Wanting to start a new Catalogue System

[theMusicMan]

Hi All

Having read some responses in a thread I posted about optimum catalogue size, and my version of LR2 slowing down a lot recently, I have decided to archive all my photos into a few catalogues.

What I want to do is select this last few months photos, add them to a new catalogue, then use this new catalogue as the default catalogue to use when I launch Lightroom. All photos prior to this will be found in the 'older' archived catalogue.

Is this simply a process of selecting the folder with all the images I want on the new catalogue, create new catalogue for those images, then relaunch LR...? How will LR know which catalogue to load up automatically?

Thanks in advance, and apologies about what might be a daft question.

 

[dj_paige]

Before you split your catalog, have you tried to optimize your catalog? Under Edit->Catalog Settings->Relaunch and Optimize.

If that doesn't work, let me say that there are reasonable disagreements about whether multiple catalogs is a good idea. I happen to come down on the side of a single catalog, unless you have completely non-overlapping groups of photos (such as business and personal).

Nevertheless, it seems to me that splitting a catalog by date seems to be the worst possible way to split catalogs. If you do this, then you will not be able to perform a search that finds that great photo you took in October and that equally great photo you took in November. Surely, there must be nearly non-overlapping topics in your catalog that would make a better split.

Should you choose to split your catalog, re-importing is not the way to go. (As a general rule ... re-importing photos is almost never a good idea in any situation.) Select some photos, then Export as Catalog. Then you can remove these photos from your main catalog.

 

[theMusicMan]

Thanks Paige for that sound advice. I see where you are coming from re not spliting based on date and shall reconsider how I do this.

Really appreciate the advice, thank you.

 

[johnbeardy]

Do make sure you optimise your catalogue. That may resolve your slowdown issue and may mean you won't be so tempted to fragment control of your picture collection. How many pictures are you struggling with?

John

 

[Victoria Bampton]

MusicMan, I'd leave your existing catalog as it is, and finish any work where it is. If you're going to use a working catalog, I'd just use it for new stuff you shoot, sort, make any adjustments to, and then import into the archive catalog. It keeps it simpler.

 

[Kiwigeoff]

Her is another cut.
You could easily export as a catalog your last few months or what ever you want and then use that exported one as your working catalog.
I find if I am exporting from one catalog to another and yes I do it sometimes, that it seems to work best to export from catalog A into a temporary catalog what I want to shift and then import the temp catalog into the desired destination catalog.
Searching for files and folders on large catalogs using "import from catalog" can be problematical The mid step is much quicker and cleaner.

 

[theMusicMan]

Thanks all for the advice. I am going to hold off doing anything just now and have a think about what is the best solution for me.