lightroom catalog

[Alexis25365770b87m]

ive watched so many youtube videos and read so many forums but i cannot find any aanswers. i cant locate my lightroom catalog... now my question is, do i automatically have one? or did i need to make one when i got light room? because i really need a certain photo back. i have a mac. alot of the videos they just click lightroom at the top menu and there is an option right there for catalog. i cant find it even when searching my mac - it seems i have no catalog... lol sorrry if this is dumb but youtube videos don't really help

[Rob_Cullen]

Which Version Number of Lightroom do you have?

Lightroom catalogs are part of your Cloud storage (ie. in the Adobe Cloud).

Lightroom-Classic catalogs exist locally as file-type .LRCAT (Do a global search).

When you open any version of Lightroom it opens 'with' a catalog. Lr & LrC cannot open 'without' a catalog. Whether the catalog contains any photos is up to you to Import/Add photos into the catalog.