Lightroom

[Florry]

Hi all.

Anyone using Lightroom?

I've just moved to Lightroom 5 and think I might need to split a collection into several catalogues. How many photos is too many for one catalogue? I've got 50,000+ in a family collection and think maybe that's why the program is running very slowly. Mind you... Lightroom 4 seemed to manage it ok. Thoughts anyone?

[mikew09]

Hmm, I been a long time LR user. I tend to break mine up into sub categories depending on what I am organising but I don't think I would have any where near that many in any one category. Never faced the problem. I have a number of different brake ups. for example - Family is broken into member by name and Landscapes is broken into sunset, sunrise, landscape, seascape etc. I am also one of those types that once has processed a set of photos and happy with the outcomes, revisit the album about a week later and deletes all the definate non keepers - hence I keep the numbers down.

Not sure that helps but is my process.

[Florry]

Thanks mikew09.

It's always helpful to know how other people organise their photos. It's a challenge I'm not sure I've mastered.

I was really referring to the number of photos in my whole 'catalogue'. I'm pretty comfortable with the sorting by 'category' which you were referring to. I actually do a similar thing you do through the use of 'tags'. I think maybe my whole collection has gotten a little big and I should split it in 2.

[MrQ]

For family photos I start a new Lightroom catalogue each year. I started with LR2 and 3 which struggled with too many photos in the catalogue. My PC has a bit more grunt these days but it's a habit now and seems to work ok. I don't have trouble finding anything but I guess it could get tougher as the years add up so I also make sure I name folders with event and/or location names.

[Florry]

Thanks MrQ. I hadn't considered years. Could work, but as I've got quite a few now I'd need to do it in decades.

Noticed you have a D600. Me too. Haven't had it for long, so I'm still getting used to it.

[wideangle]

I've read some reviews that have said LIghtroom 5 is actually a bit slower than Lightroom 4. 50,000 is a lot of images and I imagine you would need quite a powerful computer to keep things running as smooth as possible. How old is your computer? Are you giving enough cache to Lightroom to work with. I think the default is 1GB.

Personally I wouldn't see the point in different catalogues as you would spend you time trying to remember and work out what photos you wanted from different shoots and different years. Another powerful and underutlised feature of Lightroom is keywords. By applying keywords to your photos you can do a quick search and then bring up only the photographs you want, abandoning the need to look for photos by dates/subject etc.

[Ian Brewster]

All advice from Lightroom guides seems to be "don't try and have several Catalogues" and the writers seem not to be phased with even 90,000 images. Have look at the Lightroom forum and download their free guide which is comprehensive.

(I've just started so can't advise in detail)

Ian


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