Lightroom :: How To Separate A Catalog Into Many Catalogs
Feb 22, 2012
I have one catalog that contains about 300 000 pictures that are located in about 14 different hard drives. Some hard drives contains modifications that were done in Lightroom 2 but most of my recent work is with Lightroom 3. It is getting way too big now. Doing my backups takes forever.I want to separate my catalog into 14 catalogs, one for each hard drive. I don't lose my metadata, selections, collections, and histories.
I have tried to do copies of this catalog (one for each hard drive). Go in one copy and then delete all the pictures and folders from the 13 other hard drives but it is was taking forever and it ended up that my catalog was corrupted. I was also thinking of "exporting this folder as a catalog" but this mean exporting the pictures as well which is not what I want since it will be relocated and it will also take forever to do.
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 would like to import multiple catalogs simultaneously into one catalog.
The thing is that I lost my main catalog in a hard-drive failure and my last backup is too old. Fortunately I always "export a folder as catalog" into the original pictures folder, so I always keep starring, color editing, etc.
What I would like to do now is to import each of these litle catalogs into one new main one, without having to import each at a time, but all simultaneously, which would save me an enormous amount of time.
I merged a small catalog with my master catalog and I am unable to open the master catalog. The error message reads "The Lightroom catalog named “master_catalog-2” cannot be opened because another application already has it opened.". There are no other applications running the catalog.
I have been very reluctant to bring edited PSD master files back into Lightroom, to the point where I regularly purge from the catalog those that accidentally find their way in there.
I'm a relative newcomer to Lightroom, having relied on a Bridge/ACR/Photoshop workflow for many years. So partly for historical reasons, raw files and PSDs serve separate and very different purposes in my workflow. Previously, everything went through Photoshop to produce a master file, from which I then batch processed for different output. I still have about a terabyte's worth of old PSDs containing layers, smart objects and whatnot; some of them very complex files. And I still occasionally need to build complex PSDs for special purposes.
Anyway, that's the background. What I want is to use keywords and all of the other wonderful Lightroom tools to organize them.
But I just have to be able to separate DNG/NEF from PSD at a glance. Or instantly filter one or the other. There's just no way I can spend time looking at individual file extensions in the filmstrip to try to figure out which is which. It has to be obvious and instantaneous, deadlines are always tight, and I'm always in a rush. Color labeling could work, but I already use that for picks vs rejects, so that's not an option. Flagging or rating seems not quite obvious enough.
So what's the best way to deal with this? At the moment I have them in separate directories, but this is getting increasingly complicated and confusing. I soon need to clean up and bring everything into a single Lightroom catalog.
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 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 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?
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 have 4 main catalogs in LR 4.3 at the moment. They all appear as folders in LR.What I'd like to do is create one main folder, with all four of these in there. Is that possible without rebuilding all of the catalogs?
When I delete old copies of LR5's catalog off of my backup external drive, I leave the 3 most current. For some reason the next time I start LR, it cannot find the catalog, and I have to manually point to the backup, since I know that one is current. I'd assume the one in My Pictures is current also, but for some reason I keep getting this error.
I run Windows 7, on a Gateway PC laptop, Two external HDs Seagates 1 1TB, 1 2TB External HDs. How do I remove all my catalogs to start over fresh and new?
One catalog is in LR 4 (called catalog B) on Ext HD F, and one is in Carbonite waiting to be restored (had an ext HD failure on Ext HD E, catalog A). I want to put these on a new 4TB external hard drive and in one catalog called A on my just purchased Lightroom 5 upgrade from 4. How do I do this without screwing up?
Have LR5.3 on a Windows 7 machine. Have SSD for programs and usual HD for pictures. Want to have LR catalogues on my SSD rather than default Pictures folder (on the HD). How do I move them to SSD and have LR find them and use that as a default hereafter?
I have several versions of my catalog due to "updates / upgrades" of the catalog. I believe this happened as I added plugins and it would tell me I needed to update my catalog. Is it safe to delete the old ones? Will I lose any data? These haven't been accessed for quite some time. See screen shot.
I recently converted to Mac from pc, and upgraded from LR 3.6 to LR 4 at the same time.Apple transferred all of my pc files transferred to the Mac, and then I downloaded the LR upgrade. That may have been a mistake, as all of the 3.6 catalogs remained on the PC. How do I get the 3.6 PC catalogs into the new version on the Mac? I'm thinking that perhaps I should uninstall LR, have Apple repeat the data migration, and then reinstall the LR 4? Or, is there another way?
When i loaded up lightroom 3 this morning all my catalogs are missing the only catalogue showing is the default lightroom one. i run weekly back ups on the catalogues i use most but theres no sign of them. Im a win 7 user
I had imported photos as CR2's worked on them in develop screen. Closed Lightroom5. When I reopened it all catalog references are gone- from this session and previous sessions. So I pulled in the photos from folders but none of the metadata changes were there (I now know it's because they were imported as CR2's-- won't do THAT again!) Is there anyway to get changes back?
Pictures do not show up in catalogs. Older pictures are there but newer imports appear as grey boxes. I can click in them in develop mode and work on them so they are in the program. After working on them they appear in the catalogs until I develop other pics at which point they switch to the grey box again
