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Need to create a second Catalog

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inkjunkie

Member
Joined
Mar 24, 2018
Messages
92
Lightroom Experience
Beginner
Lightroom Version
Lightroom Version Number
10.1.1
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
I am sure this has been asked more then once, just had no luck finding any threads about it. I have a catalog that I am using, it contains nothing but RAW images from 2017 until now. I found an external hard drive that has a ton of old images. They are all JPEGS. Some are from our phones. I also have a new, empty external hard drive. Can I create a second catalog on the new external hard drive consisting of all my old images? I am aware that I will be able to do very little in the way of editing them. I just want to put them in some semblance of order by the date they were taken. Or would I be better off using a different program? I have FastRawViewer, I have never even installed it so I have no idea if it is capable of dealing with JPEGS.
 
..Can I create a second catalog on the new external hard drive consisting of all my old images? ....
The simple answer to your question is "Yes you can".
But it is not necessary and generally not recommended. Keep all your personal photos in one catalog.
My personal catalog is well over 150,000 images and consists of raws, tiffs, dngs, and jpegs.
I would simply point your current catalog at the external hard drive and import all the photos into your current catalog.

I do maintain a 2nd catalog, but that one is for my local photoclub, and someday I hope to "give it away".

..... I am aware that I will be able to do very little in the way of editing them. I just want to put them in some semblance of order by the date they were taken. ....
You actually can do quite a bit of reasonable editing of the jpegs with Lightroom.
And Lightroom was made to put photos into order. Its database (catalog) capabilities are excellent.
And once you add a few keywords, you can also recall them and enjoy them with the newer ones.
 
But it is not necessary and generally not recommended. Keep all your personal photos in one catalog.
Just echo Jim's statement, you are actually losing by having separate catalogs. I am continually learning new things about both LRc and the way I want to manage my pictures. If everything is in one place, they you have the ability to look up any picture regardless of it's type. You can build Smart Collection based on common information.

At the moment, I have a mix of file formats in my catalog including some recent scans of old slides and negatives.

As an example of continually learning, I started to play around with LRc Facial Recognition feature. I'd never considered it until someone posted questions related to archive scanning of old film stock. I normally don't shoot people but have some and know my archive has a lot. So I now have a new feature to use across my pictures.
 
I created a train wreck of sorts. I was in my "current catalog". I clicked import from another catalog. When all was said and done I did indeed have a merged catalog...but all of my collections and collection sets are MIA. Is there a way to fix it without ending up with duplicate photos etc? My combined catalog has over 200k images in it.
 
I was no where near clear enough...sorry. I have an external drive that had images all over the place, 0 file system. I just copied them from where ever they were on the computer that I was no longer going to use. I have the PC I am now using. Has a separate internal drives for 2017-2021. This is where my current catalog is located. The current catalog has all my collections and collections sets. For example, Motorpsorts 2018, another one for Motorsports 2019, one for 2020 and 2021. When I merged the catalogs all of collections/sets vanished. Is there anyway to avid this? I have backup copies of both catalogs that I made right before I got this brilliant idea.
 
Got it figured out. Created a new catalog and just imported both my catalogs, one is titled Old Pix and the other is Current. I have all of my Collections etc this time. What I tried the first time was, after making a back up of Old Pix and Current was just importing Old Pix into Current, for some reason all of my Collections etc vanished.
 
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