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Import Max no to import?

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aphovasse

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Jan 26, 2011
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17
Lightroom Version Number
10.2 Camera Raw 13.2
Operating System
  1. macOS 11 Big Sur
I'm using a swell brand new Mac mini with Big Sur maxed out at 16GB memory and 1TB hard drive. I've been using LR since the original test versions. Over the years, I've just gone out and bought external hard drives and just dumped all my photos there, including catalogues etc. It's a mess, not well organized at all, just copy and dump, with the satisfaction of knowing I just had them backed up. This has multiplied until now and I have about 10 of these 3, 5 and 8TB drives and no real idea of what's on them. I'm a prolific photographer from way back so the last import I tried at over 400K images. It did fine until about 180K, then the beachball of death set it. I know I'm pushing it but is there any way to manage this? It would be great if LRC could just import based on dates, so I could just create a new catalogue for each year, but I don't see any way to do that. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm open to new ideas.
 
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I'd suggest trying to import that number at once would have it's challenges for any machine, and only complicates things if it crashes partway through.

You mention several drives - do one drive, or selected folders on each drive, to break down the imports? Then you can see what you have and sort them?
 
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Thanks Paul. I've managed to get over 200K on one catalogue. I'll just keep trying. The main problem is that there are dozens and dozens of different folders where I backed up my photos, often more than once on each drive, so yes it is a mess. It would be great if LR could just sniff out the capture dates from IPTC and find just images from a particular date or year; then I'd be able to have folders for each year. That would be more manageable but just blue sky thinking I guess!
 
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aphovasse said:
It would be great if LR could just sniff out the capture dates from IPTC and find just images from a particular date or year; then I'd be able to have folders for each year. That would be more manageable but just blue sky thinking I guess!
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Yes, Lightroom can do that and thats my recommedation too, to import everything into one catalog and do all the sorting afterwards. Lightroom is just the tool for that kind of work.
 
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