How do I create multiple catalogs?

[keano12]

I am coming from Capture One and want to keep the same working flow which works for me. Sessions. Each shoot is it's own individual thing. How do I make catalogs work as a session. 

I thought I was doingit right but all my shoots are now in one catalog and confused how to spearate them. I know a lot of people perfer all shoots in one catalog but that isn't for me.

Thank you

[Just Shoot Me]

File menu item, Select New Catalog.

But IMHO that is a very bad idea.

It is not the way LrC was designed to be used.

You can separate Shoots with Keywords or use a Folder structure, Job Name + Date or whatever you like to name the folders that Shoots images are stored in and use ONE Catalog that contain ALL your images.

[dj_paige]

@Just Shoot Mesays

"But IMHO that is a very bad idea."

And I say:

But IMHO that is a very very bad idea.

He's absolutely right, you can distinguish the different shoots via metadata or folders. There are a large number of advantages to one catalog compared to multiple catalogs, and a lot of disadvantages to multiple catalogs compared to a single catalog.

[keano12]

Hi guys thank you for the responses. I don't like having one catalog for all images. I understand the collections and breakdowns but I feel much more comfortable for my needs such as draging the folder (shoot) I am working on on to my local drive and then placing it back. I appreciate the feedback guys. I got it going. 

[AxelMatt]

Here you'll find a good article about the pro and cons about having multiple catalogs.

Should you have one catalog or multiple catalogs? | The Lightroom Queen

[parkerea]

I am in the same situation, coming from Capture One using C1 "Sessions." I just installed Lightroom Classic but have yet to edit my first LR photo, and don't want to start off on the wrong foot. I'm wondering what process you ended up with, whether are you happy with the results, and what caveats you may have.

I have read several discussions on why not to use multiple Catalogs (including Lightroom Queen's), but none of them consider using a catalog like a Capture One Session -- one Catalog per shoot. They often just fall back on "it's a bad idea" or "that's not how Lightroom is intended to be used," without a good explanation. Yes, I understand Collections and with one Catalog per shoot Collections won't be of much use, but I don't see that as a big loss.

When I start to edit a new shoot, my plan is:

1) Create a new Windows folder (i.e. Windows file directory) for the shoot. In that folder, create two subfolders, one for photos and one for the Catalog files.

2) Create a new Catalog for the shoot.

3) Immediately move the Catalog file(s) to the catalog subfolder.

4) Copy the shoot photos to the photos subfolder.

5) Only add photos to LR that are stored in that shoot's photo subfolder. Never, and I repeat NEVER add a photo from a different subfolder.

6) Create a simple text file in the shoot subfolder describing the shoot and listing the project, people, events, objects, etc. in this shoot. This facilitates searching within Widows, outside of Lightroom.

This process should make it very easy to move work back and forth between laptop (field work) and desktop; just drag and drop the shoot's entire directory. It can be moved to any computer without worrying about the Catalog losing track of the photos. If you Zip the folder, an entire shoot can be backed up and archived as a single Zip file. For those familiar with a Capture One Session, this should sound familiar.

The only downside I foresee is being unable to search within Lightroom across shoots. I would be ok with this as my searching is normally done at the Windows file level. That said, I understand that Lightroom has a facial recognition feature, and this might be useful to search for friends & family across shoots. I'm considering using a third party facial recognition program that could automatically catalog all my historical photos (including pre-LR), though I haven't researched them yet.

Any thoughts? (And I apologize for the long posting...)

[JohanElzenga]

Do not create a subfolder for the catalog files! If you do that, then the folder cannot be moved freely without Lightroom losing the connection to the photos. What you need to do is create a (shoot) folder with all the catalog files directly in the root of that folder, and then put the images in a subfolder inside that shoot folder. So the hierarchy looks like this:

Shoot folder

- Lightroom catalog files

- Images Folder

[john beardsworth]

The only downside I foresee is being unable to search within Lightroom across shoots. 

By @parkerea

While I agree with the earlier posts about how LR works best as a single catalogue, there are plenty of people who do work with job catalogues as you propose. When the job is done and portability is no longer needed, it's then common to open a master catalogue, use File > Import from Catalog to bring the job catalogue in, and then archive the job catalogue and never see it again. So you get the portability when the job is open and you have control of your entire picture collection. Managing all your pictures, not just folders (sessions) is an important aspect of Lightroom.

You also have other alternatives to moving work back and forth if you decide to import everything into a master catalogue.

One would be to use File > Export as Catalog to create a job catalogue, work on it on the other computer, and then use File > Import from Another Catalog to bring the work back into the master.

Another is to take advantage of Adobe's mobile workflow, syncing a job's photos and then accessing them on other computers using Lightroom Desktop, or even on phones and tablets. So today you might edit the shoot in Lightroom in the master catalogue, tomorrow morning on your laptop and one image on the iPad on the train home, etc, and all your edits will automatically flow back and forth. If you need to have access to full res files everywhere, you can import them into Lightroom Desktop or another of the mobile apps (obviously this uses up your space).

One last comment is that C1 sessions are more like folders, and the workflow is more like Adobe Bridge. They're not really analogous to LR's catalogues, which is why C1 has its own catalogue feature.