Techniques for handling a big photo archive? (+150,000 photos)

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mikeysbistro

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What are your Lightroom techniques for handling a big photo archive? I have too many to to put into one catalog file (+15',''' photos) How do you make it easier to properly catalog and search through your files. Do you use separate catalogs for each year? Or something like that?

Notes:
I used Lightroom organize the photos into folders like so - /2''9/2''9-12-'7/ but I found I could only import so many photos before performance issues had me start a new import catalog.
 
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Big? Only 15','''? I regularly work with a client's catalogue that just passed 25','''. It's regularly optimised, which is very important, and is also on a fast internal drive (1''''rpm). I've heard good reports of people using SSDs too.

If you feel you really have to break up control of your pictures (remember that is what you're proposing), think in terms of matching your catalogues to physical drives. So drive #1 is catalogued by catalogue A, drives 2 and 3 by catalogue B and so on. It could be folders, but drives are much more distinct. You need to be clear that every picture is catalogued once and once only, and there's no possibility of missing some pictures or cataloguing them more than once. a single master catalogue ensures that happens.

John
 
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How did you catalog the 25',''' photos in Lightroom? Are you using a single master catalog or are you breaking it up?
 
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As I said, a single master catalogue. It's growing roughly 1''' a week.
 
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As John indicates, a really large catalog is definately managable. I only have 25K images but my technique is infinitely expandable. I only kjeep the most current 3 months in the local drive where they are quickly accessable. Anything older than about three months, I move off the local computer to a network drive. The idea is that these images are accessed less often but LR needs to track the master location along with any Development adjustments and Metadata changes. LR is happy to track folders in multiple locations. So it would seem possible to manage this across multiple HDs. I use a NAS, but an External HD could be used as well. With a home network, a NAS is more practical since the local OS is not responsible for file management, backups and other operations on these files that might tax the user's OS resources. Additionally, these image files can be available to any network device or user on the local netwprk (Slide shows in your living room?)
 
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Thank you, that's good to hear about the master catalog, which makes a lot of sense to me. There's a lot of "advice" going around the Internet that Lightroom can't handle large/big catalogs, that's why I asked in the first place. But I love that everything can go into a master catalog and I can store older photos offline on external storage devices.
 
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