Lightroom :: How To Copy / Export To Different Catalog
May 26, 2012
I am not sure if I am going about this the right way, but once of the frustrations I deal with is managing my portfolio of images.
What I have recently done is create a seperate catalog for my portfolio image seperate from my "working catalog". My question is, once I have identified an image from my "working catalog" how can I copy it to my portfolio catalog?
i have an 8 giga LR4 catalog (about 300000 images).just installed the new LR5 and tried openning the LR4 cat in LR 5.it said it needs to upgrade, but in the middle of the prosses i had this messege: "lightroom encountered problems when trying to update the format of the catalog file and cannot use this catalog in this version of LR"
i saw that there is an option to export all my LR4 catalog as a new catalog and than import it into LR5.i haven't tried that yet since i'm worry that i might loose some info. will this process (of exporting and importing) keep all my LR settings? like develop user presets, keywords and collections?
From LR4 on my desktop PC, I used to be able to select File->Import From Another Catalog..., navigate to a catalog on a networked laptop, select which photos/dates I want to import, then choose to Copy Photos to a New Location and Import. This would both copy the photos over the network to my desktop, and add the photos to my desktop LR catalog - in one step. Always worked great for me for getting travel laptop photos back into my main desktop & LR catalog.
Both desktop and laptop recently upgraded to LR5. But now when I try this same procedure - the "Import From Another Catalog..." dialog no longer has the option to Copy Photos to a New Location and Import. The only options are Add New Photos To Catalog Without Moving and Don't Import New Photos.
Of course I can work around this by doing it with 2-3 extra steps: I can import over the network like above, but choose Add New Photos to Catalog Without Moving and then later copy the files & find the missing photos. Or export to a separate catalog & copy everything, etc.
So what happend to the Copy Photos to a New Location and Import option in LR5? Was this option removed explicitly? Or is there something else I'm missing (file path permissions, etc) that would cause the option to not be shown?
Lightroom 5 64-bit for Windows, ver 5.0 Desktop: Windows 7 64-bit Laptop: Windows 8 64-bit
I replaced my computer, and now reinstalled lightroom and created a new catalog and wanted to import photos and copy from backup, however, lightroom is not offering me the copy function
I use to have all my pictures in a single catalog - "MyPics". It contains around 50.000 photos.
Last week, LR4 has silently created a new copy of my catalog: "MyPics-2". No warning, no message. I did not notice immediately.
The 2 catalog files have roughly the same size, but the preview folders are very different: old: 350MB, 100 files, 115 folders new: 280GB, 47000 files, 34000 folders I assume it moved the preview files from old to new.
Is my assumption of moved preview files correct? Is this related to the upgrade from LR3.6 to LR4?
LR4.3 installed to the C: drive (default installation). I am now copying from my external drive all photos to the larger D: data drive.
Of course, I have the very latest catalog backed up to multiple places. The old laptop (Windows 7) was just a single C: drive instead of the two drives I now have.
2 Q: 1) To what location do I copy that backup LR4 catalog?
2) As I remember from some years ago, I also need to double-click on that LR4 catalog once it's in the proper place. Is that right?
I have an old computer running LR 3.6. I have downloaded, installed and entered my serial number for LR 4.4 on my new computer. Can I simply copy my 3.6 catalog to the new computer and open it with LR 4.4?
I have installed a new primary disc (C: in Windows 7 Pro) and re-downloaded LR4.2 release candidate. Can I simply copy the existing LR catalog (which I have on old disk, still accessible via USB, or from several backup copies) to the new disc and LR will work as it did previously. The drive letters of the locations of the actual image files (on other internal drives) have now changed so how do I tell LR to now use the new drive letter locations.
I have copied the contents of an intermitant disk into a new one; outside of ligthroom(4). How do I copy the edits embeded into a ligthroom catalog to the new disk? Both disks have the same files. My master catalog sees the edits in the original disk. This same catalog sees the new disk without the edits in the original disk.
I can drag and drop a preview from one folder to another but I have not discovered yet how to make a copy by dragging and dropping in the library module
Will exporting a catalog with DNG's allow me to re-import into lightroom if i so choose and show any changes that were made to the pictures (ie: the history for a specific file ; virtual copies) as well as include the originals even if i were to delete the ones i originally imported from my CF card.
I essentially want to create a master backup for each event i am photographing at, and export each event as it's own catalog.
I find that I edit files on my laptop but I want the files, with their edits to reside on my desktop computer also.
I had been exporting the folder as a Catalog, but can't think of shy I can't just copy the folder with both the RAW and XMP files and import the folder on the Desktop PC. This option seems to work just as well as the catalog option.
Any reason I should choose one way over the other? Using Lightroom 4.2?
I'm sure this worked in earlier versions of LR (?), but it's been a while since I've required doing this. However last night I needed to export a Collection Set housing several Collections as a single Catlog to an external HD. The options I chose were to export the negative files and available previews.
I seemed to recall that if you Right-Clicked on the Collection Set name there used to be an option "Export Collection as a Catalog", but this option seems only available on Collections not Collection Sets.
Never-the-less I selected the Collection Set, then chose Export as Catalog from the file menu; This worked but only the first 4 collections within the collection set were exported. I repeated this again with the same response. So is this a bug?
I know I could export each Collection as an individual catalogs then combine them but the Collection Set houses 13 sub collections, so rather laborius.
I’m teaching a college class and a couple of my students are shooting RAW. When they complete their assignment in Lightroom, they Export as Catalog, compress that folder and submit it to me through Dropbox. This worflow works great with students who shoot .jpg but the kids who are shooting RAW have files that are too large to upload.
If you export a group of photos as a Catalog, does this export all virtual copies including their own repsective xmp data? I need to send a batch of RAW files to someone but need them to be able to see all the virtual copies as well.
I've tried this several times, both with and without previews. I'm trying to make a copy of my masters with sidecars etc. so that I can examine the entire catalog on my laptop with an external hard drive.
On my destop PC I export all my images as a catalog to the external drive (it's a Terabyte drive ) and when done I cannot read the catalog on either the machine that created it or the laptop. I'm running Vista which seems to work ok with evertying else. I've tried both with and without previews thinking it would be a smaller amount of space by leving out the previews.
When opening the catalog from the file menu in LR 4.4 or by clicking on the saved .lrcat file it gives an error message that the catalog/library is invalid.
I have version 4.1 LR on both my home desktop as well as my laptop. I keep my desktop fairly well organized, and it is where I keep my image files for backup.....internal drive backed up onto an external drive.
My laptop is not so organized, and I am trying to clean it up. I use it primarily for a working system, when I'm not home.
My folder system on my laptop is different than the one on my organized desktop. Further, I may have image files on one system but not the other.
An example of what I do is as follows: when I am away from home for awhile, I like to try to save my pictures on the Compact Flash card until I get home. And, I also back them up onto my laptop and external portable hard drive as well. Before I get home, I often will use my laptop and LR to edit certain photos. I may in fact create new files when I create HDR images on my laptop.
When I get home, what I usually do is upload as soon as possible those original pictures from my Compact Flash card or external hard drive onto my home system so I have it there, with its backup. However, what I have not been doing is exporting any catalog settings file from my laptop and importing it onto my desktop.
My question is this: if I export a Catalog file from my laptop, without the negatives (images), and if there is a mismatch between the files on my laptop and my desktop, whether that's because of the file structure differences or whether that's because my laptop may have slightly different files on it than my desktop has, will the Catalog settings still transfer properly? For instance, if I have an HDR image on my laptop, along with any Catalog settings, and this HDR image is not on my home network, will a problem or error be created when I import the laptop Catalog file from my laptop without also importing that HDR file? I would think that the catalog settings for that laptop HDR file would be there, but because the HDR file is not being transferred over, perhaps there might be a problem?
I know I should probably get better on my workflow while away from home, but for now, I'm trying to clean up the existing problem that may exist.
I am on a Windows 7, 64-bit machine running Lightroom 5. I am having problems running certain Publish Services and also while trying to import from another catalog. On Publish Services - I am able to publish to a remote desktop but not to my own network. I have also been seeing issues with publishing to SmugMug (since before they updated their site).
Similarly, I am trying to merge some catalogs and when I import from another catalog, the process seems to hang about halfway through (I left it running all night long - the catalog is large but not THAT large!). The process did bring in what seems like most files so I wonder what I am missing.
I want a new catalog with small jpgs and the hierarchical keywords. But I seem to be able to get each part of that individually but I can't seem to get them all at the same time.
If I select images and export them with "Write Keywords as Lightroom Hierarchy" checked, then import those new jpgs into a new catalog, my keywords are a flat list without the hierarchy. I tried exporting my keyword hierarchy as *.txt then importing it into an empty catalog so the hierarchy already existed. When I imported the new jpgs into that catalog, the keywords still came in as a flat list appended to the hierarchical keyword list.
I tried selecting the images and importing as a new catalog, which gives me a new catalog, but the new catalog has the original raw images.
I recently reformatted my computer and I just realized that I lost all of my export presets even though I copied the catalog over. I've searched Finder in the all the usual places that Adobe programs store user data but I can't find them. where I can find my export presets to copy to my new home folder?
I don't want to have the original files on both laptop and desktop.
I want to make a copy of a Lightroom 3 catalog to put on my laptop so while on the move I can be geo-tagging and keywording to 8000 photographs. I don't want to drag an external drive with me. I just want to be able to work on the catalog metadata and have all the updates/changes stored there (on the laptop)(in the catalog) and then transfer the catalog back to the desktop (to the primary archive) and have all the updates/changes pushed back into the DNG's or the XMP sidecar files alongside the CR2's. These changes would be only keywording and possibly writing GPS data into them….NOT image edits (that would probally require access to the original image files)
As a test, I tried "exporting as catalog", TWO images (with the source images "unavailable"). I flash-drived the resulting catalog to my laptop. I opened the catalog in LR3 and made changes to the metadata. I tried both "saving metadata to file" and "updating DNG previews" (which would be useless anyway since I could not write data back to the missing originals) and also tried doing nothing and just closing LR, then pulling the flashdrive and plugging it into the DESKTOP.(knowing the changes are stored within the catalog itself only) I open the 2 picture catalog in LR and see the keyword updates. Hurrah!
I switch over to the master catalog. All I want to do is import the updated metadata (keywording, contrast, etc…) back into the master catalog and push the data into the original DNG or XMP. On import I select "replace: Metadata and develop settings only" (with or without "preserve old settings" checked) and click import. Voila! NOTHING HAPPENS and the updated keywords are NOT picked up.
I know that the metadata updates were carried out because they showed up when I opened it separately in LR! For some reason they don't seem to making through the import process to the master catalog…
I will be managing a small portion of a client's overall image workflow by updating their web prescence on a regular basis with new work and retagging/uploading old work. I believe this requires the catalog and the image library to be housed on an external hard drive that can travel between the two of us. We are both working on PC's with LR 5.3.
The workflow would look something like this:
Client downloads new images onto external hard drive and imports into LR "ClientCatalog" is created Flags Picks and Creates a Collection from those Picks.Hard drive is handed off to me where I open "ClientCatalog".Make suggested edits to images add detailed tags and metadata upload to various social media sites and websites return hard drive to client
Is there potential problem with this workflow? My assumption is that if everything is housed on the external hard drive then there are no worries about the catalog containing all the latest updates. Are there any "safety protocols" you would add in to this workflow (besides mirroring everythign on another hard drive)?
I'm using Lightroom 1. I tried to merge catalogs by importing a catalog into a master catalog, but there were some problems. The one I noticed immediately was that the collections are not correct. It imported the collections, but for example one collection now has only 4 photos when the originbal had 140? How can I fix that? (Although not necessariy a problem, it seems to have the wrong number of photos imported too. It says the previous import was 3175 photos when it was more like 10,000.)
I had to reinstall an OS in my computer due to a virus. As a result LR 3 in no longer installed. I still have the catalog on a backup disk and have just installed and updated to LR 4.4. What is the best way to merge the V3 catalog with V4 and are there any things I should expect or look out for?
I only want ONE cataglog. Today I installed and upgraded Lightroom from v. 3 to v. 4.3 which was OK.I wanted to upgrade my ONE and ONLY existing catalog keeping the same name.LR created a second catalog and added a - 2 to the name and it's a .ircat.
How can I return to having only ONE catalog and library?
I chose "file type:" PDF in the menu "Load Photos, Videos from folder and files" but I am not able to avoid that also JPEG files are loaded in the catalogue.
Moreover, the program freezes many times.
Am I doing something wrong or is not possible to load only a type of file?
My purpose is to get a catalogue with only a copy of all my PDF I have split in many directories.