Catalog Confusion

I thought I understood Lightroom 4 catalogs, but apparently not.
I would appreciate help from anyone in the know.
My goal is simply to periodically make manual backups to an external drive--- this is in addition to the backups that LR suggests and puts on my C drive.
The problem is I don't see the catalog where I think it should be. I can find LR's backup folder, and that contains catalogs that look and behave as I expect: (Right clicking brings up the option to "Open in Lightroom.")
I'm running Win7, LR 4.1 RC, selected the default location for my catalog (which is named Lightroom 4 Catalog-2)
The path to my catalog is C:\ Users|Jerry\My Pictures\Lightroom\ Lightroom 4 Catalog-2 Previews.lrdata
The path to my Backups is the same except for the last subfolder C;\.............\Lightroom\Backups
I suppose I could just copy the Backups folder over to my external drive, but I'd still like to understand what is going on, and how to duplicate the original catalog for use in a straightforward way.
Hopefully, I'm making some silly error and fresh eyes will see it. Thanks in advance.
Jerry

Jerry,
It is normal that the catalog file itself (the database) is a lot smaller than the previews folder. The catalog file almost only contains text (it also ZIPs very well, btw), while the previews folder contains images (your previews), which take up a lot more space. In my case, the catalog file itself is 400MB, while my previews folder is 32GB. The size of the previews folder also depends on size and quality of previews rendered.
Recreation of the previews is done from the Library module:
Library -> Previews -> Render Standard Size Previews (or 1:1 Previews, whichever you desire)
This can take quite some time, depending on the number of images in your catalog, but can be run unattended while doing something else.
If you get "Preparing to install", the link between the *.lrcat extension and Lightroom seems to be broken. Try changing the default program associated with *.lrcat by pointing to "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.0\Lightroom.exe" using the procedure described here:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/12196-open-change-default-program.html
This should make Lightroom your default application to open *.lrcat files.
Beat

Similar Messages

Migration to New Mac Has Catalog Confused

I've bought a new iMac Retina 5K and I migrated my files from my old Mac via Thunderbolt.
As far as I can tell, everything went well except LR. All the photos are in their places, but the LR catalog Lightroom 5 Catalog.lrcat references files in the Home directory of the old machine: Users/oldhome/pictures/Lightroom... instead of Users/newhome/Pictures/Lightroom...
I though I would be clever and use BBEdit to edit a copy of Lightroom 5 Catalog.lrcat and replace each instance of oldhome with newhome. Didn't work; the library was corrupted in the process.
I don't understand why, with the catalog links broken, LR can still display high-res versions of the photos. Of course, it can't do anything except display them.
Will I have to go through 15,000 photos, relinking them to their true locations?
Other issues: "The Creative Cloud Files folder located at Users/oldhome/Creative Cloud Files cannot be found... Not fixed.
I had to reinstall the Creative Cloud 2014 desktop application. Fixed.
I had to reinstall the Creative Cloud 2014 application manager. Fixed.
Thanks for reading!

Thanks for your concern. I'll repeat what I said originally. "I though(t) I would be clever and use BBEdit to edit a copy of Lightroom 5 Catalog.lrcat" A copy. I edited a copy, leaving the original lrcat file untouched.

Catalog Confused

I have just started elements organiser 9 and somehow I seem to have 3 catalogs and only want one, I understand they cannot be merged.
So how can I get back to having only one catalog?
I was thinking of save to desktop and saving back to iPhoto, delete catologs in Organiser and the re-import ensuring only one catalog is open.
Does anyone know if this would work or any other ideas?

PSE does not provide the functionality to merge the catalogs. It seems that you are on MAC.You can remove the catalogs from Catalog Management dialog box. You can go there through File->Catalog, except the current catalog which is opened, you can remove rest of the catalog.You can also choose to make a new catalog and delete the other one.And in the new catalog you can them re-import all the images.

Problem With Elements 10 Organizer Showing Wrong Files in Folders (In Folder View)

I just got started using Elements 10 on Windows XP and have had some problems with the Organizer. Once it was installed and had cataloged all my photos, I made sure to only move files and folders to different locations from within Organizer. However, now it seems to have lost track of which photos are in which folder. It will "remember" that there are 3 photos in a folder (in Folder View) and only show three photos in that folder, but they will be 3 random photos from a different location. Opening that item shows that thumbnail and referenced file are the same, so it isn't just a thumbnail problem. And looking in the actual folder with Windows Explorer shows that right photos. I'm not sure if I should run an Optimize or Repair on the catalog or if there is something else I can do to fix the problem. I don't need to use Folder View too often, but sometimes I do and I use it to reorganize the actual locations of files. Not sure what would happen if I did it now (with the obvious catalog confusion).
Any thoughts?
Thanks,
torreyindy

Image size. I have been scanning old 35mm images. Any image greater than about 8100 pixels causes thumbnails to fail - this sounds like being around 2 to the power of 23 but what a really odd combinatin that is.
8100 pixels? All of my photos are larger than that, and I don't have this problem. Do you mean 8100 pixels on a side? There is a known limitation in PSE that photos above a certain pixel size on a side cannot be displayed in the Organizer. I no longer remember what that size is, perhaps someone else can chime in. Scanning your images to be 8100 pixels on a side would be overkill for me; however maybe for you its an important thing to do.
I have about 10,000 photos in the catalog but need to load up about another 5,000 historic images, and we take about 1,500 images per annum.
This is not a problem for PSE.
I have played with databases, so if i can get into the organizer database (at least to do backups), ideally with Access, that would be brilliant. Any suggestions?
If you are going to play with the database through Acess, I think you will fail. I believe that PSE uses SQLite as its database, so you have to use SQLite to view the contents. If you are going to do this, work only on a copy of the database. As this is a long-standing bug in PSE (since at least PSE6), and no one that I know of has found a workaround, and people have reported that the rest of PSE behaves as if the photos are where they are expected to be, my guess is that the bug is in the way PSE displays the photo location in folders. And if that's the case, that the database is correct and its only the display that is incorrect, then there's really nothing you can do to fix that; monkeying around with the database itself won't help.
whereas I had complete confidence in Adobe products being a long time Photoshop fan, I am now taken aback, so any help would be much appreciated.
I agree with you, this is a shame that PSE has this problem and it has gone unfixed since PSE6. Your choices are:
use tags and captions and notes to organize in Thumbnail view, and not use Folder Location View
stop using Organizer, use your operating system to browse your folders, only use the PSE Editor
switch to Lightroom, which has a quality Organizer (called the "Library Module") that doesn't seem to have this particular bug, and in general seems very solid, behaves well and is relatively bug free. (Lightroom 3 currently on sale in the vicinity of $79 (USD) as the anticipation is that Lightroom 4 will be released soon)
switch to other organizing software, there are many, but I make no recommendations as I have tried only PSE and Lightroom

PSE10, Auto Analyzer freezes the hell over

Hi,
I am in trouble with PSE10 Auto Analyzer. This feature nver worked well and v10 is even worse. I have a good PC but Auto analyzer just freezes the whole thing. It even lock the PC off the Internet.
Exemple, 6000 pictures catalog, 8 CPU, 12GB of ram, SSD Drive, WIn7 Ulti.
PSE10 freezes. I tried to disable all Auto Analyzer in the options, it looks a little better.
Also I tried a couple time to run Auto Analyzer, then the progress bar show Starting Auto Analyzer 0% and stay stuck there for hours. The PC cannot even be accessed remotely. Have to force reboot from the power button.
I am not happy with PSE10, it looks even worse than PSE7, 8 or 9.
Any idea why this is sooo bad?

My PC is new, rated at 7.1
I had Photoshop organiser since 2002, the Element since 2004 for several versions and 3 computers. Actually, I was already using photoshop back in 1991.
By moving the files around and loosing some of them sometimes, I may have ended up with a bad catalog. I also had issues witht the former PC and PSE9 but not to that extent.
I tried to create a brand new catalog, then I do not get the freeze anymore unless I try the infamous analyzer but I loose all of the classification work I have done over the years.
Also, by moving things from a drive to another and from a directory to another, I get the catalog confused but there is no way I can move 6000 photos from within the organiser.
I find two annoying things, 1) cannot move massive quantities of photos at once from within PSE
2) PSE auto reconnect is searching at random in every drives/folders making this feature a total flop. It would be so much better to be able to limit the search to a specific root folder rather to have this stupid search all over the place behavior.
There are thing I find great in PSE but the things that are not great start to really bug me.
Next thing I want to try is to look into the catalog file, if by any chance it is some kind of xml doc, then I can edit it directly with replace functions rather than letting the software doing a sub-par job.
I may have totally misunderstood PSE even if using it for many years and even if I am profficient in IT but if I did not get it, it mean something is questionable. It should not take a PHD to use PSE.
Is there any chance Adobe can look into my catalog file see what is wrong? The stock repair command find nothing wrong.

Restored Catalog Drive letter confusion

I have Elements 7.0 (20080916.r.508356) running under Vista Home Basic on a Lenovo M57.
I have migrated from a database held on a 1TB USB removable drive attached to a laptop running XP. I backed up the catalog to the USB drive, which when attached to the Lenovo is attached as drive H:
When I re-installed PSE7 on the Lenovo, I went into File, Restore, and selected the backup on the H: drive. I have a copy of all the programs on the E: drive (also a 1TB internal drive), under the folder My Pictures, which is the same folder structure as I had on the H: drive from which I created the catalog backup.
When I go into Organiser an view by Folder location all the files are listed under drive E:\My Pictures\folder name. However, in the display screen where the thumnail pictures appear, the file name is shown as H:\My Pictures\folder name. When I edit a file it wants to save the file to H:
How can I get it to forget about H: and use E: instead. H: is listed as a drive, but there are no folders listed under H:, only E:??? I will continue to use H: as a backup for my files, but want PSE7 to only use E:.
I am very confused by all this.
John Warren
Brisbane, Australia

Jon,
PSE 6 and 7 have numerous bugs with handling mulitple drives, many of which surface when you use backup/restore to move to a new machine.
To diagnose exactly whats happening on your computer, the first step is to download and run the utility psedbtool:
http://www.johnrellis.com/psedbtool/#_Downloading,_Installing,_and
Post the complete contents of the resulting output.log here.

How to fix badly confused catalog??

I used to have two catalogs: one for current or recent shoots (basically 2009 photos), and another for older shoots that I'd finished processing and wanted to archive (basically 2007 and 2008 photos). I decided to merge the two catalogs. I thought I had everything set up properly and thought I knew what I was doing, when I imported the recent catalog (which has fewer photos) into the older catalog.
I can't tell for sure but it's possible that the import worked in the sense that all the files are now visible in one Lightroom catalog. But otherwise, it's a disaster.
Here's what I see in Windows Explorer (in other words, here's how the folders are organized on my hard disk):
My Pictures
--- RAW MASTERS
--- --- 2007
--- --- 2008
--- --- 2009
Terrific. That's what I expect to see in Lightroom. But this is what I see in Lightroom. Well, no, what I actually see in Lightroom is even more messed up than this, but this will give you an idea:
My Pictures
--- RAW MASTERS
--- --- 2007
--- --- 2008
--- RAW MASTERS
--- --- 2009
My Pictures
--- RAW MASTERS
--- --- 2009
Aaargh! I can't figure out what to do. I've tried synchronizing but that doesn't seem to work. And when I try to move the 2009 folder inside the second instance of RAW MASTERS up to the first instance, I'm told that a folder named 2009 already exists at that location and the move is prohibited.
Can anybody suggest a way out of this mess?
Thanks in advance.
Will

Update, based on new info (discovered since my first post), and also a report on how I appear to have resolved the problem.
New information
In my first post, I showed that the My Pictures folder occurred twice in the Lightroom catalog. I initially thought that this was an example of Lightroom's confusion. Actually, that particular duplication was NOT a mistake on Lightroom's part. I just noticed that there were two folders defined on my C: drive inside the Documents and Settings folder, a folder named "Will" (= name of my login account) and a folder named "WP". The folder named "Will" is my actual login account folder, containing all of my documents (not just photos, but also web sites, etc.). The folder named "Will" contained nothing but a My Pictures folder. Inside that was ANOTHER My Pictures folder. And inside that there were a few photo folders. Weird. I have no idea where "WP" came from. Anyway I determined quickly that the few folders found in that odd location, namely,
C:\Documents and Settings\WP\My Pictures\My Pictures\2009\
were duplicates of folders that are found in the right place (inside the copy of My Pictures that belonged to user hierarchy "Will"), so I deleted them. Then I synchronized that instance of the My Pictures folder in Lightroom - which caused it to be removed.
Cleaning up the mess
That left me with just one My Pictures folder, which was progress. At this point, it looked like this:
My Pictures
ALL PIX RAW MASTERS
2009
ALL PIX RAW MASTERS
2007
2008
I confirmed that these two instances of "ALL PIX RAW MASTERS" were the same. As I mentioned earlier, I was unable to move the 2009 folder and its contents into the second instance of the parent folder, because Lightroom would tell me that there was already a folder named 2009 in that location, and for the same reason I could not move 2007 and/or 2008 into the first instance of the parent folder.
So what I did was create a new folder named simply "Raw" inside My Pictures. I created this folder in Lightroom. I was then able to move the three year folders into that new folder, which left me with this:
My Pictures
ALL PIX RAW MASTERS (O FILES)
ALL PIX RAW MASTERS (O FILES)
Raw
2009
2007
2008
At which point I simply "removed" both instances of ALL PIX RAW MASTERS, and then renamed "Raw".
So it seems that I'm back in business.
Brief opinion
Having just spent about 3 hours fighting with Lightroom, I hope I may be permitted to vent very slightly.
I like Lightroom 2.5 generally very much. I'm trying out the Lightroom 3 beta and like the improvements there, too. In addition to liking the program very much, I consider myself a fairly advanced user - not a kung fu master, but pretty adept. I routinely help other photographers with Lightroom matters.
My only serious complaint about Lightroom - a complaint I've had since version 1 - is that moving and merging and renaming folders in the hierarchy is confusing and fraught with peril. I am sure that Martin Evening has very few problems managing his catalogs. But most of us do this kind of thing - merging catalogs - only very seldom. And so it's natural that, when we need to manage folders and catalogs, we're going to be doing it tentatively, without confidence, and possibly without a complete grasp of what is expected. There are many possible scenarios here (moving one catalog to another hard disk, merging catalogs on the same disk, merging catalogs on different disk, splitting a catalog in two or three, etc.). So I think it's a bit much to expect a user to pull the books off the shelf and read the file management chapters of all of them, in order to understand what Lightroom expects of me.
That's why I think Lightroom does such a terrible job on this one score. I don't have this problem moving folders around on my hard disk directly, in the Windows Explorer. You should, I think, be able to move files around in Windows Explorer (or the Mac Finder) and have Lightroom sort the changes out automatically - or at least be able to sort them out when asked to do so.
At the same time that I was combining my Lightroom catalogs of raw files, I was also combining what were originally quite separate folder structures containing exported jpegs. I manage these in Picasa, not in Lightroom. With the jpegs, I simply moved the folders around in Windows Explorer and put them where I wanted them. When I opened Picasa 3.5, it had to spend a little time adjusting - but I did not have to do a thing. Picasa just sorts it out automatically.
I sometimes wish I could use Picasa as my file management tool and Lightroom simply for processing.
Anyway, let me say again how great I think Lightroom is as a digital darkroom for processing the thousands and thousands of images I have. I just wish it was easier to manage the folders in Lightroom.
Will

Catalog and image location confusion

New to this softwear.
imported photo from cd into lightroom. thumbnail images found in catalog. found in library. go to develop and light room can not locate file since its points to an cd drive.
so i deleted the image and loaded the image outside of lightroom on to the c drive. and from the c drive imported the image into lightroom. lightroom can not fide the file.
how to solve this problemm?ed catalog?

In general, you will not get an answer from Adobe in these forums. Instead, you will get an answer from other users, which in most cases, are sufficient to solve the problem.
Your specific problem is addressed in your other threads.

Print Module confusion - settings, templates, and migration to new system.

I'm a little confused by some aspects of the print module. First, I tried copying some of my print templates from Lr1.3 over to the print template folder in 2.3, and they didn't' seem to work right. The layout display in the upper left preview window did not match the layout of the main preview window, and many of the settings were not right, such as what printer was supposed to be used. Is there a problem with using 1.3 templates in 2.3?
Next, I can select a paper type in the printer driver AND in the Lr color management section. Do these each do different things?
Also, what does the Lr "Print Resolution" do -- i.e. how does it interact with the printer driver "quality" options, which sets the resolution? Does one setting override the other? If select the maximum quality (i.e. max resolution) in my printer driver settings, should I uncheck the Lr "Print Resolution" setting?
Finally, when I migrate from one system to another, am I supposed to manually copy over all my templates? I would have thought that these would be saved in the catalog, but apparently this is not the case.
Thanks for clarification on these issues,
Larry

Does anybody have any feedback on this? I could really use some help since even after numerous searches I still cannot find the answers to the question above.
Thanks,
Larry

LR 4.4 (and 5.0?) catalog: a problem and some questions

Introductory Remark
After several years of reluctance this March I changed to LR due to its retouching capabilities. Unfortunately – beyond enjoying some really nice features of LR – I keep struggling with several problems, many of which have been covered in this forum. In this thread I describe a problem with a particular LR 4.4 catalog and put some general questions.
A few days ago I upgraded to 5.0. Unfortunately it turned out to produce even slower ’speed’ than 4.4 (discussed – among other places – here: http://forums.adobe.com/message/5454410#5454410), so I rather fell back to the latter, instead of testing the behavior of the 5.0 catalog. Anyway, as far as I understand this upgrade does not include significant new catalog functions, so my problem and questions below may be valid for 5.0, too. Nevertheless, the incompatibility of the new and previous catalogs suggests rewriting of the catalog-related parts of the code. I do not know the resulting potential improvements and/or new bugs in 5.0.
For your information, my PC (running under Windows 7) has a 64-bit Intel Core i7-3770K processor, 16GB RAM, 240 GB SSD, as well as fast and large-capacity HDDs. My monitor has a resolution of 1920x1200.
1. Problem with the catalog
To tell you the truth, I do not understand the potential necessity for using the “File / Optimize Catalog” function. In my view LR should keep the catalog optimized without manual intervention.
Nevertheless, when being faced with the ill-famed slowness of LR, I run this module. In addition, I always switch on the “Catalog Settings / General / Back up catalog” function. The actually set frequency of backing up depends on the circumstances – e.g. the number of RAW (in my case: NEF) files, the size of the catalog file (*.lrcat), and the space available on my SSD. In case of need I delete the oldest backup file to make space for the new one.
Recently I processed 1500 photos, occupying 21 GB. The "Catalog Settings / Metadata / Automatically write changes into XMP" function was switched on. Unfortunately I had to fiddle with the images quite a lot, so after processing roughly half of them the catalog file reached the size of 24 GB. Until this stage there had been no sign of any failure – catalog optimizations had run smoothly and backups had been created regularly, as scheduled.
Once, however, towards the end of generating the next backup, LR sent an error message saying that it had not been able to create the backup file, due to lack of enough space on the SSD. I myself found still 40 GB of empty space, so I re-launched the backup process. The result was the same, but this time I saw a mysterious new (journal?) file with a size of 40 GB… When my third attempt also failed, I had to decide what to do.
Since I needed at least the XMP files with the results of my retouching operations, I simply wanted to save these side-cars into the directory of my original input NEF files on a HDD. Before making this step, I intended to check whether all modifications and adjustments had been stored in the XMP files.
Unfortunately I was not aware of the realistic size of side-cars, associated with a certain volume of usage of the Spot Removal, Grad Filter, and Adjustment Brush functions. But as the time of the last modification of the XMP files (belonging to the recently retouched pictures) seemed perfect, I believed that all my actions had been saved. Although the "Automatically write changes into XMP" seemed to be working, in order to be on the safe side I selected all photos and ran the “Metadata / Save Metadata to File” function of the Library module. After this I copied the XMP files, deleted the corrupted catalog, created a new catalog, and imported the same NEF files together with the side-cars.
When checking the photos, I was shocked: Only the first few hundred XMP files retained all my modifications. Roughly 3 weeks of work was completely lost… From that time on I regularly check the XMP files.
Question 1: Have you collected any similar experience?
2. The catalog-related part of my workflow
Unless I miss an important piece of knowledge, LR catalogs store many data that I do not need in the long run. Having the history of recent retouching activities is useful for me only for a short while, so archiving every little step for a long time with a huge amount of accumulated data would be impossible (and useless) on my SSD. In terms of processing what count for me are the resulting XMP files, so in the long run I keep only them and get rid of the catalog.
Out of the 240 GB of my SSD 110 GB is available for LR. Whenever I have new photos to retouch, I make the following steps:
create a ‘temporary’ catalog on my SSD
import the new pictures from my HDD into this temporary catalog
select all imported pictures in the temporary catalog
use the “File / Export as Catalog” function in order to copy the original NEF files onto the SSD and make them used by the ‘real’ (not temporary) new catalog
use the “File / Open Catalog” function to re-launch LR with the new catalog
switch on the "Automatically write changes into XMP" function of the new catalog
delete the ‘temporary’ catalog to save space on the SSD
retouch the pictures (while keeping and eye on due creation and development of the XMP files)
generate the required output (TIF OR JPG) files
copy the XMP and the output files into the original directory of the input NEF files on the HDD
copy the whole catalog for interim archiving onto the HDD
delete the catalog from the SSD
upon making sure that the XMP files are all fine, delete the archived catalog from the HDD, too
Question 2: If we put aside the issue of keeping the catalog for other purposes then saving each and every retouching steps (which I address below), is there any simpler workflow to produce only the XMP files and save space on the SSD? For example, is it possible to create a new catalog on the SSD with copying the input NEF files into its directory and re-launching LR ‘automatically’, in one step?
Question 3: If this I not the case, is there any third-party application that would ease the execution of the relevant parts of this workflow before and/or after the actual retouching of the pictures?
Question 4: Is it possible to set general parameters for new catalogs? In my experience most settings of the new catalogs (at least the ones that are important for me) are copied from the recently used catalog, except the use of the "Catalog Settings / Metadata / Automatically write changes into XMP" function. This means that I always have to go there to switch it on… Not even a question is raised by LR whether I want to change anything in comparison with the settings of the recently used catalog…
3. Catalog functions missing from my workflow
Unfortunately the above described abandoning of catalogs has at least two serious drawbacks:
I miss the classification features (rating, keywords, collections, etc.) Anyway, these functions would be really meaningful for me only if covering all my existing photos that would require going back to 41k images to classify them. In addition, keeping all the pictures in one catalog would result in an extremely large catalog file, almost surely guaranteeing regular failures. Beyond, due to the speed problem tolerable conditions could be established only by keeping the original NEF files on the SSD, which is out of the question. Generating several ‘partial’ catalogs could somewhat circumvent this trap, but it would require presorting the photos (e.g. by capture time or subject) and by doing this I would lose the essence of having a single catalog, covering all my photos.
Question 5: Is it the right assumption that storing only some parts (e.g. the classification-related data) of catalog files is impossible? My understanding is that either I keep the whole catalog file (with the outdated historical data of all my ‘ancient’ actions) or abandon it.
Question 6: If such ‘cherry-picking’ is facilitated after all: Can you suggest any pragmatic description of the potential (competing) ways of categorizing images efficiently, comparing them along the pros and contras?
I also lose the virtual copies. Anyway, I am confused regarding the actual storage of the retouching-related data of virtual copies. In some websites one can find relatively old posts, stating that the XMP file contains all information about modifying/adjusting both the original photo and its virtual copy/copies. However, when fiddling with a virtual copy I cannot see any change in the size of the associated XMP file. In addition, when I copy the original NEF file and its XMP file, rename them, and import these derivative files, only the retouched original image comes up – I cannot see any virtual copy. This suggests that the XMP file does not contain information on the virtual copy/copies…
For this reason whenever multiple versions seem to be reasonable, I create renamed version(s) of the same NEF+XMP files, import them, and make some changes in their settings. I know, this is far not a sophisticated solution…
Question 7: Where and how the settings of virtual copies are stored?
Question 8: Is it possible to generate separate XMP files for both the originally retouched image and its virtual copy/copies and to make them recognized by LR when importing them into a new catalog?

A part of my problems may be caused by selecting LR for a challenging private project, where image retouching activities result in bigger than average volume of adjustment data. Consequently, the catalog file becomes huge and vulnerable.
While I understand that something has gone wrong for you, causing Lightroom to be slow and unstable, I think you are combining many unrelated ideas into a single concept, and winding up with a mistaken idea. Just because you project is challenging does not mean Lightroom is unsuitable. A bigger than average volume of adjustment data will make the catalog larger (I don't know about "huge"), but I doubt bigger by itself will make the catalog "vulnerable".
The causes of instability and crashes may have NOTHING to do with catalog size. Of course, the cause MAY have everything to do with catalog size. I just don't think you are coming to the right conclusion, as in my experience size of catalog and stability issues are unrelated.
2. I may be wrong, but in my experience the size of the RAW file may significantly blow up the amount of retouching-related data.
Your experience is your experience, and my experience is different. I want to state clearly that you can have pretty big RAW files that have different content and not require significant amounts of retouching. It's not the size of the RAW that determines the amount of touchup, it is the content and the eye of the user. Furthermore, item 2 was related to image size, and now you have changed the meaning of number 2 from image size to the amount of retouching required. So, what is your point? Lots of retouching blows up the amount of retouching data that needs to be stored? Yeah, I agree.
When creating the catalog for the 1500 NEF files (21 GB), the starting size of the catalog file was around 1 GB. This must have included all classification-related information (the meaningful part of which was practically nothing, since I had not used rating, classification, or collections). By the time of the crash half of the files had been processed, so the actual retouching-related data (that should have been converted properly into the XMP files) might be only around 500 MB. Consequently, probably 22.5 GB out of the 24 GB of the catalog file contained historical information
I don't know exactly what you do to touch up your photos, I can't imagine how you come up with the size should be around 500MB. But again, to you this problem is entirely caused by the size of the catalog, and I don't think it is. Now, having said that, some of your problem with slowness may indeed be related to the amount of touch-up that you are doing. Lightroom is known to slow down if you do lots of spot removal and lots of brushing, and then you may be better off doing this type of touch-up in Photoshop. Again, just to be 100% clear, the problem is not "size of catalog", the problem is you are doing so many adjustments on a single photo. You could have a catalog that is just as large, (i.e. that has lots more photos with few adjustments) and I would expect it to run a lot faster than what you are experiencing.
So to sum up, you seem to be implying that slowness and catalog instability are the same issue, and I don't buy it. You seem to be implying that slowness and instability are both caused by the size of the catalog, and I don't buy that either.
Re-reading your original post, you are putting the backups on the SSD, the same disk as the working catalog? This is a very poor practice, you need to put your backups on a different physical disk. That alone might help your space issues on the SSD.

How to get the last SCN number from catalog database

Hi All,
I have a catalog database where my PROD database is registered. Evereyday at 12AM rman takes the hot backup of PROD.
Now I want to create a auxillary database using the last RMAN backup, for this I want to restore using the SCN from the catalog views.
Please help me to get the SCN number from the RC_ views.
Regards,
Bikram

asifkabirdba wrote:
Current SCN:
Use the dbms_flashback package to get the current SCN. This value will be used during instantiation at the destination site, as well as by RMAN when duplicating the database.
SET SERVEROUTPUT ON
DECLARE
until_scn NUMBER;
BEGIN
until_scn:=
DBMS_FLASHBACK.GET_SYSTEM_CHANGE_NUMBER;
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('Until SCN: ' || until_scn);
END;
Regards
Asif KabirHello,
i am a bit confused,
SELECT CURRENT_SCN FROM V$DATABASE;
6272671324
and from your package
SET SERVEROUTPUT ON
DECLARE
until_scn NUMBER;
BEGIN
until_scn:=
DBMS_FLASHBACK.GET_SYSTEM_CHANGE_NUMBER;
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('Until SCN: ' || until_scn);
END;Until SCN: 6272671267
why are they different, and why first result is lower than yours? can you explain please, thank you
Ugur MIHCI

How can I make different catalogs from the same image

How can I make different catalogs from the same image where that image has been changed in some way between the catalogs. For instance if I wanted to have a catalogs for cropped images and have 3 catalogs one for 4x6 , 5x7 and 8x10 cropping. When I tried this , if I changed a file in one catalog that same image in the other would change also.

Do not confuse the creation of the crops and the display in collections per crop ratio.
Of course one virtual copy (VC) per crop ratio is needed. If the same image should be cropped in all 3 mentioned ratios there would be 3 VCs.
The OP asked how to have/see a set of same-crop-ratios.
After having created the virtual copies for whatever crop ratio he wants, the way to display this result in the fashion asked for is via smart collections, provided they can be found. Without a plugin the naming of the VC with the crop ratio applied is a straight way to achieve that.
IF the wish is to get new crops automatically added. (See my answers 2+3)
IF the wish is to creat static collections per crop ratio for a certain set of images, I'd go as follows:
1. Select all images you want to have cropped in that way,.
2. With this selection click on the + to add another collection and fill the dialog box like this:
Then navigate into this newly created selection and perform the 4x6 crop - according to taste individually or by synchronizing the first crop.
Cornelia

Need help with multiple users of a catalog

I run Lightroom in a small office and several of us have to have access to the image catalog, using Windows XP. To accomplish this, the images were placed on a shared external drive, the catalog was created on a USB flash drive and Lightroom was loaded on multiple computers. Everything has been fine and this strategy will work for us. However, when I move the catalog to another computer (logged on as a different user) the catalog appears with all keywords and image adjustments, but my import presets are not available. The preset files are located in the preset folder that accompanies the catalog, but they won't appear in the drop down box within Lightroom when attempting to import images. My temporary solution is to recreate the import presets, which I have done for one other user so far, but I don't want to have to do that for each new user. If one looks for the preset file, it is located in a folder called "user", but I have not figured out how to get Lightroom to recognize and use the preset files after logging on as a different user. When I move the catalog (USB flash drive) back to my computer (original computer, original user), then everything is fine again and I can see and use al the presets.
Anyone use Lightroom accross users or machines? Any way to get Lightroom to "see" and use import presets by multiple users?
Thanks for any help!

Not really sure if this will help or confuse things...
If each user has a preset folder/directory, could you not create a symlink that points to oen on the USB device? And then keep all the presets there?
Disclaimer: i have not tried this, nor looked at it much, just a thought as i was reading your post. If it doesn't apply, ignore me!
Cheers!

Lightroom 5 catalog issue. please help

hallo everybody,
I really need some help. When i open Lightroom 5, it gets confused and the catalog is not complete anymore. Half of them are missing.It shows the pictures on my SD card,which I always format.In other backups it's the same thing. So, I had to reimport all pictures which did month's ago and now the same AGAIN That can't be....
please help.
thanks to everyone that replies.

Are you speaking about Lightroom? By "main page", do you mean the Library Module with "All Photographs" selected?
If so, right-click on any photo and select Go To Folder in Library and it will highlight the folder containing this photo in the left-hand side Folder Panel.

Images (w/correct meta data) are in catalog and on disk, but LR 5.7 considers them new on Import

For reasons explained below, I want to try to re-import all my images into LR and hope that none/few are in fact considered new and are imported. Yet, for some folders, LR is apparently unable to detect that my source images are already in the catalog, and are on disk, and that the source file meta data matches what LR knows about the images. When I click an image in LR and Show in Finder, I do see the imported image on disk. I can edit the image in the Develop module. So, it seems good, but all is not well.   Sorry for the long post here, but I wanted to provide as much info as I could, as I am really seeking your help, which I'd very much appreciate.
Here are some screen shots that illustrate the problem:
Finder contents of the original images
LR folder hierarchy
an image as seen in LR
Finder content of external LR copy of images
import showing 10 "new" photos
The original images ... (I'm not sure why the file date is April 2001 but the actual image date is January 2011; I may have just used the wrong date on the folder name?)
The LR folder hierarchy ...
An image as seen in LR ...
The external folder containing the images in the LR library
But on import of the original source folder, LR sees 10 "new" photos ...
I tried "Synchronize Folder ..." on this particular folder, and it simply hangs half-way through as seen in the screen shot below.   IS THIS AN LR BUG?   This is really odd, since "Synchronize Folder ..." on the top-level folder completes quickly.
I have a spreadsheet of of the EXIF data for the original files and those created by LR. (I extracted this info using the excellent and free pyExifToolGui graphical frontend for the command line tool ExifTool by Phil Harvey.)   Almost all of the Exif data is the same, but LR has added some additional info to the files after import, including (of course) keywords. However, I would not have expected the differences I found to enter into the duplicate detection scheme. (I didn't see a way to attach the spreadsheet to this posting as it's not an "image".)
I'm running LR 5.7 on a 27" iMac with Yosemite 10.10.2, having used LR since LR2. I have all my original images (.JPEGs and RAWs of various flavors) on my internal drive on the Mac.   To me this is like saving all my memory cards and never re-using them.   Fortunately, these files are backed up several ways.   I import these images (copying RAWs as DNG) into LR with a renaming scheme that includes the import number, original file creation date and original file name.   There should be one LR folder for each original source file folder, with the identical folder name (usually a place and date). I store the LR catalog and imported images on an external drive. Amazingly and unfortunately my external drive failed as did it's twin, same make/size drive that I used as a backup with Carbon Copy Cloner.   I used Data Rescue 4 to recover to a new disk what I thought was almost all of the files on the external drive.
So, I thought all would be well, but, when I tried "Synchronize Folder" using the top-level folder of my catalog, the dialog box appeared saying there were over 1000 "New" photos that had not been imported. This made be suspicious that I had failed to recover everything.   But actually things are much worse than I thought..   I have these counts of images:
80,0061 files in 217 folders for my original source files (some of these may be (temporary?) copies that I actually don't want to import into LR)
51,780 files in 187 folders on my external drive containing the LR photo library
49,254 images in the top-level folder in the LR catalog (why different from the external file count?)
35,332 images found during import of the top-level folder containing original images
22,560 images found as "new" by LR during import
1,074 "new" images reported by Synchronize Folder ... on the top-level folder in the catalog; different from import count
Clearly things are badly out of sync.   I'd like to be sure I have all my images in LR, but none duplicated.   Thus, I want to try to import the entire library and have LR tell me which photos are new. I have over 200 folders in LR. I am now proceeding to try importing each folder, one at a time, to try to reconcile the differences and import the truly missing images. This will be painful. And it may not be enough to fully resolve the above discrepancies.
Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions? I'd really appreciate your help!
Ken

Thanks for being on the case, dj!   As you'll see below, YOU WERE RIGHT!      But I am confused.
    1. Does the same problem exist if you try to import (not synchronize) from that folder? In other words, does import improperly think these are not duplic
YES. Import improperly thinks they are NOT duplicates, but they are in fact the same image (but apparently not the EXACT SAME bytes on disk!)
    2. According to the documentation, a photo is considered a duplicate "if it has the same, original filename; the same Exif capture date and time; and the same file size."
This is my understanding too.
    3. Can you manually confirm that, for an example photo, that by examining the photo in Lightroom and the photo you are trying to synchronize/import, that these three items are identical?
NO, I CAN'T! The ORIGINAL file name (in the source folder) is the SAME as it was when I first imported that folder. That name is used as part of the renaming process using a custom template. However, the file SIZES are different.    Here is the Finder Get Info for both files. Initially, they appeared to be the same SIZE, 253KB, looking at the summary. But, if you look at the exact byte count, however, the file sizes are DIFFERENT: 252,632 for the original file and 2252,883 for the already-imported file:
This difference alone is enough to indicate why LR does not consider the file a duplicate.
Furthermore, there IS one small difference in the EXIF data regarding dates ... the DateTimeOriginal:
                                                                                               CreateDate              DateTimeDigitized                    DateTimeOriginal              FileModifyDate                              ModifyDate
ORIGINAL name: P5110178.JPG                                     2001:05:11 15:27:18    2001:05:11 15:27:18-07:00        2001:01:17 11:29:00        2011:01:17 11:29:00-07:00       2005:04:24 14:41:05
After LR rename: KRJ_0002_010511_P5110178.JPG    2001:05:11 15:27:18    2001:05:11 15:27:18-07:00        2001:05:11 15:27:18        2011:01:17 11:29:02-07:00       2005:04:24 14:41:05
So ... now I see TWO reasons why LR doesn't consider these duplicates.   Though the file NAME is the same (as original), the file sizes ARE slightly different. The EXIF "DateTimeOriginal" is DIFFERENT.   Therefore, LR considers them NOT duplicates.
     4a. With regards to the screen captures of your images and operating system folder, I do not see that the filename is the same; I see the file names are different. Is that because you renamed the photos in Lightroom (either during import or afterwards)?
I renamed the file on import using a custom template ...
        4b. Can you show a screen capture of this image that shows the original file name in the Lightroom metadata panel (it appears when the dropdown is set to EXIF and IPTC)?
SO ....
The METADATA shown by LR does NOT include the ORIGINAL file name (but I think I have seen it displayed for other files?). The File SIZE in the LR metadata panel (246.96 KB) is different from what Finder reports (254 KB). There are three "date" fields in the LR metadata, and five that I've extracted from the EXIF data.   I'm not sure which EXIF date corresponds to the "Data Time" shown in the LR metadata.
I don't understand how these differences arose.   I did not touch the original file outside LR.   LR is the only program that touches the file it has copied to my external drive during import. (though it was RECOVERED from a failed disk by Data Rescue 4),
NOW ...
I understand WHY LR considers the files different (but not how they came to be so). The question now is WHAT DO I DO ABOUT IT?   Is there any tool I can use to adjust the original (or imported) file's SIZE and EXIF data to match the file LR has? Any way to override or change how LR does duplicate detection?
Thanks so very much, dj.   Any ideas on how to get LR to ignore these (minor) differences would be hugely helpful.

Catalog Confusion

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for