Can you merge catalogs in lightroom

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My book as so many post-its! You should be able to leave the Master catalog where it is. I appreciate the feedback. I was confused about the merging instructions which required the creation of a new catalogue.

I will work it the way you describe in your response. You are a great resource! I recently had to upgrade from LR 4 to LR 6 new camera, new raw format. Now my 80D raw files are recognized.

But my Catalog size went from 78GB to 7. The catalog only contains my most recent loads. I have a backup LR4 format of all the work prior. The catalog only contains your most recent uploads? But yes, you can merge. And then Import from Another Catalog to pull the newer catalog in after that. In this article you recommend finding missing photos before merging catalogues. I have several external USB hard drives. Each is configured similarly, with its own catalogue — hence I re-launch Lightroom 4 each time I use a different USB drive.

I now finally have large enough storage that I want to move my photo files off the USB drives onto the new storage. I then want to create a new master catalogue and import from all the disparate USB drives. The question is: can I use the following steps? A very common error that new Lightroom users make is to create multiple Lightroom catalogs. Over the years I have helped many Lightroom users and have seen many of them create a brand new catalog every time they import.

One individual had over separate Lightroom catalogs! Most Lightroom users only need to have one catalog. Even if you are a photographer, I highly advise you to keep just one catalog, and use Lightroom Collections to keep your personal and professional images separated.

Don't worry, there is a fairly simple fix. You will need to merge your Lightroom catalogs into a single catalog. In my case, I actually had three Lightroom catalogs: one for my Mac mini desktop computer, an old one from a PC desktop that bit the dust two years ago, and my laptop catalog. I recently imported the Mac Mini and the PC catalogs into my laptop catalog, and I thought I would share the process with you.

To merge catalogs, you will essentially be "importing" pictures from one catalog to another catalog. When you do that, all the edits, keywords , ratings, flags, collections , and everything attached to each and every image in that catalog gets brought into the catalog you have open. After using Lightroom for a while, it can be challenging to remember the catalog location.

Luckily, we can ask Lightroom for help. Open the General tab to find the specific folder where the active catalog is stored and its file name. To move the Lightroom catalog to another computer is a multi-step process. You need to install the application, move the photo library, catalog, settings, cache, and preview files.

And the most crucial part is to relink missing folders to new locations. It is not a complicated process, but it takes some time.

I would not recommend it. As I mentioned above, you can move your entire photo library to an external drive without sacrificing Lightroom performance. But you need to keep your catalog and its cache on the fastest internal drive you have. It is not an easy question to answer because every photographer has different workflows and requirements. In my case, I went from multiple catalogs to two catalogs and finally ended up with one catalog.

One catalog setup perfectly fits my professional and personal projects. But if you are an event photographer, you might create a separate catalog for each event. Because after you delivered photos to a client, you are not going to access them often.

If you have a very large catalog of K or more images and Lightroom becomes slow, you can separate a single catalog into two. One is active for current projects and archive for old photos you do not access often. If you are not sure where to start, start with a single catalog setup.

And when you feel that you need to expand to a multiple catalog setup, you can do it easily. You create a brand new empty catalog, and by using the Import From Another Catalog functionality described in this article, bring necessary files and folders from your original catalog. Even though one catalog organization suits my photography the best, the Import from Catalog functionality in Lightroom gives me the flexibility to use multiple catalogs when necessary without jeopardizing the simplicity of my travel photography workflow.

The first task is to identify which catalogs contain metadata you want to keep. The easiest way to do this is to make a … Click to continue. In another post, we discussed the arguments for and against multiple catalogs. So, if you decide to merge some catalogs, how do you go about it? In this first of five posts, we'll take an overview of how to merge catalogs and some of the reasons you … Click to continue.

Have you ever edited photos in Photoshop, only to find the edited photo appears in a different folder in Lightroom's Folders panel? Or perhaps you've ended up with two Pictures folders in Lightroom, but only one on your hard drive. The cause is … Click to continue.