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Catalogs Storing Lightroom Images and Catalog (was: How can a catalog best be placed on a DVD?)

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Nikonut

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Oct 7, 2019
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Intermediate
Lightroom Version
6.x
New to this forum!! On the same note I would like to save my older photos in another repository, and have a smaller Light room catalog again. Right now I have one catalog with 35000 photos and another for some trips we took. Can I just make a new catalog and save the older ones with the lrcat file? My goal is to move to Lightroom classic but wish to make things cleaner prior. Thanks for the anticipated help.
Prop
 
New to this forum!! On the same note I would like to save my older photos in another repository, and have a smaller Light room catalog again.
Can I ask why? I have 42,000 photos and climbing in my catalog and it seems pretty clean to me.

Multiple catalogs mean that you can't search all images, you have to create a new keyword list (which won't be synced with the ones in your other catalog), collections/smart collections will only feature images from that particular catalog etc etc. In short many of the reasons to use a DAM are undone by splitting images across different catalogs and there are no actual benefits.
 
New to this forum!! On the same note I would like to save my older photos in another repository, and have a smaller Light room catalog again. Right now I have one catalog with 35000 photos and another for some trips we took. Can I just make a new catalog and save the older ones with the lrcat file? My goal is to move to Lightroom classic but wish to make things cleaner prior. Thanks for the anticipated help.
Prop
Are you using the cloud version of Lightroom? Moving to Lightroom Classic does not mean moving away from Lightroom (cloudy). Lightroom (cloudy) only allows one catalog (library) file.
Lightroom and Lightroom Classic are designed to use one and only one catalog.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them
 
Here is what I am trying to orchestrate. I had lost a hard drive recently and fortunately recovered with carbonite. I have purchased a NAS and will be storing my 2 catalogs on that, as well as making the upgrade to the on line version of classic, that I have been dragging my feet on. I was thinking of storing photos pre- 2013 and just have newer ones available. I guess I might be better off moving all catalog and library to NAS and free up realestate on local drive. Most of my work is from desktop, however I was considering installing 2nd copy to new lap top. Also all three of my cameras are supported on the perpetual version with no immediate plans to go mirrorless. Is there a big enough change in going to the on line?
pROP
 
Here is what I am trying to orchestrate. I had lost a hard drive recently and fortunately recovered with carbonite. I have purchased a NAS and will be storing my 2 catalogs on that, as well as making the upgrade to the on line version of classic, that I have been dragging my feet on. I was thinking of storing photos pre- 2013 and just have newer ones available. I guess I might be better off moving all catalog and library to NAS and free up realestate on local drive. Most of my work is from desktop, however I was considering installing 2nd copy to new lap top. Also all three of my cameras are supported on the perpetual version with no immediate plans to go mirrorless. Is there a big enough change in going to the on line?
pROP
I think there are better solutions to achieve your goals.
  1. Use a "real" system backup to backup ALL of your critical user data for WHEN you disk drive eventually dies. Carbonite is one solution but recovery can be slow and a pain. You can in addition to Carbonite use an App to back up ALL of your critical user data to a local EHD. Acronis (PC or Mac) or TimeMachine (Mac). are some that I recommend.
  2. With Lightroom Classic, keep your master catalog on the fastest locally attached disk drive (usually C:\ or "MacIntosh HD). Your Master image files can be stored on an External Disk Drive. or even a network drive (NAS)
    1. You can't backup a NAS with Carbonite or a System Backup App.
  3. Get the Adobe Subscription which gives you both Lightroom, Lightroom Classic and Photoshop
    1. Use Lightroom Classic for the master Catalog on the desktop
    2. Use Lightroom on the laptop to access the images that are stored in the Adobe Cloud by Lightroom Classic. It will also be used to transfer any new images imported to the Laptop back to the master catalog on Lightroom Classic.
Without Lightroom in the Cloud, there are only some very crude ways to synchronize a Desktop with a laptop and no way to integrate any other mobile device remotely if you continue to use LR6.14.
 
Here is what I am trying to orchestrate
I asked earlier. What version of Lightroom are you running? LR6.14 which is a perpetual legacy version and not being updated? Lightroom (formerly Lightroom CC) that requires a cloud based implementation? Or Lightroom Classic which has all of the functionality of the older versions of Lightroom and all of the current feature set.?
Knowing where you are is critical to answering your question.
 
Hi Clee;
Yes I am using 6.14

Since you are thinking about a subscription, then My suggestions in the list are still the ones that I would recommend for giving you the best wirkflow. It is the one that’s I use (except that I don’t use Carbonite or any cloud based backup


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
I'll weigh in here given that our objectives are similar.
  • I too prefer the perpetual license rather than being bullied by Adobe into a monthly fee. The $149 that I paid for the perp a few years ago has already paid for itself. Not to diminish the added functionality of the monthly option.
  • I too have lost an HDD and prefer a more stable medium, though there are advantages to both USB/HDD/SSD/cloud and other options.
  • I too have objectives for splitting off my catalog to several smaller ones. I've already reduced my 48K images to 25K. But there are several basic categories: Technical (photos taken just to document stuff), Travel (several international trips with friends) Events (Weddings, birthdays, baptisms, etc. where immediate family are not involved) and Family (photos of grandkids and others NOT in the other photos).
  • Where I find substantial overlap among a couple of categories I may duplicate photos in two or more catalogs. Not yet implemented but a thought....
Using my preferred approach is what I want for my applicatin because if I know that e.g., there are family that were also on my trip to Italy I always can reference that catalog to find those photos. I agree that there are advantages to having all your photos in one catalog especially when you integrate keywords and face look-up, which I do for e.g., family. But we all have different objectives (and pocketbooks) so one approach doesn't fit all preferences.

Just my thoughts given that you referenced my thread.
 
Thanks for responding! All I wish to do at this point is clean up the the catalog and the other accrudements that I have mentioned. I have just took delivery of the NAS and want to store my Lightroom on it as well as quickbooks, which I am finding has gone more proprietary. and may not work well with NAS. I feel I spent a good deal of money and not be able to accomplish what I want with the unit. Back to Lightroom, I wonder if greating a new catalog for the older folders might work. It would have it's own lrcat file.
 
With respect to others that have weighed in. I can see where you would lose some functionality in splitting. That may or not be important . Als I believe Clees mentioned that you could have only one catalog with LR Classic subscription. I thought that most of the original functionality stayed with classic as we know it? I am still pondering your suggestions. I thought the NAS would be the ho;ly grail and now with your suggestions I wonder if I jumped too quick.
Prop
 
I believe Clees mentioned that you could have only one catalog with LR Classic subscription.
Correction: What I said was that you can only Sync one Lightroom Classic catalog to the Lightroom Cloud. You can have multiple Lightroom Classic catalogs but only one of these can be sync'd to the cloud. If you keep all of your images in one master catalog, then that master catalog can sync all of your images to the cloud and all of those images will be available to any mobile device or laptop running Lightroom (cloudy).
 
I thought the NAS would be the ho;ly grail and now with your suggestions I wonder if I jumped too quick.
Probably. I have gone the NAS route in the past but having to deal with Network transmissions speeds and using faster wired connections (as opposed to WiFi which persists the most portability), I eventually decided that having all of my data storage locally attached to my desktop made the best sense. I have my desktop shared over the network so that I can reach any files from anything on my local network (essentially this turns the Desktop into a NAS).
With the integration of Lightroom Classic and Lightroom (cloudy) I don't really need my Lightroom fills anywhere except locally attached to me desktop.
 
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