Catalog merge and keywords

[Bill Plunkett]

Greetings,

I have 2 catalogs, 1 quite large with over 60,000 images and a newer one with only a few thousand. I haven't been able to find any advice about how large a catalog can be so I am going to assume that the upper limit to number of images isn't a problem.

My images are extensively keyworded and I make use of keyword sets to keep like type of keywords together as I am sure most everyone here does. My question is if I merge the catalogs, how is the keyword structure handled? Other than the time involved to merge, is there a difference whether I merge the big one to the smaller one or the other way around?

 

[Johan Elzenga]

If the keyword hierarchies are identical, you won't have a problem. And keywords that only exist in one catalog will be merged. If the hierarchies are not the same, you risk ending up with duplicate keywords. There is no technical difference between importing big into small, or small into big. The latter is faster, of course.

 

[Bill Plunkett]

Thanks for reply Johan. The hierarchies ARE NOT the same. This actually explains why I have a new catalog. In the past, I organized the physical image files in folders by subject. Now I just do it by date and let the keywording take care of everything else. In the older catalog, the keyword structure was, to put it mildly, pretty much a mess. The new catalog is well structured with and clean.

Rather than mess up the keywords, I think I'll just stay with 2 catalogs....

thanks for advice - should help keep me from making a big mess.

thanks again,
Bill