Just started using LRC to work with my Aplibraries & want to make sure I understand

[VictoriaJZ]

Lightroom Version

10.4

Operating System

1. macOS 10.14 Mojave

I have a whole bunch of different aplibraries & for the past month or two have been going thru and deleting what I could and merging what I could but I still do have lots of separate libraries. From just a little bit of test using, I gather LRC uses a reference-based system, ie pics stay where they started but LRC creates a directory of them. That is fine other than it is confusing to then deal with multiple disks/drives of aplibraries [you do not want to know == just know it's more than 5 and less than 50]. I gather that what I need to do is get all the aplibrary content onto one drive for LRC to work with [using Avalanche to convert if LRC can't = I know Avalanche has worked well for me so far] and then marking that 1-2 or so drive as LRC contents so I can in fact find the contents when in the LRC directory I'm looking for something. One reason I never used reference libraries in Aperture was this = too confusing and difficult to find again down the road. So - what is the best way to make sure LRC can in fact find Picture X on another drive??

Oh yes, and do I want the LRC directory to be on my main computer [MBP or iMac] or do I want it resident on the content drive???

In the meantime I'll keep going thru and deleting and merging and cutting down

 

[Califdan]

Others can reply more fully but....

1) LrC has no requirement that all the images be on the same drive. It works perfectly fine with images on multiple drives. Of course if any of those drives are not hooked up, the folders and images on those drives will show in LrC as "Missing"

2) Whether you put the LrC catalog on your (faster) internal drive or on the same externald drive where your images are located is a personal preference. You'll get better performance if it's on the faster internal drive. On the other hand if you tend to use different computers from time to time having it on the external drive with the images is more convenient as you just move that drive to the other computer.

I use a hybrid approach. When at home, I have LrC use the catalog on my internal SSD drive. However, each evening (or on demand) my automated back up routines make a copy of the LrC folder containing the catalog onto the external drive where the images are to keep it current in case I want to run off somewhere with my laptop and the images external hard drive.

When I'm on the road with my laptop, I tend to use the catalog on the external drive as I'm usually spending way more time with my camera thjan I am with Lightroom so a bit of performance degredation is not significant. However, if I find that I need to do some heavier LrC work while on the road for some reason, I may temporarily copy the catalog folder to the internal drive of the laptop for that time period. then copy it back to the external drive.

Dan

 

[VictoriaJZ]

Thank you. This helps quite a bit for me to think through how I wish to approach using LrC catalog - Appreciate the illustration provided.