Since version 1.1, Lightroom has been able to create and switch between multiple catalogs. But the question is, just because you can, should you? Should you have one catalog or multiple catalogs?
There is no ‘right’ number of catalogs. As with the rest of your Lightroom workflow, it depends on how you work. So should you use a single main working catalog*, or should you split your photos into multiple catalogs? Let’s consider the pros and cons…
Why is a single catalog the best choice for most photographers?
- The whole point of a DAM (Digital Asset Management) system like Lightroom is being able to easily search through and find specific photos, but you can’t search across multiple catalogs (e.g., to find the best photos from multiple shoots) without opening each catalog in turn.
- It’s a pain to keep switching catalogs, especially since you can’t switch catalogs while a process is running (e.g., if you’re running an export in one catalog, you have to wait for it to complete before switching to another catalog).
- Mobile sync only works with one catalog.
Why do some people recommend multiple catalogs?
- Some people say that small catalogs are faster than big catalogs, and this is true in some circumstances:
- Smaller catalogs are faster to open and back up than very large catalogs – but how many times a day do you need to open and back up?
- Big catalogs can be slow to search, if you’re searching the whole catalog – but it’s still faster than opening multiple catalogs in turn to search through each one.
- We should define big/small catalogs – even 50,000 photos counts as a small catalog… 4 million is big!
- As long as the catalog’s optimized regularly and stored on a fast drive, viewing and working in individual folders/collections should be almost the same speed regardless of catalog size.
- Some people encourage multiple catalogs on the basis that you’ll have less to lose if your catalog becomes corrupted – but simply backing up the catalog regularly works just as well.
- Other people say it’s easier to organize photos by topic in separate catalogs, perhaps separating their bird photography from wildlife. We’ll consider alternatives that may be simpler, later in this post.
For most amateur photographers, the benefits of a single master catalog massively outweigh the disadvantages. Professional photographers may need to weigh the pros and cons a little more carefully and decide what’s right for their workflow.
Who should consider multiple master catalogs?
- You want to separate “Work” shoots from “Home” (or “His” and “Hers”) and there’s no overlap.
- You have multiple employees who need to be working in Lightroom at the same time, and the web interface doesn’t offer the features that the “other” people need.
- You shoot for other people and it’s essential that their photos don’t mix (e.g., The Smith baby shoot doesn’t get accidentally dropped in the Jones folder, and Mr Smith doesn’t accidentally see Mrs Jones makeover shoot.)
How do you differentiate between shoots in a single catalog?
If your reason for multiple catalogs is simply wanting to separate work from home, or His and Hers, then consider the ways you can do so in a single catalog. For example, your Folders, Collections and Keywords panel may have separate hierarchies for each style:
This way, you still have all of the benefits of a single catalog, but with the ability to quickly and easily view and search specific photos.
What if there’s more of an overlap? Perhaps some of your holiday landscapes are used in work brochures. Then leave all of the photos in a single dated folder structure and just use ‘virtual’ divisions, using Collections and metadata filters (based on Keywords, or even Copyright metadata) to differentiate.
If you do decide to use multiple catalogs, there are some danger areas to look out for:
- Be careful that the same photos don’t end up in multiple catalogs, as this causes no end of confusion (for example, they may be edited in one catalog but not the other, have different keywords in different catalogs, or when renamed/moved in one catalog they get marked as missing in the other, etc.)
- Be careful that the photos don’t end up in the “wrong” catalog, as transferring them is a pain.
- Be careful that you don’t completely miss importing some photos.
- Watch out for different keyword spellings and hierarchies, especially if you’re going to merge catalogs later.
If you decide you need multiple catalogs, there are also a few questions to ask yourself:
- How are you going to divide the catalogs?
- By client (all of the shoots for the Jones family – engagement, wedding, baby, family)
- By job (the Jones baby shoot)
- By date (2020)
- How will you know which catalog you should open to find a specific photo? For example, it would be easy to remember that Kate & John’s wedding photo would be in Kate & John’s catalog or in the 2019 Weddings catalog, but it’s not so simple to remember whether a photo of a friend would be in the 2018, 2019 or 2020 catalog.
- Do you ever need to search through all of your photos to find a specific photo, or group together your best shots for your portfolio? If so, you may choose the best of both worlds: keep your current photos in a small working catalog (or a catalog per job), and then use Import from Catalog to transfer them into a large searchable archive catalog when completed.
- Where will you store the catalogs? Will you keep all of the catalogs together in a single folder, or keep the catalog in the same folder as the photos?
- How will you make sure they’re backed up regularly?
- How are you going to make sure there’s no crossover, with the same photos appearing in more than one catalog?
- Where are you going to put the photos that don’t fit into the categories you’ve selected?
- How will you make sure your keyword lists are consistent in all of your catalogs?
Conclusions
So, should you have one catalog or multiple catalogs? As a general rule, use as few catalogs as you can. For most photographers, that’s a single catalog, but if you need additional catalogs, think it through carefully before you act. Multiple catalogs can work, but they also add a degree of complexity that’s unnecessary for most photographers.
If you already have multiple catalogs and you want to figure out which ones you can delete, or how to merge them into a single catalog, don’t worry – we’ll come back to tidying up existing catalogs later in the series. If you want to get started now, see pages 431-433 in my Lightroom Classic book.
* In this post, we’re not referring to temporary catalogs which are created for a purpose, for example, to take a subset of photos to another machine before later merging them back in, but more specifically, your main working or master catalog.
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 5 December 2016, updated for latest Lightroom versions March 2020.
StuartAllison says
Hi Victoria, I use LR 6.14. Is there any way I can match my LR catalogue with the annoying way that MS Photos stores pictures, please. It would be useful to have the two systems in synch. Thanks.
Victoria Bampton says
Honestly, trying to mix two different programs that both want to organize your photos is a recipe for disaster. I’d avoid doing that if all possible.
Nadine says
Hi there, thanks for this great post! I `m just moving my LR catalog to a faster ssd in the hope that LR will be quicker (it`s VERY slow currently..) and while doing that I was thinking whether I should start using multiple catalogs – one for each client. But knowing I`m not good at organizing it would probably end up in a mess and really glad to read that it doesn`t make a significant difference in speed! When just checking the catalog I wanna move, I found that I have a catalog called “LR-MasterCatalog-2” and the catalog that LR is currently using “LR-MasterCatalog -2-v10” – I can`t remember having created a new catalog or anything… Can I just delete the “LR-MasterCatalog-2” or may it contain stuff that I still need and how could I find out? Cheers, Nadine
Paul McFarlane says
LR-MasterCatalog-2-v10 will be the upgraded catalog created when you installed Classic 10.x, it took the information from LR-MasterCatalog-2 which will have been the previous catalog. Checking the dates used will confirm this. So, assuming LR-MasterCatalog-2-v10 is your current catalog and is working fine, the other is no longer needed.
PATRICK W MACKIN says
I don’t see anything about multiple drives mentioned here, which is the only time I would consider a second catalog. Does Lightroom support one catalog and multiple storage drives? My first drive is full and I have now purchased a second. Do I need a new catalog for it, or can one single catalog file contain images sitting on multiple storage drives?
Paul McFarlane says
Lightroom is quite happy with multiple drives, they show in the Folders panel when you add the photos. Make sure to back up the additional locations.
Jake says
I’m really debating splitting my catalog into two:
* Nude/fashion/implied model shoots
* Everything else
Two big reasons:
* Not accidentally showing off the images of model shoots
* Managing storage issues as the overall master drive (12tb) is reaching capacity
My options are:
* Split the catalog and have each catalog + relevant images on separate drives (the fears of people looking at my library are low, but not zero)
* Not split the catalog, but move the folders of images into two separate drives for storage space
I hadn’t been thinking about the one catalog, two drives idea until last night. Are there any knock-on concerns about that?
Paul McFarlane says
One catalog, even over two separate drives, doesn’t address your concern of accidentally showing model shoots to viewers. Two catalogs avoids that completely.
Most professional photographers keep their work on a separate catalog from their personal lifestyle one.
Jake says
Yeah, agreed. And I’m not a pro, so I’m less concerned. It’s still, there, but putting that on the shelf for a second…
I’m more curious about any possible concerns with splitting the files across two drives in one catalog. Any potential issues (aside from backup, but I know how to manage that)?
How would I do it.. just drag the right folders from their current location to another drive in the Folders sidebar?
Paul McFarlane says
Lightroom is happy as long as you tell it where the photos are.
This blog post may help:
https://www.lightroomqueen.com/move-photos-another-hard-drive-leaving-catalog/
Christy says
Question for you. I’ve been using LR for years, and love having a single catalog, as I can always find the photos I need via keywords, etc. My catalog has 135k photos. I am on a macbook pro, but my hard drive is only 256GB. My previews file got so large (above 80GB) that a few months ago, I had to move my lightroom file and previews file to an external hard drive, because my Macbook hard drive was constantly full because of the giant previews file.
After moving the LR file to my EHD, LR slowed down to the speed of molasses. I’m trying to methodically organize all of my photos year by year, but I’m finding it impossible to work with the LR file on my EHD. Each task takes infinitely longer than when LR was on my Macbook’s hard drive. Just waiting for the previews to populate when I’m trying to work is excruciating.
Enter my multiple catalogs idea. What I’d like to do is to create one extra catalog at a time. I’ll split the master catalog, and pull just one year of photos out into a new catalog. I’ll save that new small catalog directly onto my Macbook hard drive so I can have speed once again without a giant preview file eating all of my hard drive space. Open and use that small catalog to keyword, tag, and organize that year to my heart’s content. When I’m all done, open the master catalog, delete that one year that I previously split into it’s own file (so as to avoid duplicates), and then merge my small, one-year catalog back into the master catalog on the EHD.
Is this a horrible idea? What am I not considering? I just have to find a way to make LR run at a reasonable speed once again!
Thanks so much for your help!
Paul McFarlane says
You could do that, and some photographers use a small catalog for current work then effectively archive it to their main catalog once it’s all worked on.
However, a couple of other suggestions:
– you could clear the previews file and just build for the current ones you are working on (so it’d be slower for the ones without previews as Lr will have to create them on the fly as needed)
– you could get a faster EHD, we’d suggest an SSD drive
The second is probably the best solution aas it’s more permanent and 1Tb SSD drives aren’t that expensive these days.
Christy says
Thank you so much for your reply!
How would I go about building previews just for the current files I’m working on? I suspect the previews are a large part of my slow down. When I moved everything to my EHD, I deleted my previews file and let LR rebuild. I figured 80GB was unnecessarily large, and if I’d just let it rebuild, that file size would shrink. Instead, I think I just set myself back months and caused a big slow down. I’d love to restrict previews to just one year, for example, while I work on organizing those photos
Thank you also for the SSD drive. I hadn’t considered that! I’ll definitely have to look into that option.
Paul McFarlane says
To build previews just for current files, select them (in Grid view) and Library > Build Standard-sized Previews.
also, check in Catalog Settings > File Handling what the Standard Preview Size is set to – generally Auto works best.
Photobill says
I am new to LR (1 month)
I’m shooting team sports. My question is on adding “key words” I shoot multiple teams Each team has the same player #. If I make a KW for each player (including there team & #) is there a way to limit the KW that are displayed at a single time? If I’m working on a single team I don’t need to see/have access to the hundreds of other KW I will not be using.
I came across your website serching for + & – of multiple catalogs.
Paul McFarlane says
Not as such, but if you use a hierarchy then you can collapse the other hierarchies. For example, create a keyword for the Team, then within that the players for that Team. Then with the other ones collapsed, you just have that Team visible to select from.
Brad says
Thanks for the information. I am in the process of organizing about 700GB of photos. I’ve been a LR user since V1 but never really got around to getting stuff organized.
I was planning to use multiple catalogs until I saw this post and a recommendation from a friend.
But just to make sure I did my due diligence, I contacted Adobe. I explained my situation and their recommendation was to use multiple catalogs!
When I asked about searching multiple catalogs, I was told this of course is not possible.
When I asked about system speed degradation, he said multiple catalogs would resolve this.
At this point, I’m thinking I was not speaking with LR royalty 😉
Even though I already setup multiple catalogs by year, once my current backup is complete, I’ll be consolidating them all into a single catalog.
Thanks for an informative post!
Brad
Victoria Bampton says
Good move Brad. Unfortunately the quality of Adobe support depends who you actually get to talk to on a specific day. Some of the guys are great and some will say anything to get you off the phone. Catalog size for 700GB of photos won’t be an issue on a vaguely modern computer. When you get into the millions of photos, then it starts to notice a little more.
Karen E. says
Seems I’m different. As a pro, I keep a unique catalog and LR folder for each client. It stays in the client folder on my system along side their proofs, PSD files, retouched full resolution images, contract etc. For multiple shoots for the same client they are named and/or dated. There’s never any risk of mixing up files or slow downs. I’ve never really put much thought into this as LR is just a first stop in my workflow for images that go to the retouching phase. If I’m shooting an event where there is limited individual retouching it may sometimes be the only processing – but I never have any difficulty finding a client folder and specific shoot and images. Maybe I’m doing it “wrong”? – but it works for me.
Victoria Bampton says
Nothing “wrong” with that. It’s just important that you’ve weighed the pros and cons and made an educated decision. Since I wrote this article, we have sync to add to the list of things that require a single catalog, and having the photos split over multiple catalogs makes it more difficult to group together all of the photos shot at a specific venue or similar. In your case, the benefit of not risking mixing up files may well outweigh those disadvantages.
Olivier GALLEN says
I always used a single catalog for my own photos… but I’ll add a new catalog for retouching photos *taken by others*. I don’t want to mix those photos with my main catalog because I don’t own their copyright and it’s a totally different activity.
That’s the first time I ever considered an additional catalog and I wanted to share this situation with you.
Victoria Bampton says
Yeah, that’s a good cut off point Olivier, because there’s no overlap.
HeartThing says
Hi Victoria, your books are fluid. I am planning to scan 2000 of the old photos of my parents for their 60th anniversary. Is that a good reason for a 2nd catalog? Which of the LR cloud services do you suggest? I have been using LR5 for years. Thanks Dan
Victoria Bampton says
Thanks HeartThing. I’ve recently been doing the same with my parents photos, and I dropped them into my normal catalog so they can be managed along with the rest. It just keeps things simple. I did create a separate Scans parent folder to keep those photos separate from my digital ones, but that was just for my own organization.
If you’ve been on Lightroom 5 for years, you’ll probably want Lightroom Classic, but here’s a comparison: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom-cc-vs-classic-features/
George B. says
I started using LR in 2011. Since then all my work related photos were stored in my 3TB external hdd and maintained 1 catalogue. Through the years I’ve been deleting folders from this master catalogue. Currently, I have almost 100k photos in it. Now here’s the problem. I’ve noticed since then while using LR, it began to slow down. I don’t know if it’s my laptop, hdd or LR software were the problem. Then I decided to buy a new desktop computer since my laptop was really an old one. Now that I’m using Lr with my new pc, I still encounter the SLOW loading of photos…a bit of lag from switching to one photo to another. I’m really confused now and searching for the best solution to this. Should I create a new catalogue? Or does my external hdd the problem? Or the Lr software?
Victoria Bampton says
External hard drive may well be a factor – is it USB2 rather than the newer/faster USB3 perhaps? And is there plenty of space on there too? You could try the Performance series of posts: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom/performance/ They were written for LR6, so some of it’s now changed in LR Classic, but the basic ideas still apply.
George B. says
The external hdd is already usb3.0. Also, I still have 1TB+ free space. Hoping the link you gave shed a bit of light towards my problem. Thanks Victoria!
Clinton says
Help! I have light room cc on my Dell Optiplex 990. I do a lot of moving around with a motorhome and have 7 external hard drives where I put all my pics in separate folders. I do not worry about searching through all my hard drives for any particular picture. I have been confused when I down loaded my 2018 hard drive and found the folders placed placed in with my 2017 hard drive. Many of my hard drives have folders with the same name but I want them all (meaning hard drives)to be separated by years. So I went into file to create a new catalog ( I wish to have a new catalog for each of the hard drives) and erased several catalogs that did not connect with the proper hard drives. So I erased all except the original catalog and then tried to create a new one. It will not give me the window entitled “Create Folder with new Catalog” any more. Now what?
Victoria Bampton says
I’m not quite following what you’re seeing there (and I’d still have to question whether 7 catalogs is a better solution than a single catalog that records photos on each of the 7 drives). But you mean you go to File menu > New Catalog and nothing happens?
Reginald says
I create a separate catalog for each shoot I do. Just easier for me to keep up with each client and/or personal shoots.
Victoria Bampton says
I won’t argue with that, but I’m glad you’ve thought it through properly.
Agnieszka Wiklendt says
Hi. Just putting in my 2c.
Summary:
I maintain one master catalogue from which I do my work/archives. That said, I create a new *temporary* catalogue when I travel (e.g., Africa 2016, Japan 2017, etc) which then gets partially merged when I get home.
In detail:
When I travel, I have a cheap (AU$300 DELL) little netbook that I have LR installed on. I use it to backup files from my SD cards to the expandable memory in the netbook (I use Lexar’s excellent 200Gb microSD card) as well as a USB3 1TB portable backup drive (LR lets you do this simultaneously in the import settings).
I then use LR on the netbook while i’m away to do a quick pick/reject categorisation of my travel photos from each day – yes, the netbook is a tad slower for LR, but not enough to become bothersome. this simple daily task reduces the amount I have to do once I get home, which is mostly just then develop and export.
Once I DO get home, I put this microSD into my main computer, develop and then export the final set that I am happy with out as RAW (not DNG, just original format with XMPs), which I then import back into my master catalogue. This is important for me because I don’t have the storage on my local/main computer to store ALL my travel photos ( (i.e., the photos where I’ve accidentally shot the pavement, etc) only the ones that have potential, which I classify as anything good enough to share with friends on facebook, or better.
My master catalogue is where I view all my previous travels, all my local work, and access all my tags, collections, and folders. The temporary catalogues hardly ever get touched after that. The microSD card then remains as a backup, and I continue then to use the main catalogue until I travel again.
Agnieszka.
Victoria Bampton says
Great example Agnieszka. Travel is one occasion I do recommend a temporary extra catalog.
Ryan L says
Thanks Agnieszka and Victoria for your insights. I have an additional question : If a person chooses to use the a single unified catalog, where would this reside: on an external drive, or on a computer? The reason I ask, is that I’ve found it hard to keep just one “updated” copy of my “unified” catalog. I also follow Agnieszka’s approach of carrying a sidekick/spare laptop on travels and copying the Unified catalog back and forth between the main computer and the spare computer has become a hassle.
When traveling, (a) I don’t get time to review all the photos taken that day, and (b) I am were nit-picky about maintaining consistency among the keywords. But if I don’t import new photos into my Unified catalog while traveling, I end up with two catalogs anyway, and then I have to merge them.
Hence wanted to ask if it is advisable to keep the Unified catalog on an external SSD?
Ramona Boston says
I’m wrestling with archiving. When I store an external drive. Should I not make a catalog with it as a directory? I just read the issues with having the same image in multiple catalogs. do I just disconnect and store and what happens when I plug in the new drive to that slot?
Thanks for any thoughts!
Victoria Bampton says
I’d keep a single catalog on your internal drive, or another drive that’s always connected if you possibly can. All of the photos can be recorded in that catalog. I don’t know which OS you’re on.
On a Mac, drives have drive names, so Lightroom can tell the difference between the drives, regardless of which port you plug it into.
On Windows, you can assign a different drive letter to each drive, so it can recognise the drive whichever USB port you use. Or alternatively, create a named folder at the root of each drive (“big black one” or whatever) and put the photos inside that folder. Then, in the folders panel, you can easily find and reconnect that folder regardless of the drive letter it’s automatically selected.
Mark says
I have about ten thousand photoss in six catalogues. I suddenly found that I was having majorproblems with lightroom. I tried many fixes with no effect. It did not matter which catalogue I was in. The major problems were opening lightroom and switching catalogue s. It took multiple trys. The biggest catalogue had Six thousand pictures in it. My problems with lightroom resolved when I broke this catalogue into two. Don’t ask me why, it just happened. There were no updates from lightroom
Victoria Bampton says
Slow opening and switching catalogs is usually down to problems with the hard drive. Even 10k photos in a catalog is tiny.
Annabella Dean says
Victoria, I’ve been using a single catalog for my photography, however I’ve been considering moving to multiple catalogs to manage client work. I hadn’t fully considered all the potential risks until reading your article. Thank you, I really appreciated your helpful insights 🙂
Victoria Bampton says
I’m glad it helped Annabella. Multiple catalogs aren’t inherently bad, but it’s worth weighing up the pros and cons.
Geoff says
I have a LR Cat from 2012 to present when I started using LR. I have 100,000 photos in it. I was considering starting to do a Current Year Cat that would be merged back into the large one at the end of the year. I was hoping for some speed up in switching from Library to Develop and in Backing up and Saving the Catalogue. Because I’m using a simple Current Year vs All Previous Years type of design I think I can keep track of what is going on.
I have one question…so far I’m experimenting with a 2017 only Cat that for now has only 3000 images in it (soon to be culled to probably 1800). I created that Cat by exporting the 2017 Folder to a new Cat. I was wondering if there is any way to export the Cat and maintain my Publish Services that I have setup in my large main Cat? I realize they Publish Services won’t see the 2012-2016 files from within the 2017 Cat but I would like the same Publish Services maintained so I don’t have to set them all up again. Is there away for me to export a 2017 folder as new Cat and keep the Publish Services?
Thanks
Victoria Bampton says
Not really, sorry Geoff. It’s yet another reason to stick to a single catalog. The closest you’ll get to a workaround is this plug-in
Ryan Smith says
I’ve got about 400,000 pictures in my current catalog on an SSD and everything seems to work fine. It’s much easier to use Collections to separate your images by year or type then using separate catalogs.
Victoria Bampton says
Good choice, thanks for sharing Ryan.
Mario Melillo says
I’m a working photographer and had heard about the speed benefits of multiple catalogues, so I had one per year for the last 15 years. Worked well, but when needing to go back to find older photos, it was usually guesswork trying to remember in which year I shot the specific photos. I usually had a general ide! But it was trial and error, until I got it right.
I just decided last week, after reading up a bit, to merge all my catalogues into one master, all excepting the active working folders. About 3/4 of the way through. Master catalogue will likely hit 500K. Glad to hear of the many benefits, and looking forward to less searching for stuff.
Thanks for the article. Well timed!
MARK DERISLEY says
When I started using using LR I did not “keep” any catalogue !! What I used to do was import a set of photos, edit them and then export Jpegs and then remove them from the catalogue. I was used to using photoshop and other software where you just opened the photos and edited them. I didn’t get the concept of a catalogue and was not comfortable to keep my photos inside a LR catalogue.
Eventually when I started to understand that the photos were not in fact being held hostage by LR, I became brave enough to leave my photos inside the catalogue and I had separate catalogues for each of my cameras and a separate one for scanned photos so about 5 or 6 in all.
As the catalogues and my understanding developed I decided to have only one catalogue for all my photos. It took a little time and frustration to import from the various individual catalogues but have never looked back and would never go back to having multiple catalogues.
The key wording, rating and editing is a work in progress and a labour of love.
Victoria Bampton says
Sounds like you’ve made great progress Mark.
Brett says
Thank you for this clarification of large vs. small catalogs. I see reference to this often with few specifics mentioned. A single catalog works great for my workflow, however I’m still trying to figure out if it’s safe to sync with Adobe CC ALL collections. If anyone has examples of what won’t break my iOS devices, I’m all ears. Now that we know what is safe (4 million) for desktop, what is safe for mobile? Lightroom Mobile seems to do fine with 14k photos, however I’m curious how well it does with 40k or 100k. Other experiences most welcome…
Victoria Bampton says
I currently have more than 40k synced, and I understand that 100k + has been tested. I’ll add some more pics to my sync if you like 🙂
Brett Coleman says
This is fantastic to know! Thank you Victoria. I just didn’t want to blow up the cloud and iOS integration by checking all those little sync boxes and letting it upload for a week. 😉 I might just let it rip.
Victoria Bampton says
Go for it!