Thoughts on using a separate catalog for work related content?

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
October 22, 2022
4 replies
659 views

Using Classic, I have my main Catalog that I use for personal photos, though I am starting to take more and more work relate photos and I am wondering how to best balance my personal and work related content. I was thinking of making a separate catalog for just work stuff, though was just curious to hear from others if this is a good idea, a bad idea for some reason or if I should consider something entirely different?

Thanks in advance

macOS

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M

media katAuthor

Known Participant

Ok, I will likely keep 1 Catalog. However, I will not likely need to see these photos or work on them again much if at all. Instead of keeping them on my primary drive, I am wondering if I copy them to a "Photos from Work" drive and import them into my Catalog that way to keep free space on my main drive. I have never tried this; will this work and is it a bad idea for any reason? I'm assuming that I will be able to see previews of the photos but will not be able to access them until I plug in the drive containing the photos?

Thanks

D

dj_paige

Brainiac

Sure it will work if you do it right, here are instructions for you (scroll down to "Part 2 — Updating Folder Location"). In my mind, in the future it would be even better if you don't put the photos on your main drive and move them later, instead put them straight out of the camera on to this other drive.

Although the idea of physically segregating the photos by putting them on another disk also seems like work for no real benefit, if you adopt the idea of segregating them by the use of smart collections or LrC filters. The only benefit I can see is if the drive they are on now is close to running out of space.

TheDigitalDog

Inspiring

IMHO, one and only one catalog (otherwise, the image you want is always on the other <g>). One makes backup and cloning to other machines super easy too.

Use Smart Collections to divide up any and all the stuff you want separated instead.

One catalog to rule them all!

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"

KR Seals

Community Expert

The only time I use a separate LrC catalog professionally is when I am working on photos that I do not own. I do retouching and wedding album design for other photographers and keep a separate catalog for their work identified with the photographers business name.

For my own work, it's easy enough to separate professional jobs from personal stuff with folder names and keywords.

Ken Seals - Nikon Z 9, Z 8, 14mm-800mm. Computer Win 11 Pro, I7-14700K, 64GB, RTX3070TI. Travel machine: 2021 MacBook Pro M1 MAX 64GB. All Adobe apps.

D

dj_paige

Brainiac

I think that personal vs work photos is a valid exception to the advice that you want one catalog. The drawback remains that you can accidentally import a photo into the wrong catalog, and then you can't find it.

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