Hi all, well I have been using Lightroom to catalogue my photos and I really do like it, but now I have a challenge on my hands.

I have two huge catalogues and I need to decide how to manage them. The first is the one I have had going for a while and is around 21000 photos or 69GB, and the second is a new one on my laptop. I created it while on my recent trip overseas so I could download photos off my camera daily. It totals 9000 images or about 75GB. (bad thing about the Canon 7D, makes much bigger files!)

If anyone could be so kind as to share any tips about managing big catalouges like this? Should I merge them, keep them separate? I kind of like everything being in one place, but how big is too big? Should I use the Lightroom import or export tools? If I want to import the trip photos, is it just a matter of copying them to my PC disc and them importing them, but I wonder if I will loose any edits and tags etc that were in the laptop LR catalogue.

I just don't know!?!?!?

I am currently doing step one....backing up both catalogues!