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Another view on multiple catalogs
My first love is landscape photography, but sometimes I need to resort to other types of photography to support my habit. This means doing product, stock, and portrait photography on a semi-regular basis. Especially with product and portrait work, I seldom need to return to images after an assignment, but I can’t afford to get rid of them completely either. Still, they take up space and add to the list of folders and collections in Lightroom.
Along the lines of James Duncan Davidson’s blog post of March 2, I’ve decided to use multiple catalogs to help my workflow. Unlike James though, I have a very easy way to tell where images might live. All my portrait work goes into a dedicated portraits catalog, which makes it easy to find clients when needed and has the added benefit of reducing the number of keywords in my main catalog.
The exception, and it seems that there is always an exception to everything, is stock photography. Originally I planned to have a dedicated stock catalog like I do for product and portrait work. But, I quickly realized that while I might shoot certain images specifically for stock, I’m often going through product and general images for specific stock requests. So, rather than a standalone catalog for stock, I use a combination of keywords and collections across multiple catalogs. If I shoot a subject specifically for stock, it goes into either the product or general catalog depending on the subject matter, tagged with the stock keyword, and when the image is submitted I add it to the stock collection.
I also use temporary catalogs when shooting in the field and editing on my laptop. I do my initial edits and keywording in the evenings, and when I get back I merge the images into the appropriate catalog on my office system. I also have the option to update the XMP file automatically selected to insure my keywords and adjustments migrate to the new catalog. Go to File > Catalog Settings and select the Metadata panel, then check the Automatically write changes into XMP checkbox.
I find that using multiple catalogs streamlines my workflow, and if you have the type of imagery that lends itself to this type of division, you might give it a try. If you decide it doesn’t work for you, it’s easy enough to merge everything into a single catalog.
i also use multiple catalogs for my workflow but i find it easy to just separate them by months. i then label each sub folder with a descriptive name. I thought of merging them to one huge library but i realized that it might be slow for me. it's a pain to look for photos so i just remember the months when i shot the photo.
In the Find command for iView Media Pro you can search mulitple catalogs in a folder, why doesn't the iView Reader do this?? I'm trying to maintain a 20,000 digital pic catalog which is apparently to big for one catalog b/c it won't search at all. But now its pointless to break it up into multiples if were going to have to search each catalog individually! Free game downloads
Hi Polla -
Reader really wasn't intended for use with an entire catalog or group of catalogs, but as a way for Media users to share files with clients in a catalog without requiring them to own a full copy. So, you'd normally select a set of files for your client, placing them in a new catalog that you'd send along with the reader.
Jon
I've just started using multiple catalogs, and struggling with it every step of the way.
At first I started cataloging every month, but realized how dreadfully painful it was to guess which month I shot a particular image.
Then I switched to having separate catalogs for each event I shoot, and another for landscapes & nature photography. This seems to work the best, but trying to transfer a single image from one catalog to another is a nail-biting experience.
hello,I need some help!!! just started using lightroom, great application! just purchased a external hard-drive also as my Mac memory is all full and since I filled all my images in lightroom, what do I do next, do I have to delete all the pictures in lightroom and copy them over to my new hard-drive and then drag them back to lightroom so then lightroom can detect them and the other hardrive, surely there is a quicker solution to this! I'm confused in how to use separate catalog's mentioned above! any suggestions would be great!
Hi Christian -
The easiest way to do this would be to Export Catalog from Lightroom (File > Export as Catalog) and have it placed on your new drive. Then you can open the catalog with everything intact including your collections, keywords, ratings, etc.
Jon