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Subdivide Catalog

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Rohnsman

Rohnsman

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Joined
Jun 22, 2018
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2
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
6.x
Lightroom Version Number
LR CC Classic
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
I'm hatching an idea I want to bounce off some more knowledgeable folks. My LR catalog is now a bit over 88.5k images. It's rather cumbersome to deal with. It occurs to me that I could split it into landscape and people/portrait folders. If I select all the Portrait folders and use Export As Catalog, then save that Catalog and (once confident all has worked), go back to the Master Catalog and delete all the Portrait folders I exported I should have two catalogs, one with the Portrait Photos and the other with the Landscape photos, yes? Are there any flaws or "gotchas" to this thinking? Better methods? Thanks...
 
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Welcome to this very friendly and useful forum. There are lots of threads in this forum about why it's better to have just one catalog, with suggestions for how to manage a large collection. I'm sure you will get lots of replies besdies this one.

My suggestion is to copy your current catalog twice. Rename each copy either Portraits or Landscape. Then delete all the photos in each catalog that don't align with that catalog's name. Once you are done, set aside your master catalog for the time when you realize that you're better off with just one catalog.

Phil Burton
 
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Remember that the LR catalog doesn't contains your photos. Instead, it's a database thet references all your photos, wherever they are in your computer.
Therefore, even with 88.5K images, the catalog is not that big (look at the file .lrcat). Splitting it won't improve LR performance, but will make you loose the facility to all your photos.
It's your photos that takes a lot of place. If you are in need of room in your computer, I would suggest to move (from within LR) your oldest photos (say before 2 or 3 years ago) to an external disk. You will still be able to search and look at these photos, even if the ED is not connected since they will still be referenced in your catalog. You will have to connect the ED only if you want to print or develop one of them.
 
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I concur. One catalogue and move files to an external drive.
 
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Another vote for one catalog. Spliting means maintaining two separate keyword lists, no cross catalog search, no actual benefit to performance....
 
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88,5 K is not a big catalog and spliting it up does not solve any problems but it will make life less easy.
So, what is the problem you want to solve?

When you want to distinguish Landscape from people/portrait's than i suggest make two Collections for those photo's.
Or you could add a keyword 'people' to photo's with people and 'landscape' to photo's with landscapes. With two smart collections you can show all photo's with one or the other keyword.

The pro's for this approach is that it fits also for photo's with both landscape and people.
 
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I agree with that as well. The catalogue system has so much to offer why break all that up with multiple catalogues.
 
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Unless there is some business constraint (separation of individual customer data), there is no reason to have more than one catalog. There are catalogs that contain 300K-500K images and there is no performance impact. The keyword, collections and dynamic search capabilities are best implemented in one and only one catalog. You can not search across catalogs Searching is the one best reason to have one and only one catalog.
 
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I agree that it is best to stick with one catalog unless there are very good reasons to keep certain photos apart.
 
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In case it wasn't clear above, one catalog can point to two or more volumes of images, so if you run short of space on existing drive(s), you can just create new drives, and your one catalog can refer to as many drives as needed to hold the images. These drives can even be taken off line, and LR does not get unhappy (though some functions then cannot be done on those images as they are not at that moment accessible), and then will restore full access when you plug that drive back in.

Note there is only one preview folder, by default in the same folder as the catalog, and that preview folder(s) apply to all the various image drives/volumes. So the library can show an image even when the original image's volume is off line (if a preview has been generated, which is usually automatic).
 
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