• Global community
    • Language:
      • Deutsch
      • English
      • Español
      • Français
      • Português
  • 日本語コミュニティ
    Dedicated community for Japanese speakers
  • 한국 커뮤니티
    Dedicated community for Korean speakers
Exit
Locked
1

How to split one large catalog into parts?

Explorer ,
Sep 11, 2017 Sep 11, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Looking for the best way reorganize images by splitting one large Lightroom catalog with 40k images into several, smaller catalogs.

Views

14.4K

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines

correct answers 1 Correct answer

LEGEND , Sep 12, 2017 Sep 12, 2017

We have a number of LR catalogs (doesn't everybody?)

No. This is false.

I don't. Many people in this forum don't. One user in this forum has over 600,000 images in his only catalog, and he has tolde many people that you should use one catalog.

But aerial photography images for example have no place in our commercial real estate catalog, not do we want to combine product photography with wedding or portrait photography. Then there's personal travel & family images, etc. etc. Actually some jobs are s

...

Votes

Translate

Translate
Community Expert ,
Sep 11, 2017 Sep 11, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Why?  This is not necessary and not advisable.  You can organize in several other ways that don't involve several catalogs, such as collections or keywords or even searching using metadata filters in grid view.  40k images is not a lot for Lightroom to handle in one catalog.  Splitting images into several catalogs will only cause more work and frustration for you in finding images in the future.  What criteria are you considering to organize images?

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
LEGEND ,
Sep 12, 2017 Sep 12, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Agreeing with @JoeKostoss, this is pointless. You won't solve any problems, and you will create problems.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Explorer ,
Sep 12, 2017 Sep 12, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

>>this is pointless. You won't solve any problems, and you will create problems.

Hmmm... thought it was a pretty simple question and did not expect my workflow to be challenged.

Surely all LR users don't have ALL of their images in one huge LR catalog. We have a number of LR catalogs (doesn't everybody?) each of which represents a particular segment of our overall work. Some have 100k+ images. But aerial photography images for example have no place in our commercial real estate catalog, not do we want to combine product photography with wedding or portrait photography. Then there's personal travel & family images, etc. etc. Actually some jobs are so specific that we create a catalog for that one single instance.

Yes theoretically one could have ALL in a single catalog, but why deal with juggling meta data filters, collections, keywords etc. if that was the case? But hey, if the single catalog approach works for others and their workflow then that's fine with me!

But getting back my original questions, let's say for example that you have 40k images taken over the course of one year in a catalog which is specifically used for aerial images. Somewhere along the way family photos were imported into the same catalog on a number of days throughout that year. I would want to break this single catalog into two. As cute as my cat is I wouldn't want to be working with a client at their site and have his cat face pop up on the screen.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
LEGEND ,
Sep 12, 2017 Sep 12, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

We have a number of LR catalogs (doesn't everybody?)

No. This is false.

I don't. Many people in this forum don't. One user in this forum has over 600,000 images in his only catalog, and he has tolde many people that you should use one catalog.

But aerial photography images for example have no place in our commercial real estate catalog, not do we want to combine product photography with wedding or portrait photography. Then there's personal travel & family images, etc. etc. Actually some jobs are so specific that we create a catalog for that one single instance.

Yes, these are valid reasons for using a separate catalog. These were not stated in your original post, thus the advice to keep one catalog ... which in the absence of valid reasons is the best advice.

So to answer your original question, using your operating system you could copy your original catalog as many times as needed. Then open each copy, remove undesired photos (but don't delete from the hard disk), close the catalog, repeat as many times as needed until now you have catalogs to your liking.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Guide ,
Sep 12, 2017 Sep 12, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I understand your situation. I have a great many images in my catalog, commercial, photojournalism, aerial, etc.  If I were in the situation you describe, desiring to separate those areas of your work, I would do it with one catalog and top level folders like this:

Drive X:\ All Photos (makes backup much easier)

\commercial

     \2016

          2016-12-22-Company ABC Annual Banquet and Awards

\weddings

     \as above

\aerials

\real estate

\misc

These folders can be placed on multiple volumes/drives. Lightroom handles that fine.

Such a folder structure all in one LR catalog will give you the segregation of categories you need. Ultimately, I think you will tire of opening and closing multiple catalogs in your daily search for images and importing new jobs.

As recommended in the ASMP standards for image organization, one should be able to have full access to the file system in the OS outside of the photo/DAM software. I like to go directly to the folder (in the OS) where I know my exported jpgs are located so I can find them for emailing, social media and web site use.

Ken Seals - Nikon Z 9, Z 8, 14mm-800mm. Computer Win 11 Pro, I7-8700K, 64GB, RTX3070TI. Travel machine: 2021 MacBook Pro M1 MAX 64GB. All Adobe apps.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Explorer ,
Sep 12, 2017 Sep 12, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I understand your situation. I have a great many images in my catalog, commercial, photojournalism, aerial, etc.  If I were in the situation you describe, desiring to separate those areas of your work, I would do it with one catalog and top level folders like this:

Drive X:\ All Photos (makes backup much easier)

Definitely agree here.

\commercial

     \2016

          2016-12-22-Company ABC Annual Banquet and Awards

\weddings

     \as above

\aerials

\real estate

\misc

Afraid we have to part ways here.

Were I to organize my images that way I'd have one huge catalog with many hundreds of categories and keywords. Even with the full range of LR's organizational tools that's just way too messy for the way I work.

I have multiple HDs on my primary editing computer and each primary catalog has it's own HD with the images contained in that catalog. All the backups are done on a HD level (using GoodSync software) not in LR which makes it very easy to keep everything up to date. I also have a number of hot-swappable HDs which contain other lesser used catalogs & images. In some cases we even have a dedicated catalog & images on an external SSD for just one specific project which we can send to a client or partner for their own use.

I do understand what you're saying about maintaining the ability to bring up any file from one place but that's just not much of an issue in our case. Were I to be working on aerial photos and then had a need to access a particular product shot for example, easy enough to just close the current catalog and open the one with the image. And given we'd need to do that rarely, not really a problem.

I hate to say it but the ASMP is just a bit DAM misguided in this case IMO.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
LEGEND ,
Sep 13, 2017 Sep 13, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I still think its pointless. You have an organization now, you want to get the exact same organization in a different "container" (catalog), so you are going to do work, introducing the possibility of errors, to get the same organization, with the drawback that once complete you will possibly import into the wrong catalog and with the additional drawback of having to open a different catalog at times.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Explorer ,
Sep 13, 2017 Sep 13, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I still think its pointless.

I know you do. You've made that abundantly clear. However at this point I have no interest in your opinion of my workflow. There is no doubt in my mind that the way I'm organizing my images is absolutely the best approach for MY workflow. I'd wager that there are many others who have similar needs and also maintain multiple catalogs. If you think they're all doing it wrong, what can I say.

And no, I will not import images into the wrong catalog. Haven't done that since LR1 working with tens of thousands of images over the years so doubt I'll start doing it now.

with the additional drawback of having to open a different catalog at times.

No idea why this is considered a drawback. Takes seconds and opening a different file is something I do with virtually every other application I use dozens of times a day.

I just wanted some input as to breaking up one large catalog that over time contains images that I no longer want in that catalog. Period. You provided a good, workable solution and I thank you for that.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Guide ,
Sep 15, 2017 Sep 15, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

"I hate to say it but the ASMP is just a bit DAM misguided in this case IMO"

My only reference to the ASMP guidance was that you should be able to fully access your Photo library outside your DAM app such as LR. From your description on your setup, you apparently agree :-))

Ken Seals - Nikon Z 9, Z 8, 14mm-800mm. Computer Win 11 Pro, I7-8700K, 64GB, RTX3070TI. Travel machine: 2021 MacBook Pro M1 MAX 64GB. All Adobe apps.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Explorer ,
Sep 18, 2017 Sep 18, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

My only reference to the ASMP guidance was that you should be able to fully access your Photo library outside your DAM app such as LR.

I guess I'm not sure just what they're saying here. People can always access their images outside of LR-- without any of the adjustments done in LR being available of course. Perhaps I'm missing something?

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Guide ,
Sep 18, 2017 Sep 18, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

"People can always access their images outside of LR-- without any of the adjustments done in LR being available of course. Perhaps I'm missing something?"

Not necessarily... File organization and management is like a sub religion, right next to Mac vs PC devotees. Over the years in this and other forums, a number of LR users suggest dumping all photos into a common "My Pictures" folder and using keywords to find their stuff. Or, just using the default year/month/day LR file importing/organizing file structure. To me, that is in no way usable outside LR.

Ken Seals - Nikon Z 9, Z 8, 14mm-800mm. Computer Win 11 Pro, I7-8700K, 64GB, RTX3070TI. Travel machine: 2021 MacBook Pro M1 MAX 64GB. All Adobe apps.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Explorer ,
Sep 20, 2017 Sep 20, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

...dumping all photos into a common "My Pictures" folder and using keywords to find their stuff. Or, just using the default year/month/day LR file importing/organizing file structure. To me, that is in no way usable outside LR.

I have to agree. Long before LR-- and computers-- photographers had all manner of ways to store their images. I still have some old 3 ring binders with contact sheets in fact. So with digital being able to store all your images under one folder in this electronic box, by date/time/event for example would seem like a dramatic improvement. At the same time it's hard to imagine a scenario where one could not benefit greatly from a more DAM-centric approach. But hey-- everyone has their own approach.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Jun 03, 2023 Jun 03, 2023

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

For example?

 

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Adobe Employee ,
Jun 03, 2023 Jun 03, 2023

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

LATEST

You’ve posted to a very old thread. It is highly unlikely that the issue described in this thread, though not impossible, is the same issue which you are currently experiencing. Rather than resurrect an old thread that is seemingly similar, you are better posting to a new thread with fresh, complete information including system information, a complete description of the problem and step-by-step instructions for reproduction. 

 

In the unlikely event the issue is the same, we will merge you back into the appropriate location. 

 

Thank you!

 

Rikk Flohr - Customer Advocacy: Adobe Photography Products

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Explorer ,
Sep 12, 2017 Sep 12, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

One user in this forum has over 600,000 images in his only catalog, and he has tolde many people that you should use one catalog.

Ok, that's fine. But of course I don't think it would be doing anyone any favor not to recognize that there are a number of valid reasons for maintaining separate catalogs. IOW, not a blanket "never" but rather, "it depends".

Yes, these are valid reasons for using a separate catalog.

I guess I just figured it would be understood I had a valid reason.

So to answer your original question, using your operating system you could copy your original catalog as many times as needed. Then open each copy, remove undesired photos (but don't delete from the hard disk), close the catalog, repeat as many times as needed until now you have catalogs to your liking.

Excellent. Since posting I found the same advice in another discussion and I think this will be the best way to break up a catalog. Thanks much for your assistance!

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
LEGEND ,
Sep 12, 2017 Sep 12, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

tymbe  wrote

One user in this forum has over 600,000 images in his only catalog, and he has tolde many people that you should use one catalog.

Ok, that's fine. But of course I don't think it would be doing anyone any favor not to recognize that there are a number of valid reasons for maintaining separate catalogs. IOW, not a blanket "never" but rather, "it depends".

I'll stick with my approach. The advice is to keep one catalog, unless the user presents a valid reason. Far too often, the user has invalid reasons, and splitting up his catalog would be the wrong thing to do, and it would be making a major mistake for me to say "it depends". It would also violate my conscience to say "it depends" in the absence of a valid reason, because you could then be interpreted as saying go right ahead and do the wrong thing.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Explorer ,
Sep 12, 2017 Sep 12, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I'll stick with my approach. The advice is to keep one catalog, unless the user presents a valid reason. Far too often, the user has invalid reasons, and splitting up his catalog would be the wrong thing to do, and it would be making a major mistake for me to say "it depends". It would also violate my conscience to say "it depends" in the absence of a valid reason, because you could then be interpreted as saying go right ahead and do the wrong thing.

Understood. And I'll stick to my approach where if asked how to split a catalog rather than saying that's a bad idea I'd ask what was the reason for wanting to do that? Keeping all in one catalog may in the end be the thing to do, but it seems to be a better way to teach one IMO rather than a blanket "don't do it".

I do understand your point as I've worked with a lot of people with only a rudimentary understanding of how LR works ("Database? What's a database?") and perhaps more often than not there are ways to keep all in one DB and learn how to utilize the many tools & options LR offers to organize images.

The best example I have of not understanding how LR works happened a few years ago when the son of a partner of mine at the time, just starting to use LR, imported hundreds of aerial images into the catalog. He then, reasoning that since they're now "in" LR-- deleted the source images. Lesson learned the hard way for sure.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Sep 12, 2017 Sep 12, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

tymbe  wrote

...And I'll stick to my approach where if asked how to split a catalog rather than saying that's a bad idea I'd ask what was the reason for wanting to do that?

I believe that is what I did in my post #1.  "Why?"  and "What criteria are you considering to organize images?"

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Explorer ,
Sep 12, 2017 Sep 12, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I believe that is what I did in my post #1.  "Why?"  and "What criteria are you considering to organize images?"

Right-- yes you did. My initial response was to the suggestion by dj_paige that:

...this is pointless. You won't solve any problems, and you will create problems.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Beginner ,
Sep 22, 2017 Sep 22, 2017

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Hi DJ,

I would love to keep all of my 200,000 photos in one catalog, but it loads PAINFULLY slow when I try to edit images.  When I split out to a smaller catalog (e.g. create one catalog per year) I am not having the speed issues.  So I am wondering if there is a workaround to the slow load time in the large catalog, or if I should just continue to create catalogs by year?

Also, if I create one catalog per year, I am going to have to start with one massive dump of photos into a catalog from my Apple Photos, which currently houses all 200,000 of my photos.  Then I am going to need to keep creating duplicate catalogs of the huge one, one year at a time, and then delete 180,000 images from each "yearly" catalog (all of the photos not in the current year).  I do see how this is exhausting and a total nightmare.  But I feel like I have no choice when an edit in the large catalog literally takes 2 minutes to save!

Thanks for your help!

Elissa

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Jun 25, 2018 Jun 25, 2018

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I have many Catalouges, as i have Terabytes of photos.

I met an Adobe rep who advised that the best thing to do 'is keep many catalouges to keep the LR system fast'.
I can't believe the number of people on this forum who are suggesting otherwise. Wanting LR to be fast is invalide?

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Guide ,
Jun 25, 2018 Jun 25, 2018

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

I have 7TB of photos. 192,000 images in my single LR catalog and I am happy with the speed of loading the catalog and accessing the previews.

The one thing that will help with loading of the catalog and previews is to put your catalog and preview files on a separate dedicated SSD drive. 512 GB drives are very affordable now.

Ken Seals - Nikon Z 9, Z 8, 14mm-800mm. Computer Win 11 Pro, I7-8700K, 64GB, RTX3070TI. Travel machine: 2021 MacBook Pro M1 MAX 64GB. All Adobe apps.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
LEGEND ,
Jun 25, 2018 Jun 25, 2018

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

The size of the catalog stopped being a speed problem when the catalog was converted to a SQL database ages ago.

As suggested by KR Seals, putting the catalog and its cache on a drive separate from the original images can speed things up. Even better if that drive is also not the system drive.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Jun 26, 2018 Jun 26, 2018

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Discussions of ideology and working tactics aside:

highlight the set of images you want to separate out

Export as Catalog which creates a fresh Catalog which only contains these, their Develop metadata and their organisation including Cirtual copies, Collections, keywords etc.

There’s a decision here: are you looking to also separately manage the source files belonging to these particular images? If so, you can have LR copy these files and their containing folder arrangement into the location you have chosen for the new Catalog and these new copies will be the ones referenced by the new Catalog. Otherwise the new Catalog is now sharing these files and folders with your main Catalog where all these images still remain.

Now you can remove from your main Catalog this same set of images which you have just exported. They are still highlighted. As appropriate, if you have just copied their source files to a new location you may want to also ‘delete from disk’ at the location still referenced from the main Catalog. If you didn't Copy them as part of the ‘export as catalog’ then obviously you would not do that.

Backup files and Catalog before doing any of this!

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines