How many catalogs do you have?

Question

I read a tip recently where a photographer recommended creating a new catalog for every client job. His concern was performance and reliability as he added 5-10 thousand images per week from various jobs. I've started doing this myself and it seems logical. Any pros or cons? Do most of you just use the one default catalog?
Thanks
Michael Gauthier

Answer 1

I have just one catalog.  One catalog is the same as one database.  One database can contain a myiad of information on a particular subject.  In the case of Lightroom, the subject is Photography, any kind of Photography.  The catalog can contain Sports images, Landscape images, Portrait images and so on and so forth.  The driving idea behind a single Lightroom catalog is the ability to look in one location for any image that you've placed within the Lightroom catalog.  Using mutiple catalogs to me is a kin to storing my entire music CD collection throughout the house, assigning my jazz collection in the den, my classical collection in the Livingroom, my Top 40 collection in the kitchen and my Hard Rock collection in the garage.  Why would I walk around the entire house making my selection of music for the evening?  Would it not make more sense to place my entire collection of music CD's in one location?
I think the best way to "manage" images would be better served by folder usage, rather than catalog usage.  Using mutiple catalogs requires have to remember additional information I'll need to find a specific image.
Recently, I've been spending time rearanging my images into "Subject" folders such as, Sports Photography, Landscape Photography and Event Photography.
Within the Sports Photography Folder, I  have subfolders for Chicago Bears, Cubs and White Sox.  In the Event Photography, I have subfolders for Easter 2008, Christmas 2007, My Birthday.  Using the file method just described by reducing the number of "root" folders, I've now reduced the total number of folders I have to "slide" through to find the folder that I need.
I've also been making heavy use of Collections to quickly find the "best of the best" within the folders and sub-folders within my single catalog.
Are multiple catalogs ever appropriate?  Sure.  I however limited myself to a second catalog while initialily installing and testing Lightroom.  Once I was confident in using Lightroom's cataloging features and commands, I quickly removed the second "test" catalog.
While my catalog isn't very large currently, about 10K images with 1:1 Rendered Previews, I  have yet to lose or failed to find even one single image.
As to creating a catalog for each and every client might make sense if you anticipate having only a few clients.  What happens when you reach the 25 client mark?  Or the 50 client mark?  Or the 327 client mark?  Would you seriously consider making 327 catalogs?  How long would you be willing to spend going through 327 catalogs with a total of 520,000 images just to find one?  In this particular case, the photographer's concern for performance is badly misplaced.  A much better area for performance concerns should be placed in computer hardware.  Having a faster CPU, shorter disk access times and scratch disk space would serve much better on the performance side than having 327 catalogs to have to search through.
In the end, the discussion of one catalog vs. mutiple catalogs is like the arguement between Chevy vs. Ford.  It's never ending and more than likely once a position is taken, is usaully never changed.