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How do I safely merge several LR catalogues into one.

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
October 23, 2024
2 replies
8504 views

I have been using LR Classic since version 1, but have not studied the nature of LR catalogues until now.
As new versions of LR Classic appeared, new catalogues have been created automatically, and, sadly, I have been ignorant of this. I now want to merge them all into one catalogue, as per the recommendation in your help text.
Presently, LR Classic catalogues and data files are located as seen in the attached document "LR-Classic_Catalogues and Data Locations.pdf".

I will prefer to have the resulting single catalogue and related data located on the external harddisk, with the original picture files. This is to save space on my laptop's harddisk.

I will be very happy to receive advice on how to go about this in a safe way.

LR-Classic_Catalogues_and_Data_Locations.pdf

Windows

This topic has been closed for replies.

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

There is nothing to merge. These 'automatically appearing' catalogs are not really new (different) catalogs, they are upgraded catalogs. That means they are newer versions of the same catalog. Obviously the older versions won't contain your latest images or latest edits, but your current catalog will contain everything.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

Jonas LundeAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thank you for the reply. I am, however confused by the fact that, looking at the file sizes of the catalogues, the latest, current catalogue (Lightroom Catalog-v13-3-2.lrcat) does not seem to contain all the older ones - ref. the attachment to my original post. I am nervous that I may have muddled up something in some of my earlier "manoeuvers". Or, is this not a case of simple arithmetic?

Jonas LundeAuthor

Participating Frequently

First, I cannot open your (or anyone's) file attachments. So if you want to provide information, make screen captures and include the screen captures by clicking on the "Insert Photos" icon.

Looking at the table and the second attached file "LR-Catalog-v13-3-2.pdf", my first question is this: The catalog "Lightroom Catalog-v13-3-2.lrcat" seems to contain only a few folders, while its size indicates that there should be more. I suspect that not all content is shown. Is there a way of bringing any hidden content out into the open?

As I stated earlier, looking at file sizes doesn't really tell you much, and can be quite misleading. So I wouldn't bother showing me your table of file sizes. When you say "seems to contain only a few folders", are you determining this via the file size, or did you actually look into the catalog with your own eyes and see what folders are in there? When you look at a catalog to see what it contains, you can go to "All Photographs", sort them by date, and then see the earliest and latest dates of the photos. You can use the filter bar to get more detail about what dates are (or are not) included in the catalog.

It also happens to people that sometimes the wrong catalog is upgraded, which can cause certain expected folders to not be in the upgraded catalog.

First, I cannot open your (or anyone's) file attachments. So if you want to provide information, make screen captures and include the screen captures by clicking on the "Insert Photos" icon.

Looking at the table and the second attached file "LR-Catalog-v13-3-2.pdf", my first question is this: The catalog "Lightroom Catalog-v13-3-2.lrcat" seems to contain only a few folders, while its size indicates that there should be more. I suspect that not all content is shown. Is there a way of bringing any hidden content out into the open?

As I stated earlier, looking at file sizes doesn't really tell you much, and can be quite misleading. So I wouldn't bother showing me your table of file sizes. When you say "seems to contain only a few folders", are you determining this via the file size, or did you actually look into the catalog with your own eyes and see what folders are in there? When you look at a catalog to see what it contains, you can go to "All Photographs", sort them by date, and then see the earliest and latest dates of the photos. You can use the filter bar to get more detail about what dates are (or are not) included in the catalog.

It also happens to people that sometimes the wrong catalog is upgraded, which can cause certain expected folders to not be in the upgraded catalog.

By @dj_paige

To dj_paige:

I am referring to the two files that you were not able to open as attachments. You find them at the top of this post.

Regarding file size - I have noted your advise not to use file size to judge catalog contents. I included it in the table only as a rough indication.

I have looked into the catalog "with my own eyes", and extracted two pieces of information from each catalog and presented that in the table of the file "LR Classic_Study of Catalog Contents.pdf:

1.) Total No. of pictures.

2.) The dates for the earliest and the latest folder of pictures.

Thanks for the tip about sorting "All photographs" on date, this will definitely be a useful tool.

dj_paige

Legend

All you have to do is open one catalog, then File->Import From Another Catalog, and select the second catalog. Repeat until all catalogs have been imported into one.

There are some options when you do this, you can read about them here (scroll down to "Import photos from a different Lightroom Classic catalog")

Best to save space is to Import your Photos to the external HD straight out of the camera — don't put photos on the internal disk. You might also want to move the photos to the external drive (instructions)

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