Starting over in LightRoom?

[photoguy6405]

I have imported and "cataloged" (not really, but it kinda did it anyway) a few dozen photos haphazardly into LightRoom. Now, I want to get serious and start over. I feel that I'd do better, and hopefully not miss anything, or at least as much, if I start fresh. How do I wipe clean the saved catalog information so I can start over? Thanks.

[Victoria Bampton]

Just go to File > New Catalog and choose where you want to put it. You can always go back and delete the existing catalog.

[ssim]

If you are starting fresh and you are going to be using the keywording component of Lightroom I would suggest that you give this some clear thought and planning before commencing to apply words randomly. I built all of my keywords in a text fie first and then imported into Lightroom and keep this updated via the import/export keywords. It is easy to build nested keywords in the text file which is the way I like to work as it keeps the list slightly shorter as you can expand the areas that you need at the time.

[photoguy6405]

In this case I have no keywords assigned yet, so that's one aspect where I really am starting from scratch. I had only imported and manipulated for export to PS.

[PixelMagic]

The only problem I foresee is that if you had previously saved metadata to files by using the CTRL+S command, when you create a new catalog and import the photos the Snapshot panel in the Develop module will have two snapshots "Import" and "Import 2" for every previously imported image.

Its not a big deal but if you're picky like I am it will bug you.

[photoguy6405]

I am picky like that. Stuff like that just drives me up the wall. I shouldn't let it, but it does. Anyway, I don't believe I have saved any metadata (except maybe 1-2 images while playing around), so hopefully it'll be easy to deal with.

If I understand right, LR saves an external file for this information. Might it be as simple as deleting (or renaiming) that file?