Catalog conundrum

[Unklejon]

Please help me get my head around this issue of catalogs.
As a doting Granddad I have some 1,500+ RAW files of my grandson – I know most are rubbish technically, but I still don’t want to losethem. I have exported copies to JPEG and now I want to be brave and go in andsort the wheat from the chaff [technically].
So here is my question can I create a new / separate catalog ofjust his pictures, then work through the pictures in my existing catalog toreduce the count? If I do this I am guessing [fingers crossed] that as long as I simply delete the picturefrom the catalog, but not from the disc then the new catalog would keep trackof those RAW files not in my current catalog? Is that correct or simply crazythinking.
I need to do this with several large specialist collections where I amstruggling to decide what to keep and what to let go. I am hoping this backupcatalog idea will allow me to grasp the nettle and sort my master catalog witha safety net. Your advice really welcome Also whilst I am thinking if I go this way can I add future pictures to this new catalog ?

 

[Mark Sirota]

Answering your question directly, yes, if you delete them from catalog but not from disc in the new catalog, the original catalog will be unaffected.

However, this doesn't feel like the right way to go about this. Rather than using new catalogs, use a Collection in your existing catalog.

 

[Tony Jay]

I am with MArk here - use collections from within the current catalog to sort the images.

Tony Jay

 

[Unklejon]

I see what your suggesting but that des not release the sheer volume of my master catalog. I suppose I should simply accept that if I am not going to do any more work on them then the JPEGS would be enough. Thanks guys

 

[clee01l]

I see what your suggesting but that des not release the sheer volume of my master catalog. I suppose I should simply accept that if I am not going to do any more work on them then the JPEGS would be enough. Thanks guys

Any images that you are "going to work on" should be cataloged in your Master LR catalog. You do not need more than one catalog. Using Collections to "slice and dice" your image inventory is the way to get a handle on ALL of your images. A Catalog of 1500+ RAW images is not considered huge by any means. My master catalog has around 25000 images cataloged. This covers everything since 2007 and a lot of older stuff going back 10 digital years before that. I shoot about 25000 new images per year. So, managing everything through LR is essential.
Look carefully at Mark's first part answer. It addresses your immediate issue. Another approach would be to merge all of your catalog into one master catalog. LR will help you identify duplicates and will make virtual copies on any image that have two different develop histories.

If you are not using keywords and collections to manage your image inventory, then you are not really using LR to manage you image inventory.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

then work through the pictures in my existing catalog toreduce the count?

Let me ask a question for consideration... why do you want to reduce the count?

 

[Unklejon]

Sorry Victoria et al --I have been away from desk a few days. OK Here is what I am trying to achieve
Since getting my first digital camera and my first copy LR3 I have been busy trying to make the most of both. It is probably easy for you the pro's to forget the days when you did not have strict workflows.
Basically I have been somewhat tardy in my administration over the intervening years and I know have circa 9.5K RAW files in my LR5catalog.
Bear in mind in the intervening time I have been on learning curve as to what makes a good picture [baseline] what makes a picture that can be worked on and what makes a picture that's worth working on. That's before we include learning LR and PS CS6 - all in all I have got in a right mess.
Like most camera users I have a mixture of personal snapshot type pictures, family portraits and holiday snaps as well as stuff I have taken in the hope of one day being artistic. Again over the years my stack of keywords has grown, altered etc. - total lack of consistency. So now I find myself opening a catalog of some 9.5K, trying to sort the whet from the chaff, the memories from the ones I want to take further as I learn the power of pixel pushing.
There is an old saying "how do you eat a whole elephant" answer "one chunk at a time" that is basically what I want to do - start again break it down into small "doable" chunks. E.g. take grandson pictures out, take Far East pictures out etc.. and deal with these in isolation.
I do use smart collections but what I really wanted was that when something went into a smart collection i.e. small chunk - it also disappeared from the MAIN "all pictures" collection so basically I can reduce that down until everything has a home, purpose, deleted or labelled. Going through the bigger collection every time means stuff gets missed or I get side lined [very easily]
That was what I was trying to achieve. It would simply be nice to have a smart catalog type affair that simply had everything that was not allocated to any other smart catalog. I am sorry guys if this does not make sense but I am not always sure what the correct names for these containers are...

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Hi Unklejon.

Rest assured, the saying that the painter never paints his own house appears to be true if you take a look at my home catalog! So I do understand it, and I've recently started eating my elephant too.

I took some hints from John's workflow smart collections. Here's my smart collections, and the keywords they're based on. The reason for keywords for things like ratings was simply that I'd previously rated some pictures, but wanted to go back and check existing ratings to make sure they conform to my new standard.


Alternatively, you could create 3 normal drag-and-drop type collections - a To Do, a Working and a Done. Drop everything into To Do, and then as you add them to Working, remove them from To Do at the same time.

There's loads of ways you could handle it, but I'd suggest trying to do it within a single catalog rather than splitting into multiple catalogs, as you'll save yourself a lot of confusion.