Multiple Catalogues

Is it possible to have more than 1 catalogue with PhotoShop Album Starter Ed 3.2? (Running on XP). If so, how do I set it up.
I have a lot of photos and would like to divide up my collection into 3 separate catalogues

You can download the trial version of PSE 6.0 from link www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelwin/. The organizer has many exciting catalog related operations etc. Let me know if you have any comments.

Similar Messages

Best photos across multiple catalogues

Because I have 35k photos, I have divided my collection into multiple catalogues (if I put all the photos in one catalogue everything grinds to a halt). Is there some way to keep an album of the best photos from each catalogue on one of of my catalogues? Maybe export copies of the "best shots" album to a subdirectory and then import those files into one of my catalogues? Or maybe combine the best shots (from multiple catalogues) into a single online album?

Some time back I had also felt a need of Catalog of Catalogs - http://bit.ly/HJ9ZQG

Assigning multiple catalogues in a Master Inspection Characteric

hi,
Pls explain whether multiple catalogues can be assigned to an MIC
Regards,
Sravan

hi
it is not possible.
but what is the reason for giving multiple lots.
it is possible for multiple catalogs other then 1 and 3 Catalog Type
-ashok

Workflow management: multiple catalogues or one master catalogue?

Hi everyone:
I am new to Lightroom 3.2. I am researching the best way to set up my digital workflow. I have a two-year old Macbook with no firewire (only USB), an external monitor (Cinema Display) and I am thinking of buying two ruggeds or 1 T Seagate external hard drives. I have a few questions about setting up my workflow. I have read differing opinions about whether to have one master catalogue and run that off my external hard drive or create separate catalogues with subfolders for images for different clients and a third option would be to have a master catalogue, a master folder for images, and a series of catalogues that index the master folder of images (if that's possible?). I also want to take into account with whatever approach I use that I only have a USB connection. Some of the files I work with are up to 70 MB and I probably only have 32 G of image files at the present time. I'm sure this will increase with time but I would appreciate any suggestions or best practices that you have found to work in your own workspaces. Thanks so much for your time and counsel!

I think a lot of people would say: ONE CATALOG. It doesn't get any simpler than that. Of course, there are many others who create a catalog for each "job" that they have, so they will have to speak for themselves. I enjoy the simplicity of one catalog, I don't want to have to keep switching catalogs, and by having one catalog, I can search across all my photos (you can't do that with multiple catalogs).
You seem to be implying that there is some relationship between folders and catalogs. Folders do not have to relate to catalogs (although they can if you want them to; but you have a single catalog, its not an issue).
A clarification: your catalog file should go on your fastest disk, usually the internal disk. Your photos can go just about anywhere, including internal, USB or network drives. I'm sure there are many others who have 70MB files on a USB disk (in fact, I do), and I just don't think the speed is an issue in this instance
I strongly recommend you keep your workflow as simple as possible. When the photos come out of the camera, put them in somewhere (a folder name of your choosing), and don't move them again (exception: when you need to move them to another hard disk). It doesn't get any simpler than that. Use Lightroom structures like keywords and metadata to achieve organization; do not use folder structure or file names to achieve organization. Use Lightroom for all your photo management. Use Lightroom for browsing your images. Use Lightroom as much as possible!

Multiple catalogues and missing images

I have several overlapping catalogues in my elements 10. The largest is coordinated with the online backup (which is due to be terminated). It has over 400 missing images that cannot be reconnected via the online backup. Some of the wayward images may be in one of the other catalogues or a download to the external hard drive from the online backup (done last year).
1. How can I merge the several catalogues, and should I?
2. How do I serch the the file in the external hard drive? I.e., how do I designate this file in the "browse" dialogue box for where to reconnect? I can navigate to it, but then what?
Thanks in advance.
Dan F

Some of the wayward images may be in one of the other catalogues or a download to the external hard drive from the online backup (done last year).
Images are never stored in the catalog.
How can I merge the several catalogues, and should I?
There is no tool available to merge catalogs. The best you can do is to write the metadata to the files (File->Write Tags...) in each catalog, and then import all photos into a new catalog. In this process, you will lose albums and version sets and stacks and a few other things that I can't remember at this time. So, should you do this? If the drawbacks of the merge process don't make you say "Stop", then YES you should do this. I see no benefit, and huge amounts of confusion, caused by multiple catalogs, made even worse by the fact that they are overlapping.
How do I serch the the file in the external hard drive? I.e., how do I designate this file in the "browse" dialogue box for where to reconnect? I can navigate to it, but then what?
In PSE, you can find the name of the file, and this is the name you would use to search your hard disks using your operating system. Exactly how you do a search depends on your operating system, which you haven't mentioned.

Start from scratch with multiple catalogues

I have just installed Lightroom 4 and want to get started by setting up more than one catalogue but I am not sure if you have to have one catalogue for every photo in addition to the separate catalogues I want for subsets of photos. Can I just go ahead and make several catalogues and sort my photos (which are on my hard drive) into them without making a catalogue that references every photo? Maybe it's a good idea to have one complete catalogue as well in order to make it easier to find that missing photo?Also I have read that it is a good idea to store catalogue files in a separate folder in the root, which appeals to my sense of organisation, but do I need to make separate sub-folders for my individual catalogues or can they just all go into the one folder? Can't wait to get started!
Thanks,
Nick

In my opinion, multiple catalogs is usually a bad idea, especially for beginners. It will lead to confusion, duplication of effort, and waste of time.
The only time I can envision using multiple catalogs is when you have totally non-overlapping subject matter, such as business and work.
The idea you are considering, a "full" catalog, and several sub-catalogs, is just extra work with no benefit. Furthermore, since Lightroom stores edits and metadata in its database, changes you make in one catalog are not reflected in the other catalog(s). Did I say extra work with no benefit? I think I meant extra work with no benefit and significant disadvantages. I'm sure if I wanted to, I could make a list of 10 disadvantages to multiple catalogs.
So, I recommend a single catalog for all your photos. Make your life as simple as possible. You lose nothing by using a single catalog. You can take advantage of Lightroom's capabilities (which are significant) to slice and dice your photos in many many ways, giving you "virtual sub-catalogs" whenever you need them, without the effort of creating and managing a sub-catalog.

Eccomerce / products into multiple catalogues

i am building a eccomerce store.
We sell vehicle accessories and a large percentage of our products will suit multiple vehicles.
i will build a catalogue structure to place the products into but i would like each product that is relative to more than one catalogue to have a uniqu title/name displayed at the large layout.
any ideas how we can achieve this withou making unique products for each vehicle ?
please see site here:
any help would be much appreciated.
www.vanguard-direct.co.uk

You can download the trial version of PSE 6.0 from link www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelwin/. The organizer has many exciting catalog related operations etc. Let me know if you have any comments.

Should I create a new catalogue ?

Hi there,
I saw some youtube seminar from some top guru in Lightroom. I remember his advise was not to create a multiple catalogue and always stick to one catalogue.
I intend to follow his advice but I am now face with this problem below:
My 20TB Drobo 5D external harddisk which I usually uesed for Video editing will be getting full soon. I realise that it's getting filled up so fast because for the last many months, I have been putting timelapse raw photos into the Drobo 5D. All these timelapse raw fotos are catalogued in Lightroom
So, now I intend to moved all these raw timelpase photos into another harddisk so as to free the space in the Drobo 5D. I believe once I moved the raw timelapse fotos from 5D to a new harddisk, will the catalogue be all messed up ?
So what shall I do now ?
Thank you and appreciate the advice of experts here.
Thanks again

dj_paige wrote:
Let me give you the opposite advice. Keep everything in one catalog. There are rarely benefits to multiple catalogs. If you want all photos, time-lapse photos and videos of a particular subject, and they're spread out across two catalogs, you can't retrieve them easily using multiple catalogs. In one catalog, this is a simple search.
ONE CATALOG ONLY.
You can move photos and videos to another hard drive without messing up the catalog by following these instructions: Adobe Lightroom - Find moved or missing files and folders
Thanks dj_paige for your advice which is the same as the guru i saw in the youtube.
I read the link you gave me twice. The author is suggesting we copy the files in a new disk. That means now we have two identical folders at two different disks. This is a good precaution against corrupt files. But surely, after when you load Lightroom, it will be able to locate the files ... which is why I don't understand the section about ? folders and ! files and then do a locate ... Surely the ? and I would not come out since we are copying he same files over to another disk. (remember the author said we delete only when we are satisfied the files in the new disk are not corrupted ?)
Sorry, I am a bit confused about the link. Thanks

Collapsing Multiple Cataloges

New-er to LR. Recently upgraded to 2.0 and read Scott Kelby. Now I realized I have too many catalogues - can collapse into one organized into collection sets.
How do I collapse multiple catalogues into one - retaining the post processing, tagging and collections already defined?
Suggestions?
Cheers, drc

Pick one of them then use the "Import from Catalog" (File emnu) command to add the others to it.

Lost catalogue?

I installed Photoshop Elements 9 on my Win 7 32-bit computer.
I created 2 catalogues.
I can go from one to the other easely after creation.
However when I close Photoshop Elements and come back to it the following day, the Catalogue Dialog box only shows me the Cataloge I was in when I closed the program.
The other catalogue does not appear.
If I try to create it again under the same name: it says that it already exists.
If I go to convert I can see the other catalogue, but when I convert it it does not give me all my recent additions.
When I go to Custom Location to try and retreive it, it does not allow me to access ALL USERS in Users only my own user.
Any idea what is going wrong?
Many thanks
Ray

There was no dialogue to click through. There is only one catalogue on the laptop and I did verify in catalogue preferences that this is the one that is opening up.
I'm not accessing the file through other than a local disk, however I do use network drives as follows:
How I generally operate:
Master Machine (MM) = multiple catalogues on D: of desktop machine
Slave Machine (SM) = laptop with single catalogue.
I work on MM and prepare files for showing to a client.
I go to SM and empty out any previous work.
On SM I link to D: over network and Import catalogue from MM copying all files to a new location on SM.
Network share can now be disconnected.
Then I create previews to ensure I'm able to skip through images quickly.
(*) During review I work only with SM and local files.
Once I have finished with SM I go to MM and connect to C: drive of SM.
Now I import the SM catalogue to the MM catalogue updating XML but not overwriting files.
(*) Yesterday I was at this point. Therefore I'm working on a single catalogue with local files. I had created a slideshow on the SM and created a collection set and collection inside it for the slideshow. I had then flagged items (**) (initial selection), created another collection in my collection set (final selection) which contained the initial selection. Finally I had removed selected items from the collection set to get to the final cut.
(**) This is the process that the flags show is half way through when I go into the catalogue on SM now.
Recovery is simple enough - I zap the catalogue and start again.
But having to ask the client to do their selection again is something I don't want to happen another time, hence looking for ideas of what might have happened.

[Help] Export or copy a virtual copy from one library to a different library?

Hi all,
I need to be able to extract or export a virtual copy (VC) from one library to an other library. The same image that the VC depend on is represented in both libraries but since a friend will be editing some images on his computer and therefor his library I need to be able to import the different VC he makes to my library later on or perhaps merge since he needs the VC I make.
So please, can someone tell me how to do this. If we only make some editing of a RAW we just save the metadata and we are done, but with VC it is different.
Thanks in advance!

Use File > Export as Catalog in the current catalogue, and use File > Import from Catalog
Ask yourself if it's really a smart idea to (a) work with multiple catalogues, and (b) catalogue the same picture in more than one catalogue. As you've found, working with multiple catalogues introduces inefficiencies like trying to copy VCs around, while cataloguing the same image in more than one catalogue is a recipe for confusion.Maybe you should be asking how to resolve the underlying workflow problem?
John

Using more than one catalog

If I have more than 1 catalog, can I start Lightroom with different shortcut so when I click it will start the propper catalog inestead of going to close and reopen the other catalog???
Thanks for Your help

dj_paige wrote:
This is one reason why most people recommend for most situations that you use only one catalog.
Wot dl_paige says.
There may be particular reasons for multiple catalogues, especially for professional photographers. Examples are: to separate personal from business, or to keep work for different clients in separate, water-tight silos.
However, there are enormous benefits in having all photos in one catalogue where that's possible. You can search, sort, collate etc over all your photos. Photos in a catalogue don't all have to be on one drive, and they don't even have to be online. Lightroom can manage hundreds of thousands of images in a catalogue without slowing down significantly.

LR + PS Optimizing Hardware Config on my Win7 PC

Dear All,
I'm looking to speed a few things up in terms of my hardware/software perfromance re. Photo editing (I'm a pro-photog).
Here is my current hardware profile (assembled by an individual contractor - not a brand):
Win 7 Ultimate 64bit
12 GB RAM (Standard issue kingston DDR3. Not that fancy Gaming Ram).
Intel Core i7 3770k CPU 3.50ghz (3rd Gen)
AMD 7750 1GB VGA (Display Memory: 2775 MB Dedicated Memory: 999 MB Shared Memory: 1776 MB)
USB 3.0 ports
Page File: 3737MB used, 14518MB available (Details of Custom pagefile config is next to each drive that is set to have a pagefile)
-Lightroom 4.1 (Multiple Catalogues - One for each shoot (+preview folder) located in the Main folder with the corresponding photos). 60% of all photos are processed and edited with this program.
-Autowrite XMP turned off
-Photoshop CS5 & CS6 30% of all photos are processed with CS5. 10% with CS6 (I can't get some filters (ColourEfex 2) to work with CS6 and haven't bothered sorting that out yet).
-I defrag regularily with MyDefrag
-Multitasking involves running LR, PS and Chrome/Gmail simultaneously.
-Each folder per shoot can range from 4GB - 50GB of Raw/DNG files.
Hard Disks:
(A) 1TB Sata/300 Driver: Windows/OS , LR & PSCS5 & PSCS6 Drive, partitioned 300GB for OS and 630GB for the other partition (B) which holds some music (400GB free). (Overkill I know but this was the only drive I had at one point...) (Pagefile 2000mb)
(C) 2TB Sata/600 Drive: Primary DATA drive, where Folders and their respective LR catalogues are stored and accessed. (Freespace ranges from 850GB-1.1TB) (Pagefile 2000mb)
(D) 2TB Sata/600 Drive: Backup of (E). These should be mirrored but it didn't happen that way for some reason...! (Mostly as above)
(F) 500gb Sata/300 Drive: This was an older drive that ended up as a PS scratch disk (The only one). It is mostly used for movies and LR catalogue backups. The LR Camera Raw Cache is also here (It's set to 100GB). (Freespace: 300GB) (Pagefile 2000mb)
Here are the intensive processes I wouldn't mind speeding up:
1) Importing and converting 1000's of 5D Mark 3 CR2 (RAW) files into DNG
2) Rendering 1:1 previews
3) Exporting apprx 500-800 full-res or Resized Jpegs from DNGs at a time
4) Exporting apprx 100-200 ZIP compressed tifs at a time
5) Saving Tif's with ZIP Compression in Photoshop CS5 & CS6 (If I'd like anything to be faster - it would be this. It can take anywhere from 20 seconds to 1 1/2 minutes to compress (ZIP) and save a flattened Tif with only minor changes eg. Cross process color changes. Resulting Tif files range from 60mb to 120-180mb). I don't have too many large (500GB+) layered Tif files on this computer so we can discount that. I also don't work with video or panoramas (for the forseeable future anyway!)
6) Batch processing SilverEFX Pro actions onto DNGs which are then saved as Tifs (as above in no 5)
*OS and Application start times are quite fast and are not an issue*
-The Usual process is to Export and Save images to the same harddrive as the Source file eg. a DNG on Drive (C) will be exported as a JPG to Drive (C)
I find no difference in terms of speed when Exporting from (C) to (D). Especially when you factor in the time it takes to copy the exported files back to (C) so that they're located in the same folder.
The Questions:
Q1: Does this setup make sense esp with regards to the Win Pagefile? Or is there something that isn't quite recommended (bottlenecking)?
Q2: If so how can I improve it? How might an SSD work best to improve performance esp with regards to point 5) - saving Tifs in PS? Or in LR perhaps as an Export or Save Disc? This may prove cumbersome as it requires the files to be moved back to disc (C) but if the performance gain is significant then whoopee!
Unfortunately SSD's are fairly pricey in the country I live in. A 120GB drive will cost about $160 a(affordable) and my current OS Drive (A) is already at 150GB of usesage (although this can be trimmed down). Mostly I'd rather not have to reinstall Windows and all my PS filers, fonts, minor programs etc but if the performance gain is worth it I could consider it.
The next level of SSD is at a currently unaffordable US$380.
I'd be grateful for any thoughts, this machine has come a long way since it was first assembled...!
Thank you in advance,
KC

Hello Epoch,
I think, there not many things that you can do do speed up your workflow. A few suggestions:
1) Importing and converting 1000's of 5D Mark 3 CR2 (RAW) files into DNG
-> USE an internal USB3 Card Reader ( reads more than 90 MB/s on my SDCard)
2) Rendering 1:1 previews
-> perhapst you skip the geneation of these files on import and first select images to delete. After deletion you can generate the previews.
3) Exporting apprx 500-800 full-res or Resized Jpegs from DNGs at a time
> exporting images is recorded inside the catalog. Updates on your catalog take place on every image you export. Therefor put the catalog on your fastest drive!
4) Exporting apprx 100-200 ZIP compressed tifs at a time
-> from you setup, I saw that you are using a 3770k @3.5 GHz. Overclocking? Mine 2500k is running @4.3Ghz since more than 1 1/2 year.
I tried myself to seedup LR by tweaking Windows7 - does not really worked for me.
You can try LR 4.2. There some reports, that is faster than 4.1.

How many raw images can lightroom 4.2 efficiently process?

I have thousands of images. I have found that a catalogue can only process about 3500 images without slowing down greatly. This means I have to create multiple catalogues to process my images. This is a royal pain. Any suggestons?

qumquat wrote:
can only process about 3500 images without slowing down greatly. This means I have to create multiple catalogues to process my images. This is a royal pain. Any suggestons?
If, by process, you mean exporting whole catalog, and other whole-catalog operations, then you are not alone...
CollectionAgent has a feature "Divide to Conquor" developed to help divide photos into collections (with a specified number of photos each), just for such processing.
(otherwise, catalog should handle hundreds of thousands without affecting basic performance like editing speed, or thumb scrolling, etc... - granted: whole catalog searches will slow down as catalog grows...).
Rob

Library Filter returns images of the wrong date

I have just moved from v3.6 to v4.3.
When using the library window, grid view, I use the filter bu selecting a specific date but images are being returned incorrectly.
For example:
When I select a date i.e. 25/05/2011, I have images being shown for that date but also others with a capture date of 06/02/2012.
How can this issue be corrected? I have over 60,000 images to review.

Although I can understand why you think that a large catalogue might be more easily liable to corruption, I had read Adobe’s own comments which said that there is no problem with them.
In fact, the same source recommends that you should NOT have multiple catalogues.
I’ve just completed the re-import of my last v3 catalogue into the v3 software and then gone through my list of files, doing a manual check of each file on my list and compared its details to those before the upgrade.
The two lists do not match. Where the EXIF data was contained in the catalogue before the upgrade, now there are files where it is missing.
These errors match those seen in the v4 version.
As the upgrade was done on the following day, it isn’t likely to be a corruption of the v3 catalogue but it is probable an effect of the upgrade process as the v3 Catalogue is now showing a modified date the same as the date of the upgrade.
After my review of the files, it is clear that most of the files losing the metadata are Jpegs (approx. 80%), although the remainder are pretty evenly split between RAW and PSD files.
As the v3 is now flawed, I need to recreate the lost data.
The information missing from the metadata includes the EXIF & contact data & creation dates and some files are showing a creation date a year ahead of when they were actually taken.
Where the metadata remains intact on a RAW or a PSD file, is there any way to copy this to the Jpeg where it is missing?
If it can be copied, I presume that it isn't possible to do an automatic process that identifies images where file names are the same albeit the file extension is Jpeg or PSD?
Whilst discussing metadata, can I select the sections of metadata I use, or at can I rearrange the panel to show the sections I want ahead in the sequence above those I don’t so as to reduce the need for scrolling?
(I am aware that capture date can be amended in batches).
I greatly appreciate all your time and advice.
Fingers crossed that this can be finally sorted and not require too much effort from me to put the errors right!

Multiple Catalogues

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