How many Lightroom catalogs do you have?

kiapolo wrote in post #15483996
Why only one?

Because it's quicker and more efficient to go through your entire library!

But like I've said, it's up to personal preference, like so many things!

I have 3, one for all my regular photos, that's day to day family, food, landscape, etc etc, one for my studio sessions (mostly nudes) and one for my kids and their cameras. I did start out with new ones for each year when LR was new, but that really didn't make things easier, made it harder to find things.
But I like to keep the studio work separate - fine art nudes don't really work that well next to the kids in the park, and I keep what my kids shoot in an other catalog just so I don't have to wade through their photos too.

Kind of a similar approach I use with credit cards, I have one family card for everything, one for only my own stuff (amazon, gear, etc), makes it easy to track my expenses and since both always get paid in full I get free accounting support from the bank

I thought about having them for each vacation etc etc, but that's really not practical at all, much easier to keyword all photos from particular events and keep it all in one catalog. That's also what just about every book I have about LR suggests and it makes sense to me, especially since you can't quickly switch but basically have to shut down LR to switch. I have no patience for that.

One catalog, liberal use of keywords, ratings, and smart collections.

kiapolo wrote in post #15483996
Why only one?

Because that's the recommended approach by, well, everyone.

kiapolo wrote in post #15483996
I've split mine by month. Then I split by subject/event.

So for January I have three so far:
1 - Pics of my daughter
2 - My wife's last day at work
3 - Sunrise Hike

I will also create a misc catalog for January, when I get around to talking any non-event/subject specific pics.

Whoa, are you serious? So how many total catalogs do you have? What's your rationale?

I've never seen anyone with more than 3 or 4 catalogs, you must have dozens, if not hundreds. You must constantly be opening and closing Lightroom to switch catalogs, not to mention you have no ability to search, filter, rate, etc across catalogs. I'd really like to understand your reasoning, I can't see a single legitimate argument for more than a few catalogs.

2 catalogs for me. 1 master catalog with everything that I update at the end of each year, and 1 for the current year.

CincyTriGuy wrote in post #15484118
...[Y]ou must have dozens, if not hundreds. You must constantly be opening and closing Lightroom to switch catalogs, not to mention you have no ability to search, filter, rate, etc across catalogs. I'd really like to understand your reasoning, I can't see a single legitimate argument for more than a few catalogs.

I have tons of catalogs. I tried doing one catalog for a while (about a year). Someone suggested creating multiple catalogs divided by time, events, and/or subject, etc... I tried it and tinkered with what form of catalog organization and division that I liked the best and after about 6 months settled into a system I like.

You can always import catalogs into one giant catalog.

Anyway, I've tried both ways and my current system works best for me.

!

kiapolo wrote in post #15483996
I've split mine by month.
.

Whats the point of having multiple empty catalogues?

kiapolo wrote in post #15483996
Why only one?

I've split mine by month. Then I split by subject/event.

So for January I have three so far:
1 - Pics of my daughter
2 - My wife's last day at work
3 - Sunrise Hike

I will also create a misc catalog for January, when I get around to talking any non-event/subject specific pics.

I know that I have more than one catalogue, but I think you really might want to look at some of the Library/catalogue features that you seem to be missing out on. What you are using separate catalogues for most would be doing using Collections/smart collections. The advantage of collections is that images can be in more than one collection at the same time, and retain the same conversion parameters between those collections.If you keyword your images then you have even more options for sorting the images.

By creating different catalogues you really are limiting the power of LR, if an image were to naturally fall in to two (or more) of the categories you use to create catalogues, which one do you put it in? If it is both how do you know which one has the correct, latest set of edits? Edits cannot easily be shared across catalogues. This is what collections are for.

Alan

I have one called Current in which are all of my photos yet to be worked on in various folders under a folder called New, plus all of the photos I've processed in the last month or two. I have another called Old which contains everything prior to what's in Current. Each is on a different drive.

Every now and then I merge the two, drag some the folders containing processed photos from Current into Old. I then split the two again. This way my Current folder is small and fast, which is crucial on this old dual-core 4GB RAM Dell PC.

BigAl007 wrote in post #15487012
I know that I have more than one catalogue, but I think you really might want to look at some of the Library/catalogue features that you seem to be missing out on. What you are using separate catalogues for most would be doing using Collections/smart collections. The advantage of collections is that images can be in more than one collection at the same time, and retain the same conversion parameters between those collections.If you keyword your images then you have even more options for sorting the images.

By creating different catalogues you really are limiting the power of LR, if an image were to naturally fall in to two (or more) of the categories you use to create catalogues, which one do you put it in? If it is both how do you know which one has the correct, latest set of edits? Edits cannot easily be shared across catalogues. This is what collections are for.

Alan

Excellent points, Alan!

I open Lightroom and from there have quick access to, gosh, 12-13 years of photography, I can hop back and forth at will, no matter what or where the subject is!

There can be only one.

Really, with proper keywording and collections I can't see any ppoint in doing anything else.

hollis_f wrote in post #15490660
There can be only one.

Really, with proper keywording and collections I can't see any ppoint in doing anything else.

I saw a post on The Luminous Landscape Forum by a guy who said he has created 24,000 keywords:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/in​dex.php?topic=73813.0
Sort of like an Eskimo with 30 words for snow. Or...(dare I say it?)... 50 shades of grey.

Only one, what's the point to have more when you have all the organization ability in lr plus the ability to filter.

Two for myself, one for the wife. One of mine is all my photos (any subject, all heavily keyworded with probably several thousand keywords), the other is old photos of my various car projects since I dont need those in the main catalog and theyre mostly for reference.

Main LRcat is 400-500MB now. My NAS server keeps snapshots so I dont back up that often, I can revert to any of many snapshots over the last months including one taken almost a year ago. So meh to Lightrooms slow backups.

I take it that Im the only one who does this from reading above lol.

I Organize my files into individual photos per event when I take them off my cards.
I also create an individual catalog for that event and store it in that folder with the raw files.
When I export final images I put them in a subfolder of the event folder the raw files are in.

Personally for me I have been doing it this way for a few years just because I find it easier to know whats what on my Hard drive etc..

Might not be the best way but really works for me