Separating out part catalog

[charleso92783218]

Hi everyone

I do backups of my entire PSE 2022 catalog to an external hard disk drive. My photo collection includes old photos of a village which I use as a historical archive and they are all tagged as such. I wish to do a separate backup this archive collection (only) to another disk so that it may be passed to another curator using PS in due course.

Can I do this while retaining all the essential keyword metadata in a PS format or would other catalog programs be able to sort them? Is the only way to do an entire backup to another disk then manually delete the non-archive collection? That might take some time!

Thanks

Windows 10

[Greg_S.]

@charleso92783218 said:  Is the only way to do an entire backup to another disk then manually delete the non-archive collection? That might take some time! 

It's not the only way but it may be the best.  And it shouldn't take a lot of time (other than the restore and backup).

Since you already have a complete backup, I would suggest restoring the backup to the other drive with a new location for the backed up photos.  You will now have a new catalog and a copy of your photos in a new location.  With that copy open, in the Organizer, select the keyword tag for the village photos.  Next, click on the Options menu and select Show results that do not match:

You can then use Ctrl+A to select all of the files and then press the Delete key.  However, depending on the number of media, you may want to delete them in blocks of several hundred.  You should also check your recycle bin to make sure it has not filled up with the deleted files.

You can then rename the catalog to something suitable like Village photos and back it up for transfer to another person.  To clean up the new catalog, you would also need to delete unnecessary ablums or keyword tags.

There are other possibilities.  But I would need to know more about your setup before giving adequate instructions.   Are all of the village files in a single folder or folder hiearchy?  Have you saved all of the village files' metadata to the files (using Ctrl+W)?

[charleso92783218]

Thanks for the prompt response. I do save metadata to files when I remember but am reassured this happens automatically when items are edited and saved.

I think I will have to backup/transfer to a separate storage drive and then exclude everything that's not part of the keyworded village archive. All the archive files are in a folder hiearchy which makes the saved metadata essential. I have a separate hierachy for speculative 'date of photograph' for scanned material for which nearly all decades are covered (and years) since late 19th century.. I'll make sure this metadata is saved as well and it should all be revealed in other organisers.

Thanks again.