Lightroom Catalogues

[CML-1591]

Does anyone know how these work exactly? Should I have a different catalogue for each sort of folder of photos i put in? Also what would happen if i were to work off an EHD?

Thanks in advance.


P.S, sorry if this is in the wrong section, was torn between two.

Craig

[Mick]

P.S, sorry if this is in the wrong section, was torn between two.

Craig

Craig, sorry I can't answer your lightroom question, as I don't use it.   But I have added a lightroom forum, and moved this into it for you. 

[picsfor]

Hi Craig,

i'm not as up on this as some of the others - but i don't think it really matters. A case of personal choice i think.
Lightroom can certainly handle a large library (i've not heard of a limit being found as yet) and the pictures can be organised in folders ordered by category, date etc or you can have seperate catalogues - 1 for each subject.

The real art is learning to use the keywords that allow you to search and retrieve pictures quickly.

Mine are currently ordered in one glorious folder using keywords - though i am now starting to use sub folders.
I think if i were ever to make a living from photography to any extent i would create a seperate catalogue and have one for personal and one for professional.

That's my take on it.

[Oly Paul]

Does anyone know how these work exactly? Should I have a different catalogue for each sort of folder of photos i put in? Also what would happen if i were to work off an EHD?

Thanks in advance.


P.S, sorry if this is in the wrong section, was torn between two.

Craig

No need for seperate catalogues really and if you did it would make searching for images by keyword difficult as you can only have one open and search one catalogue at a time unlike EM2 which can searches multiple catalogs, which I use in conjunction with LR2.

Working of a EHD is no problem, if it is not connected you can still work with the previews that LR built when it was connected, so you can still us it in the Libary mode. you can keyword etc without being connected but you cannot use it in the develop mode to process/develop your images unless connected .

[picsfor]

good point about EHD's - forgot about them and key word searching of multiple catalogue's.
My EHD is permanently connected for use with Mac OS X Time Machine and as i said- i only use the single catalogue.

[CML-1591]

So by the sounds, all the pics go to one catalogue,

Hmm thanks guys, some thought now.

[Jonathan]

Probably one catalogue for all pics is OK.  I use one per client and then one for all clients (plus others for my own snaps).  Some people who regularly add large numbers of pics reckon they get much better performance by creating a new catalogue for their big shoots (e.g. 2 weeks in the Masai Mara), editing the pics in there and then merging the catalogue with their regular one.

LR catalogues can hold a lot of pics - hundreds of thousands easily.

As for the EHD - what everyone else said.  But you may need to remember that the catalogue must go on a local drive (internal or USB/FW) it can't go on a network drive or shared drive from another machine.

Oh and originally Adobe/Apple recommended excluding LR catalogues from Time Machine backups.  You may want to check current advice.