Moving Collections to a NEW Catalog

[eileenc43832332]

It would be great to move Collections over to another catalog (and not folders associated).

My goal was to move all my portfolio-potential images (in collections) over to its own Catalog.  I only see my file folders available to move. I would imagine LR could find a way for this to work. They have made so many leaps and advances, lately. 

If I am mistaken and it is possible, please share. Maybe I missed something. 

[john beardsworth]

You've not missed anything, but be careful before trying to work with more than one catalogue - you can easily waste time and cause confusion. Here for example I'd ask why not just create a portfolio collection?

If you do want a portfolio catalogue, you can use the good old File > Export as Catalog. So select the images, choose File > Export as Catalog, tell it to use only the selection, do not include negatives (ie originals), and go ahead. This creates a new catalogue with all the collections and keywords and other metadata associated with those photos. No new folders are created - the catalogue is pointing to the same pictures as the other catalogue. Now those photos are being managed by two catalogues, a recipe for confusion?

[dj_paige]

Agree with @john beardsworth 

One catalog is a much better approach, avoids confusion as he said. Use keywords rather than a new catalog to allow you to identify the "portfolio-potential" photos.

Related, you could mistakenly choose to do something in the "wrong" catalog, it would be hard to tell the two catalogs apart visually. I have set up my web browser on my home computer in one color scheme and when I work from home, I use the same physical screen, but my work web browser is a different color scheme, idea is to make it easy to tell them apart. And it doesn't help. Mistakes happen. I use the wrong web browser. I know that for most e-mails I recieve, I should not click on "Reply All", but sometimes I do. Again, people make these types of mistakes, especially if you are in a rush or distracted.

[eileenc43832332]

It would be great to move Collections over to another catalog (and not folders associated).

My goal was to move all my portfolio-potential images (in collections) over to its own Catalog.  I only see my file folders available to move. I would imagine LR could find a way for this to work. They have made so many leaps and advances, lately. 

If I am mistaken and it is possible, please share. Maybe I missed something. 

[Per Berntsen]

You cannot move collections between catalogs. (and you cannot move folders to a different catalog either)

A collection is just a list of images, and for the collection to display, the images must have been imported.

Having more than one catalog has lots of disadvantages – you can only have one catalog open at a time, the open catalog doesn't know about your other catalogs, you have to remember what images are in what catalog, and so on.

Using one catalog is much simpler. You can merge all catalogs into one by following this procedure:

Open the catalog you consider to be your "master" catalog.

Go to File > Import from another catalog, and import the other catalogs one by one.

For detailed instructions, see the links below.

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/what-is-a-lightroom-catalog/

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/one-or-multiple-catalogs/

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

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/merging-catalogs-1-identifying/

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/merging-catalogs-2-prepare-merge/

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/merging-catalogs-3-import-catalog/

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/merge-catalogs/

[dj_paige]

Can we merge this thread with the other thread from @eileenc43832332 ? This is that other thread: https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/moving-collections-to-a-new-catalog/td-...

Eileen, do not post the same question multiple times.