In another post, we discussed the arguments for and against multiple catalogs. So, if you decide to merge some catalogs, how do you go about it? In this first of five posts, we’ll take an overview of how to merge catalogs and some of the reasons you might want to.
Why you might want to merge catalogs
Perhaps you’ve unintentionally ended up with multiple catalogs, because you opened a backup catalog and continued working in it, or you’ve started a new catalog each time you’ve upgraded Lightroom. If you have metadata and edits scattered across multiple catalogs, you won’t want to lose all of the work you’ve done, so you’ll need to merge the catalogs.
Or perhaps you previously used multiple catalogs because someone said it was a good idea, but having weighed the pros and cons, you’ve now decided to combine your multiple catalogs into one.
An overview of the merge process
When merging multiple catalogs into a single master catalog, there are four distinct stages. We’ll summarize them in this infographic (which may take a moment to load), but then we’ll break it down into the individual stages over the next few weeks.
It can seem like an overwhelming task at first, but don’t worry, we’ll go into more detail in the next few posts…
- Stage 1 – Identifying Catalogs
- Stage 2 – Prepare Catalogs for a Clean Merge
- Stage 3 – Using Import from Another Catalog to Merge
- Stage 4 – Cleanup
It’s more time-consuming than complicated, although some basic computer knowledge is required. You need to know how to use your operating system to search for files, show additional columns of metadata in Windows Explorer/Finder, and how to move files.
Depending on the level of disorganization, it may not be a quick job, so set some time aside to complete each stage. You don’t have to do all of the stages in one go, as long as you keep track of your progress.
If it still sounds too overwhelming, or you don’t have the needed computer knowledge, don’t worry. Many Lightroom teachers offer one-on-one support, and can help you figure it out. Just one word of warning… don’t ask your IT person to do it unless they’re going to follow these instructions to the letter. This kind of cleanup requires an understanding of how the catalog relates to files on the hard drive.
For extensive information on Lightroom Classic, see Adobe Lightroom Classic – The Missing FAQ.
If you have the Photography Plan, then as well as Classic you have access to the Lightroom cloud ecosystem including the mobile apps and web interface. For more information on these apps, see Adobe Lightroom – Edit on the Go.
Note: purchase of these books includes the first year’s Classic or cloud-based Premium Membership (depending on the book purchased), giving access to download the latest eBook (each time Adobe updates the software), email assistance for the applicable Lightroom version if you hit a problem, and other bonuses.
We also have a special bundle offer for the two books. This includes Premium Membership for the first year as described above for the whole Lightroom family!
Originally posted 17 April 2017, updated for latest Lightroom versions March 2020.
I am merging several catalogs as I made a mess, developing some images in two different calalogs. Do you know what will happen at the merge time?
Will I have virtual copies of the same image?
Will lightroom show the !!! meaning two different programs imput metadata on the same image?
Do you do private consulting?
This post gives helpful details on merging and handling duplicates:
https://www.lightroomqueen.com/merging-catalogs-3-import-catalog/
Hi this was super helpful, thank you! I merged two small separate LR catalogues that I created from ‘exports as catalogue’ from images from within two other much larger LR catalogues. Can I safely delete the two small catalogues and their associated files I created for the merge?
Assuming the two small catalogs were just temporary ones so you could create the merged one, then no, no need to keep them.
We’re pleased this was helpful!
Hi – I think I did something “dumb” and I need to figure out how/if I can recover…
Over the holidays I decided to do some rearranging and housecleaning… I have not lost any image files, but in the aftermath, some of my past edits/history seem to have been lost. I have backup LR catalogs I could drop back to, but the restructure I did is something I want to complete, so I need to figure out how to get back my edits/ratings/tags
My storage system has emerged over time & is done partly via disk actions, and then partly in LR. I know this is not ideal, but it’s what I have, since many of these files have been collected over a decade of changing photography habits.
My workflow is that I offload all images to a “general collection file cabinet” that is organized by camera/ year/ month/ date. If I have a major event that I shot, I will normally copy relevant images from all the cameras involved into a separate “event folder”. I do all these steps in Windows file manger – sometimes aided by Adobe bridge, depending on the camera or image source. Once the data is staged in these places, I will then import both the data in the general collection and the events folders into Lightroom. I will generally create a Collection/subcollection structure from these files in the general and event folders inside of light room. And I perform all rating, tagging, and edits in LR.
I have a very large Lightroom catalog (>150K photos) – actions on it take me a lot of time, so I usually only dive into this when I have a break like the holidays. The root of my problem is I had stuff not in the right storage place and duplicated, so I needed to straighten that out. Normally I have been able to do that by moving files in Windows and then re-syncing the catalog. This time, due to the amount of restructure, it did not find the main collection folder, so I chose to “re” import that folder – not realizing that could loose my past work on those files… this appears to be where I lost things. The images are in the catalog now, but the ratings/tags/ history of them is no longer there.
Even after I (re)imported images and re-sync’d everything, I have several large collections that are coming up empty, and I have a lot of edits on files that look like they are “lost” (the image may be in final state, but there is no rating, tagging, or edit hx on the files…
I am considering falling back to what I had before, but sine I did some file system level restructure, I will still have to do some stitching of things to recover that.
I have opened up the catalog backup I have from before and done some catalog exports of the key subdirectories that were restructured. I have read that you can merge the catalogs, so I am considering trying that, but before go there, I wanted to know if you would be willing to comment on a best recommended approach for how to best recover from this.
Recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
I have done more reading here (you have a nice & useful site – I will be back :-), and have figured out that the best bet is for me to use a backup of my catalog and to reconnect my restructured file set that I made in Windows Explorer by “identifying missing folders” in LR. This has stitched things back together. When I run sync (carefully. following the directions you provided here: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/synchronize-folder/), I have some missing files still, but I can reconcile most of those from File Manager level merge/deletions, so I am recovering pretty well.
WHAT I LEARNED – (1) Check here for good tips, (2) doing a re-import of files you already have in a LR Catalog is a really good way to loose a lot of historical work, (3) Once something is imported to LR, I should REALLY NEVER be doing re-org in File System level – I should ONLY use LightRoom.
Live & Learn 😉
PS> If anyone comments on this, I would like to know if there is a good recommended strategy for when to move to more than 1 catalog… I am at over 160K images in the catalog now & after reading some of these articles about exporting/ importing/ and merging Catalogs (and since there are lots of people that have accidentally corrupted catalogs), I am wondering what the right workflow strategy should really be to not put too many eggs in one basket.
Oh well done David, sorry, you caught me on a rare day off. For long questions, try the forum as well, as my LR Gurus are often online around the clock.
When to move to one catalog… 160K is small and safe as long as you have regular catalog backups. I know of one catalog that’s over 7 million, and that can be a little bit slow… 😉
Victoria
Are the related “Helper.Irdata,” “Preview.Irdata,” “Smart Previews.Irdata,” “.Ircat-wal,” and “.Ircat.lock” files to be deleted or otherwise dealt with?
If you’re deleting the catalog they’re associated with, then yes, delete them too. If you’re keeping the catalog, keep them, at least until you’re finished sorting out the files.
In this article you recommend finding missing photos before merging catalogues. I have several external USB hard drives. Each is configured similarly, with its own catalogue – hence I re-launch Lightroom (4) each time I use a different USB drive. Over time my OS has assigned different drive letters to the USB drives, so LR is often “missing” folders and images. I now finally have large enough storage that I want to move my photo files off the USB drives onto the new storage. I then want to create a new master catalogue and import from all the disparate USB drives. Clearly I’ll merge one at a time. The question is: can I use the following steps? 1) Copy files from USB drive to new storage drive; 2) Open LR with new master catalogue (that is located on the new storage drive); 3) Import from another catalogue – and choose the catalogue that is on the USB drive (ie with that USB drive connected); 4) *After* this merge, in the new master catalogue, then direct LR to find all the missing files and folders on the new storage drive; 5) Disconnect that USB drive, rinse and repeat with next USB drive until finished. The key part of the question is essentially to skip the locating of missing photos and folders from before merging, but rather direct LR in the new master catalogue to locate everything on the new storage drive.
Yes, that’s fine Chris. The reason I suggest finding missing photos first in most cases is lots of people have ended up with the same photos in multiple catalog at different locations and if they try to find missing photos after merging, it says the photos are already in the catalog. In your case, because everything’s cleanly divided, you’d be fine to do the find missing photos whenever suits you.
I recently had to upgrade from LR 4 to LR 6 (new camera, new raw format). Part of the install ‘converted’ my single catalog into a new format. Now my 80D raw files are recognized. But my Catalog size went from 78GB to 7.1 GB. The catalog only contains my most recent loads. I have a backup (LR4 format) of all the work prior. …. Will LR 6 allow me to ‘merge’ my prior backup and do the conversion on the fly? Should I copy my old backup, rename as ‘catalog_pre_2017’ and try to load it, to test what LR6 does when presented with an old format?
The catalog only contains your most recent uploads? Odd, I’ve never heard of a partial catalog upgrade. But yes, you can merge.
Personally, I’d go to File > New Catalog and create a new “master” catalog so your others are untouched. Then File menu > Import from Another Catalog and point to the LR4 78GB catalog and let it pull that it. And then Import from Another Catalog to pull the newer catalog in after that.
I recently merged all my working catalogues into one Master and backed it up using a GRAID and your recommended Chronsync. Now I have a new catalogue created while traveling. I am home and want to merge the travel catalogue into my master on the GRAID. Two questions: is there a way to do this without renaming my master catalogue on the GRAID? If I merge the catalogues and then back-up using Chronosync will every photo be moved a second time (loading up the GRAID unnecessarily) or will Chronosync only replace the images which have been changed? Thanks, Victoria. Your blogs and book are so much help. My book as so many post-its! Karen
You should be able to leave the Master catalog where it is. Open it, go to File menu > Import from Another Catalog and navigate to the Travel catalog to pull that information into the Master catalog.
The photos from the travel catalog might need dragging to your normal drive so that they’re included in the backups – I’m missing that bit of information about where the travel catalog and photos are currently.
Any photos that were only in the Master catalog won’t change, so Chronosync shouldn’t copy them again (depending on your Chronosync settings, of course.)
Thanks, Victoria. I appreciate the feedback. I was confused about the merging instructions which required the creation of a new catalogue. I will work it the way you describe in your response. And, yes, I will need to move the new photos to the GRAID backup drive I’m using. You are a great resource!
You’re welcome Karen. I can see you have my CC/6 book – try the “Import from a Temporary Catalog” instructions on page 499-502 for your scenario, and drop me an email if you get stuck with it.
Your tips are always very helpful – thanks Victoria.
Maybe you can help me with this. Can I copy and merge a catalog from LR 5 (the only thing my desktop supports because it’s only 32 bit) with the catalog from LR CC 6 on my laptop (where I now do all of the editing)?
Thanks again,
Seagull
Yes, LR6 will understand LR5 catalogs, just not the other way round. So the end result would be an LR6 catalog.
Thanks for the quick reply. Have a good weekend.
Victoria, I travel extensively. I process along the way on my MacBook. Then, when I return home, I “Export as Catalog” with all the images and previews to a temp drive, then when I get back to my desktop, I “Import from another catalog” which moves the images, but not the work I’ve done on each image. This seems like it used to work fine and for the last several years, it stopped working. Can you point me in the right direction for a fix?
It should work. Open a thread on the forum and we’ll help you investigate.
You are that one in a million that restores my faith in humanity, Thanks
Thank you Bobby!
Hi Victoria,
Looking forward to the series. I find I have several catalogs for various reasons. But this also sounds like an opportunity to move the master catalog to an external drive so multiple computers (main machine and backup) could use the same catalog. If this makes sense perhaps you could include the “how to” in the articles.
Thanks
Yes, once you’ve got everything in a single catalog, you can then refer back to a couple of other articles that would apply in your scenario.
Moving your catalog to another drive: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/find-move-rename-catalog/
Using a catalog on multiple machines: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/how-to-lightroom-catalog-multiple-computers/