How are people using Catalogs?

Question

I know I asked this question some time ago, but I'd like to ask it again since I will soon be upgrading from LR2.7 to LR3.
I would like some friendly advice from people how they use Lightroom Catalogs.
I currently use several catalogs.  I have one strictly for day-to-day stuff where I might take shots of friends and family.
I use another catalog which I use strictly for Photography Workshops I go on.
Yet another one is one which I use strictly for the few professional photography jobs I have done.  I am not a professional photographer, but I have been paid for a few photo jobs.
Still another is one which I use strictly for pictures from others.  I get a lot of pictures from relatives who wish me to edit them.  Notably, I get a lot from my mother, and many of those pictures are of family and friends, of her flower garden.  So I do like to keep them myself, but I do so in a separate catalog.... in order to keep them separate from my own pictures.  I get a lot of photos from a friend of mine whom I used to work with in Europe....and he is now sending me many pictures he has taken while working in Ghana.  I like to keep some of these in a catalog but for now, I like that to be a separate catalog then the one I do most of my work in.
I would like to get some ideas from LR users how many catalogs they might use.  Do they separate their photos into different catalogs like I do?  Do they keep photos all in one big catalog?  Or perhaps do they just use a small number of catalogs.
I do like the ability to keep separate problems, but the 2 main "problems" I have with doing this are as follows: 1)I some times I accidentally put pictures in the wrong catalog.  I usually catch this soon and merely have to do the process again, putting the pictures in the right catalog. and 2)As far as I know, I do not think you can search by keyword (tag) across multiple calendar.  This is not a big issue, but it would be nice to be able to search by keyword to get, for example, all of the pictures taken by me and my Mother of say, my niece.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks for your input.
Richard

Answer 1

I know Lightroom doesn't care about the directory/folder structure.  But I care how that directory/folder structure looks in Lightroom.  Again, it's kind of hard for me to explain this, but from what I've seen, LR mimics the structure you have on your hard drive.  It works just fine, but I don't want it to mimic the folder structure I had before with LR 2.7.
I'll try to explain, but, again, it's kind of hard for me to put into words without one actually seeing what I'm talking about.  My original folder structure on my hard drive was by year......2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, etc., each a primary folder.
Within each year, I had folders with the date(s) as well as a brief description of what was in that folder.....e.g., 122509_Christmas_at_Mom_and_Dads.
Within that same yearly folder (e.g. 2009), I also would have things like 042809_Kauai_Photo_Workshop as a subfolder.
With LR 2.7, I organized things by Catalog.  So I had a Catalog for personal photos such as Christmas with my family; I had a separate photo for Photo Workshops  I had yet another separate Catalog for pictures my Mom sends me to edit.  And, I had a few other catalogs.  It was just my way or organizing groups of photos.
My original post asked the question about how people use catalogs.....either single catalogs or multiple catalogs.  Yes, there were many comments about using keywords.  Based on the comments I had received, I did decide to combine all of my catalogs into one single catalog.
Within that new single catalog, however, I still want separate folders showing "personal pictures," "pictures from Mom," "workshop photos," "photos I did for a professional job," etc.  That's just the way I like to organize things.  As I found out, if I create separate folders in LR in a single catalog like this, it also creates a corresponding folder on my hard drive.  Therefore, I have to move those pictures into that corresponding folder if I want to keep these separate folders in LR.
One reason I like organizing things this way is that my Mom often will take similar pictures to what I take.  She'll take pictures of her grandkids that she wants me to "fix" by removing redeye, etc.  Because I'm not so sure she backs things up to the extent I do, I also like keeping her pictures to be sure they are properly backed up like I do backups.  When she takes pictures of the grandkids, I'm usually over visiting as well and take my own pictures.  So I like to keep these sets of pictures separate.   Yes, I know I could put keywords in there such as "Mom's Pictures" or "My Pictures," but I just like to keep these sets of pictures separate.  That's the way I am.  People like to organize things their own ways.
Having said all of that, I have been using keywords ever since I started using Lightroom, version 1.  I spend a lot of time doing so.  I do like them.  But, I also like having the LR folder organized the way I do.  Right now, I have a very long list of keywords.  If I want to find a group of pictures, I'm not so sure I'd find all of the ones I'm looking for unless I select the specific keywords I am looking for, and with the list as long as it is now (and it's growing), I might miss something.  With a single catalog, it does make it easier to search for all photos with a single key word, but the folders in LR help do help me narrow down what I might be looking for.
Lightroom provides these tools, and to me, I am taking advantage of them, including keywords, to help me organize my photos.  Once I get my current LR photos into the new folder structure, any new additions will be very easily and quickly done.