or not. You can find out however, by asking your friend, or by looking with your own eyes (or have your friend look with his own eyes) to see what is in them and see if you need them.

[JohanElzenga]

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@davidi87723608 wrote:
OK I can put everything in one catalog. This guy has at least a half dozen
old catalogs rattling around in his system. Can I just delete them?--

---

What you can do is assign the newest catalog as the main one (or create a brand new catalog), and then use 'Import from Another Catalog' to import the other catalogs. Anything that is already in the newer catalog won't import again, but if there are differences in metadata or edits then you can save them as virtual copies. You can also ignore them, assuming that the newest versions are the versions your friend uses right now, so old versions are irrelevant. That's something to discuss with your friend.

[DdeGannes]

There are several articles available at the link below to understand the use of Lightroom Classic Catalogs.

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/blog/page/9/