Wedding and Lightroom Catalogs

I was curious as to whether folks create a new catalog for every wedding shoot? I know that if you go this route its faster using LR but searching across catalogs for keywords etc is not doable with this approach so hence the poll and your thoughts?

Everything in one catalog, spread across multiple drives. Not all the drives have to be on and connected; I only need my archive drives when I need to retrieve something from the archive.

To my understanding, older versions of Lightroom (3 and earlier) had performance issues with extremely large catalogs, but those issues are pretty much resolved in LR4 and 5.

I don't make the most of keywords, though I do use collections in moderation. I use a folder hierarchy that makes sense, and star/color/flag ratings extensively.

I don't shoot weddings, but the events I've shot I've just put the shoots in their own folders, kept in my one catalog.

That way you can, as has been noted, quickly cross-reference keywords and collections and such.

However, there are folks who do prefer to use separate catalogs, such as a different catalog for business, one for hobby, or separate catalogs for specific clients. I don't have a beef with those approaches, it's just that I don't have a photography business, and when I shoot people who may have a privacy concern, well, most of those shots are buried in my computer and are not for "public consumption". If I do have the occasion to "share" such shots they are only available on my Web site via password-protected galleries...

I don't do weddings, but all my work, both private and the few odd paying jobs I do all go into one catalogue. I do though have one exception, I am an instructor with a local cadet force, they have rules which means that I keep all of the photos that I take for them in a separate catalogue on a separate removable drive.

Alan

BigAl007 wrote in post #16765912
I don't do weddings, but all my work, both private and the few odd paying jobs I do all go into one catalogue. I do though have one exception, I am an instructor with a local cadet force, they have rules which means that I keep all of the photos that I take for them in a separate catalogue on a separate removable drive.

Alan

That's a good scenario!

Another instance where having separate catalogs can come in handy is if you are working with another photo editor (one who has the compatible version of Lightroom) and you have an arrangement to pass the photos from a shoot over to them. Copying the photos as well as the catalog over will enable them to have the Raw files and the edits you've done stored in the catalog, although another option would be to Save the Metadata to (an xmp sidecar) File. Those files can be read by LR as well as Photoshop Camera Raw when you open/import the images.

one catalog. It's pretty much meant to be that way. keyword them or sort by date etc. Switching catalogs is a pain since LR has to shut down and restart. Imagine you want to look for your best shots of the year, you'll be opening and closing catalogs like crazy.

I do have 3 catalogs, one for the kid's photos they take with their cameras, don't want to root through those, one for my model/nude shoots, they don't need to show up when I show family pictures, and one for everything else, spreading over some 6 years now. No problems with load speed (LR5).

If you do weddings and also your own hobby/family/etc stuff it might be nice to have separate catalogs for that, but certainly not for every wedding or event.

One catalog for me, although I completely understand the rationale behind separating business / personal images into different catalogs.

Someone once posted either on here or a different forum that they created a new catalog for every.single.shoot, which completely blew my mind.

phantelope wrote in post #16766098
I do have 3 catalogs, one for the kid's photos they take with their cameras, don't want to root through those, one for my model/nude shoots, they don't need to show up when I show family pictures, and one for everything else, spreading over some 6 years now. No problems with load speed (LR5).

Aw, that's where the fun is.
Open the catalog to show off these store architecture photos, and there are the pictures from last Friday's burlesque show. That's a conversation starter right there!

One cat for me as well.

I create a new catalog for every wedding. For my purposes I never have had the need to do queries e.g. that should span across more than one wedding-each is its own self-contained project. Given the latter point, I don't see why I should take a performance hit by having weddings 1 through 70 in the same catalog as the 71st I'm processing. I would very rarely even have a need to see wedding RAWS once I've processed the respective photos.

I swapped to one catalog per client years ago, and have never regretted it. I include any shoot for the client. (engagements, family, kids, etc.) Once I'm done with a client, I don't need LR constantly accessing those folders/images. I have no need for that job being in my face. It gets archived. Done. If they hire me again, I just add the next job to their personal catalog.

Honestly, for weddings where your repeat business is relatively low, AND you don't often need to go back to look at work that's already completed and delivered, that makes a fair amount of sense.

I'm not a pro... but I go one catalog.

If you need to show a catalog to client for review, you could export a catalog and only open that (customize the LR header for a professional or personalized look for the client.) Plus since you've only exported the 'best' they won't see all the other shots you excluded.

From within LR you could then keep clients organized into collections.

Of course, I don't shoot that heavy volume, but do have one large catalog. I thought the recent versions of LR vastly improved performance of larger catalogs... but if you are taking a performance hit that would be an excellent reason to break it down. (Perhaps one catalog per YEAR... that way if keyword search is important, you're not searching every SHOOT individually?)