Transferring photos between catalogs

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PHenry

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I am in the process of subdividing an overly large master catalog in to smaller catalogs. Easy enough to select photos and "export as catalog" to a new location, and delete the photos from the master catalog. But there are a number of photos in the master catalog that I missed and I need to transfer them to one of the newly created catalogs. What is the most efficient way of doing that?
 
The most efficient way is not to do it at all.

But if you insist, select the images you want to catalogue in another catalogue. Then run File > Export as Catalog. Remove the pictures from the catalogue. Then open the other catalogue and use File > Import from Another Catalog. Tedious, eh?

What is "overly large" though? I work a lot with a client's catalogue which is now over 600k images. We routinely optimise the catalogue, and the only thing that is slower is backup - which is done when we've finished work. It's hard enough to control a lot of pictures without fragmenting control across more than one catalogue.
 
I'll just jump in to say that I agree with everything that John has already said. The only legitimate reason to have more than one master catalog is if you run a business and business rules dictate that client data must be kept separate. There is no such thing as an "overly large master catalog".
 
Thanks for your thoughts. I already tried the export to catalog and import from catalog dance. And yes, quite tedious. My catalog is about 175k images occupying about 5TB. Catalog selection and management activities are a bit slow and balky in the large catalog as compared with small catalogs. I suspect I have some hardware limitations which will be moot as I am upgrading everything soon. I think I will wait until then to render judgement on whether to divide it up.
 
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