Multiple Catalog Question

[jgillphotography]

I've been using Lightroom for several years and have over 60k images in it.  I'm just a hobbyist photographer and most of my images are family pictures but noticed my laptop is very slow when moving between modules in Lightroom.  Part of this is it's an old laptop so I'm going to upgrade.  That being said I was thinking about changing my workflow a bit and making a catalog for each year to keep Lightroom running faster and then combine those into a master catalog that I could use for searching for my photos.

My question is if I go and make changes in one of the yearly catalogs, how do I update the master catalog with those changes.  For example there are lots of images that I haven't keyword tagged yet, so as I get time I go through and tag them.  I also clean up and get rid of duplicate images, etc.  Is there a way for the master catalog to be updated with these changes?

The reason I want to keep a main catalog is so I can search for images of my children and have them all come up, or a vacation, etc.

Thanks

[dj_paige]

I've been using Lightroom for several years and have over 60k images in it.  I'm just a hobbyist photographer and most of my images are family pictures but noticed my laptop is very slow when moving between modules in Lightroom.  Part of this is it's an old laptop so I'm going to upgrade.  That being said I was thinking about changing my workflow a bit and making a catalog for each year to keep Lightroom running faster and then combine those into a master catalog that I could use for searching for my photos.

Whatever slowness you are seeing is NOT due to catalog size. Thus, changing your workflow into catalogs for years and a master catalog is extra work that will not improve the slowness you are seeing.

Fixing slowness often requires faster hardware, in your case I would guess that if it is slow going from Library to Develop (is that correct? can you be specific about what is slow?) then it is taking time to render the previews for the develop module, and this requires a faster CPU.

[jgillphotography]

Yes going from Library to Develop and even once in Develop cropping.  When I choose cropping it can take like 10 to 15 seconds before I even am able to grab the sides to crop.

[dj_paige]

jgillphotography wrote:

Yes going from Library to Develop and even once in Develop cropping. When I choose cropping it can take like 10 to 15 seconds before I even am able to grab the sides to crop.

Do these photos have lots of brushing and/or spot healing?

As stated above, this can be resolved with faster hardware (CPU), not more catalogs.

[jgillphotography]

No not a lot of local adjustments.

[Rob_Cullen · Accepted solution]

To answer some questions about "Multiple Catalogs" it is well worth reading-

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

[DdeGannes]

Thanks for this link wobertc lots of critical info there.

[jgillphotography]

Thank you.  Great information there.

[DdeGannes]

I support the advice from dj_paige, 60k images is relative small for an individual Catalog many experienced users report more than ten times that in a single Catalog.

All that you will do is significantly increase the storage consumed by the catalog files and twice the volume of previews since each catalog file will have their own folder of previews.

Use the folders and collections features in Lightroom to manage the files.

I have not seen any reports from users to suggest that what you propose will result in any improvement in the performance of Lightroom.