Getting Started: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Setup and Catalog Creation
Your image storage needs and my image storage needs will differ. Your computer and my computer are different. If storing your Photoshop Lightroom Catalog on your startup disk makes the most sense then Lightroom’s factory default Catalog creation behavior will work for you. If storing your Lightroom Catalog in the Pictures folder on your startup disk works for you then you can skip the video tutorial at the end of this article.
If the factory default configuration suits your needs then l suggest rename the default Lightroom Catalog, build an alias that always leads directly to your Catalog, and personalize your Identity Plate. Following these steps will ensure that you are working in the right Lightroom Catalog every time.
Please read these tutorials before proceeding any further with this article! I promise that the background information that they cover is totally worth your time when you are getting started with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.
Understanding The Digital Photography Puzzle Pieces:
- Getting Started with Photoshop Lightroom: Where Should I Store My Digital Images?
- Getting Started with Photoshop Lightroom: Where Should I Keep My Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog?
- Getting Started with Photoshop Lightroom: What Does “Import” Mean in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom?
If storing your Photoshop Lightroom Catalog on your startup disk is not the ideal solution for your needs then you can easily move your existing Catalog files over to another hard drive. You can easily move your Lightroom Catalog from drive to drive at any point. I urge you to rename this Catalog, and to create a new alias to leads directly to it too after the move, but starting with the factory default Catalog has done you no harm.
For my needs though storing my Lightroom Catalog, and my 40,000+ digital images, on my computer’s startup disk was not going to work. I knew the day that I started working with my current computer that its internal hard drive was never going to be big enough to hold all of my photography. For my needs using a high-quality, high-speed, external hard drive for both my Catalog and my image storage makes the most sense. My Photo Storage System: Two External Hard Drives>Using an external drive for my photo storage and other external drives for my backup plan is the best use of my resources.
Now I could have started with the factory default Catalog, renamed it, and then moved it over to my external hard drive but there is another option. In this video tutorial, I am going to force Lightroom to ask me where I want to keep my Catalog, and what to name the Catalog, rather than allowing the program to create it’s default Catalog in my startup disk’s Pictures folder. Forcing the program to ask you where you want to put your Catalog can be a time-saver if you already know that you are not going to be happy with the program’s default Catalog creation behavior.
To create a new Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog on startup:
- 1. Double-click on the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom program icon.
- 2. Immediately hold down on the Option Key (Mac) or the Alt Key (PC).
- 3. Continue to press on that special keyboard button down until the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Select Catalog dialog menu appears.
May I suggest checking out our tutorial on the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Preference Menus once you are happy with the name and location of your Lightroom Catalog. Setting the Preferences is the next logical step in the setup process.
Please allow me to also repeat the point that I use one external hard drive to store my Lightroom Catalog plus my images but I use other external drives for my backups. My photo storage hard drive is automatically backed up to another disk every day. If disaster strikes I have plans in place that will hopefully prevent me from loosing everything. You have similar plans in place too, right? Remember that all hard drives will fail sooner or later!
Please do not put all your eggs in one basket. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is a great program but it is not a backup plan! For more on this topic see:
Read our article on “Getting Started: What Does ‘Import’ Mean in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom?” once you are have decided where to store your images and your Photoshop Lightroom Catalog.
Filed Under: (01) Getting Started • Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Tutorials
About the Author: David Marx is a digital photography instructor whose engaging teaching style inspires photographers of all skill levels. David is an Adobe Certified Lightroom Expert. To learn more about David's Adobe Photoshop Lightroom software training seminars and digital photography field workshops please visit 
David,
David,
Thank you first for your prompt answer. Chopping at the bit but want to install perfectly.
Pardon my ignorance here if you will. Assuming this is sequence.
1. Download Lightroom 2.7 from Adobe giving them serial number upon being asked. I assume i want to save to computer(desktop) if asked, not to run it(does it matter)?
2. Install on computer(will they ask any pertinent questions with custom installing, or follow normal installation(i know to choose between 32 or 64, choosing 32 bit since that is how my computer is set up).
3. Launch but make sure when double clicking to keep pressing alt. key( do i first double click then immediately hit alt many times, or double click and press alt. key at same time)
*I noticed in one of your reply you mentioned another way due to Brad having problems doing it this way:
Dear Brad,
There’s always another way. Launch Lightroom without holding down any secret buttons. Go File > New Catalog and create a new catalog. I would put this catalog on an external drive and give it a clear descriptive name but you can store it wherever you want. Be sure to set your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom preferences though so that this becomes the new default catalog.
–
David Marx
(Go File > New Catalog and create a new catalog-You mean in the Lightroom program i assume)
Which way is the best. A little nervous to get this part totally right for i believe like you setting up is crucial.
Truly appreciate your time and thoroughness. I have been reading many of your tutorials and agree most people have problems by not being extremely methodical and paying extreme attention to details from the beginning.
Be well, Ed
Dear Ed Ornowski,
You are a careful reader! It sounds like you have all of the program installation details dialed in. Step one in using the program is to create a new catalog. As you point out this can’t be done until after you have installed the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom application. (Meaning that the Go File > New Catalog option only exists within the application and not within your operating system.) In this tutorial I advocate creating a new catalog, giving it a meaningful name, and putting it on an external hard drive. There are three ways to accomplish this task.
Option 1: Use the Alt click trick (Mac) or Control click trick (PC) on startup to force Lightroom to ask you what to call your catalog and where to store it.
Option 2: Launch Lightroom without holding down any keys. Quit the application as soon as it creates a new catalog for you. Using your operating system move Lightroom’s default catalog from your your computer’s “Pictures” folder over to your external hard drive. The default catalog is always a folder inside of your “Pictures” folder labeled Lightroom. Move this folder to the external and then rename it and the .lrcat file that it contains. Double click the .lrcat file inside this folder to re-open your Lightroom catalog.
Option 3: Launch the program without holding any keys and then use the File > New Catalog command to create an index on your external hard drive with a meaningful name. Once this catalog has been created quit Lightroom and trash the default catalog. Navigate to the new catalog folder on your external hard drive and double click the .lrcat file inside this folder to re-open your Lightroom catalog.
I strongly suggest setting your preferences and building a import / metadata presets right away no matter which option you choose. You will not have the import preset option in Lightroom 2.7. Which brings me to my question– why are you installing Lightroom v2 when there are significant advantages to version 3?
–
David Marx
Option
Thank you David,
I appreciate you clearing all this up. At the bottom of this reply I do have one more question though.
The person I spoke with at Adobe sales told me I would have the “option” of installing separately if I wanted rather than installing over the old version. That left me wondering how I would transfer all the edits, keywords, etc. in my old catalog.
The answer to your questions: “I know that I advocate storing your Lightroom catalog, and your images, externally but I have to ask how will it help you?”… Yes, it will for most of the reasons you have mentioned. I have 10,000 images now, but my image file & catalog is growing rapidly so I wanted to get the task of transferring done now. I do currently have a fast ESATA port for an external drive, and like you, I want to be able to be mobile with my work and use it also on my laptop. I like the idea of using multiple external drives for working and backup / image of my both my boot drive and my photos and catalog.
One thing I am still not clear on is how you image one external drive to another? I am currently going to buy the Acronis software and I am looking forward to getting all this done.
-
Bud
Dear Bud,
It sounds like you have done your research and that external storage is a good match for your needs. Good backup software like Acronis makes it easy to mirror one external drive with another. This article on how I store my images might give you some background details and these videos about the Acronis True Image software more specifics.
I just checked and Amazon is currently selling Acronis True Image Home 2011 for just $25. I love “Cyber Monday” deals!
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David Marx
David,
I have XP professional(Dell Precision T3400 which has been very stable and fast) and I am about to download Lightroom 2.7. from Adobe. I have two hard drives(320 gb). My second i had the intention always as using precisely for a dedicated photo hard drive.
Could this not act as an external hard drive which i had formatted NTFS originally. If so would i not just follow your directions in creating new folder(Photos go here) etc. allowing the perfect Lightroom for my computer and avoiding as you say problems in the future. Appreciate your expertise.
Thank you, Ed
Dear Ed,
You could certainly use your second internal hard drive for photo storage. That’s exactly what I would do too if I owned that nice Dell workstation unless I also needed to work with my images from a second computer. External storage makes sense for folks whose computers lack a sufficiently large or fast internal disk. That’s not you! It also makes sense for photographers who need to work with the same images and the same Lightroom catalog using multiple computers. If you don’t have that need then by all means follow our tutorial but substitute your second internal disk for my primary external hard drive.
No matter where you decide to store your files be sure that you make a complete backup. Our tutorial on my favorite PC backup software, Acronis True Image Home, might help and you might also want to explore online options like Mozy, Amazon S3, or Carbonite.
–
David Marx
Thanks for all your contributions and instruction, it has been an immense help. You are a top notch educator.
I have Lightroom 1 and have just purchased Lighroom 3.. I had previously set up LR 1 and am one of the people who “went wrong from day 1″ by setting up the catalog in the default location of “My Pictures” on my main drive. This is also where I have 10,000 existing photos, many of which I have edited. I have followed your advice on renaming all my photos file names and have cleaned up the folder name structure and I applied keywords to all the photos I had pre-Lighroom… Now I need to back up the photo files & catalog, then install the new LR 3.
My question is; can you advise how I should best do this? I assume it would be to do a complete new install rather than installing over the old version. Is that the plan? How do I keep my catalog metadata and all my edits while re-organizing everything to a new external HD as you recommend?
Thanks again,
Bud
Dear Bud,
I am glad you found our site useful. Thank you for the compliments. Now, let’s see if I can answer all your questions! First, I need to point out that Lightroom version 1, 2, and 3 are all separate programs. Installing a new version of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom does not remove or replace your older edition. Likewise, each version uses its own catalog format which means that your Lightroom 1 catalog will not suddenly disappear when you upgrade. I think that our step-by-step tutorial on upgrading from Photoshop Lightroom version 2 to Lightroom3 will be a big help even though you are jumping from v.1 to v.3.
A copy of your existing catalog can be upgraded to the Lightroom 3 format once you install the Lightroom 3 application. Again, your new Lightroom 3 catalog will not remove your old one and it will immediately contain all the same files, folders, keywords, etc. The only thing that will not match up perfectly are collections and collection sets but for most users this is not a big deal. If you have invested hours and hours of time building collections in Lightroom 1 please write us back before you upgrade and I’ll teach you a simple work around for this potential problem.
Once you have a Lightroom 3 catalog, you can move it and your images over to an external hard drive. Our tutorials on how to move an Adobe Photoshop Lightroom catalog from drive to drive and our tutorial on using the Find Missing Folder command in Lightroom to move folders from drive to drive should help with this process. It’s unlikely that you will have any problems but be sure that you back everything up before upgrading your old catalog or moving any of your files.
I am guessing that you running Lightroom on a PC since you called it the “My Pictures” folder. My advice is to use a quality backup utility like Acronis True Image right now to backup your entire C:\ drive. A complete backup of the C:\ drive is perfect for you right now since your photos, and your Lightroom Catalog, are currently on the internal disk. If I guessed wrong and you are on a Mac then check out this tutorial on using Carbon Copy Cloner to make a complete backup.
I believe that these tutorials should answer all of your questions and now I have some questions for you. My question is “why move your catalog and your images to an external disk?” I just want to be sure that there truly is an advantage for you before you start this process. I know that I advocate storing your Lightroom catalog, and your images, externally but I have to ask how will it help you? Are you working on a laptop? Is your internal disk too small or too slow for your image storage needs? Are you needing to work with your images and your catalog using multiple computers? Is your external disk as fast as your internal drive and is it connected via a high-speed port? (USB is not a high-speed port.)
If the answer to any of these questions is yes then moving all those files makes sense! Since I am currently working on a MacBookPro laptop, with an internal hard drive that is way too small for my photo library, external storage makes sense but I would hate for you to do all this work if there isn’t a clear benefit.
–
David Marx
Hi david,
Thanks so much for your reply ya helped me work it out i think…
Just another ?if thats ok dont answer if there is somewhere else i should be asking.
But lightroom seems to take an eternity to show up my images.
Is there something i could be checking(maybe card reader of laptop or is this just how long it will take)..
I havnt yet used one of my 8gb cf cards yet that are full only used 1 that has 3 pics on it and takes forever
Thanks for taking the time
Dear Brad,
Sorry about the delay. I took the Thanksgiving holiday off. A couple of ideas here that might help.
Best of luck,
David Marx
Hi david,
Am loving your videos so far.
Am just having a problem in the setup and catalogue creation video.
Ive created the photos go here part no worries but struggle with the part where i have to double click then press alt.
Something comes up but its not tghe same as your page i am using windows so maybe thats the problem im not sure, but the page that comes up for me doesnt give me an option to create a new catalogue.
Any help would be greatly appreciated hope to hear some tips as soon as possible
Thanks heaps in advance
Dear Brad,
There’s always another way. Launch Lightroom without holding down any secret buttons. Go File > New Catalog and create a new catalog. I would put this catalog on an external drive and give it a clear descriptive name but you can store it wherever you want. Be sure to set your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom preferences though so that this becomes the new default catalog.
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David Marx
“It’s also a good idea to back everything up first just in case something goes wrong! This posts should help”
david, to drive i’m moving to IS my backup drive….
“If you turned this option on in the beginning then moving your Lightroom Catalog folder from disk to disk also moves the presets”
I sure did!
Alon
Dear Alon Sherf,
I maybe splitting hairs here but if you are manually moving (not copying but moving) files to your backup drive then it cannot be a backup. “Backup” means a second or third copy of a file that is stored elsewhere! Perhaps, I’m jut being picky but I would hate for you to loose important files should a drive crash.
–
David Marx
hi David,
if I want to move all the pictures and catalog (including the presents and all) from my mac to my external hd how do I do that?
Can I just copy the lightroom folder?
Alon
Dear Alon,
We have a bunch of tutorials that can help you move your images and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom catalog from drive to drive. This is not a hard process though it can be time consuming. It’s also a good idea to back everything up first just in case something goes wrong! This posts should help:
How to Move Your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog to an External Drive
Moving Folders from Drive to Drive within Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
Using the Find Missing Folders Command in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to Move Folders From Drive to Drive
Moving your presets is a little more complicated. If you turned on the “Store Presets with Catalog” preference switch when you first started using Lightroom then your presets have been stored at the catalog level. Turning on this switch on is one of the very first steps in my workshops and lectures because it makes moving the presets from drive to drive easy.
If you turned this option on in the beginning then moving your Lightroom Catalog folder from disk to disk also moves the presets. If you have not turned this switch on then your presets are stored within your user account > Application Support > Adobe > Lightroom folder. If needed see http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/843/cpsid_84313.html for more help finding your presets at the user account level.
Best of luck,
David Marx
David,
Thank you so much for your reply to my question.
So, just to be perfectly clear, here is what I am to do:
1. create a ‘photos go here’ on my new external HD (after formatting it).
2. Drag and drop my photo folders from my internal HD to ‘Photos go here’.
3. Import all the photos from ‘photos go here’ folder, into LR catalog folder using the ‘add’ command.
Sorry for belaboring the point, but is this correct?
Many thanks, this is a great site to learn about LR.
Dear Jane Ellison,
You have got all of the steps right but perhaps there is an easier alternative. You could follow these steps or you could use the Import and Move command in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to do all of this work for you! Linda’s was a unique case but for most Lightroom users the Import and Move command is an easier ways to get files into your Lightroom Catalog while moving them over to another drive.
There are some advantages too to using Lightroom’s Import and Move command. Using Import and Move will give you the option to a: batch rename your files, and b: re-organize your files into new folders based on the capture time. You may not need any of these options but they are features that the Import with Add command lacks. If you go with the Import and Move option just be sure that you pay careful attention to the options in the Destination tab in the Import dialog if you use the Move option.
–
David Marx
Sorry,typo, meant to say, YOUR videos
Jane
our videos are great for beginning users of LR! I do have a question:
In your response to Linda T., you stated in number 6: “Import your files and folders into your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom catalog without moving or copying them”.
By this do you mean we should drag and drop them from our “Photos GO Here” folder on the ext. HD into the Catalog folder on the ext. HD?
Just want to be clear about this.
Thanks very much
Jane
Dear Jane Ellison,
Glad that you asked for the clarification. I was trying to suggest to Linda that she copy her photographs from her internal drive to a new parent folder on the external by dragging and dropping. I was not suggesting dragging and dropping the PHOTOS GO HERE folder on her external drive into the Lightroom Catalog folder. Doing so would not do any harm but I like to keep these folders separate at the root level. The screenshot, and the video tutorial, in my photo storage overview post might help makes this more clear.
My advice for Linda was to move her files over to the external drive and then to import them into her Lightroom library using the Import with Add command. For what it’s worth dragging and dropping a folder onto the Lightroom program icon itself will automatically bring up the Import dialog!
I hope this clears up the confusion but if its still vague please write us back.
–
David Marx
Sir,you are probably the best in this art.
Thanks.
Much Respect.
Karl
Dear Karl,
Thank you very much. We appreciate the positive feedback on the site and the tutorials.
–
David Marx
Fantastic help and tips site! As a very beginner with LR this is exactly what I was hoping to find. I look forward to your future postings.
I of course have a question:
Before finding your site, I installed LR on my iMac and opened the program–as you know LR lrcata and lrdata files were created by defaulted to my local picture folder. However, I have NOT downloaded any pictures yet. Can I/should I just delete the default files and then follow your direction(hold down option etc.) when I next open LR? Or do I now need to follow you how to move files video?
I am going to trust your advice/experience on using an external HD as the main home for my files–does it make any sense to you if I us my internal HD as one of my backup locations? I figure is just storage at this point and would not draw on processing resources.
Cheers,
Ben
Dear Ben,
Thanks for the kind words about our site. You could delete the brand new default catalog and then start over, but it’s super easy to move your Lightroom Catalog from drive to drive. Alternatively, you could change the catalog’s name using the Finder and leave it inside your Pictures folder.
You certainly can backup an external drive to your internal drive but you will need the right software and you will probably need to create a new partition on your internal disk. Creating a second partition on the startup disk can be tricky and my question is why?
I know that I make a strong case for storing images, and the catalog, externally but that system is not for everyone! Why not store your photos and your catalog within the iMac and then use your external disk to backup everything? Why not use that external to backup the entire internal drive–photos and all?
From your post, I don’t see any reason why moving your photos and your Catalog to an external disk is an essential first step. Your post doesn’t indicate that a: you currently have more images then your internal disk can hold; b: that you need to access your photography library on multiple computers, or c: that your external disk is faster than your internal drive. If you meet any of these conditions then moving everything over to the external makes good sense but I would hate for you, or any of our readers, to blindly follow my advice.
Photo storage is not a “one-size fits all” problem. Everyone’s needs are different and there is no single right solution. I should also add that these are not irreversible decisions. It takes some work but everything can be moved from drive to drive as your needs evolve. I hope this helps and please write us back if you need more assistance.
–
David Marx
Hi david, first of all u have a great site and video tutorial!
I started using LR 2 days ago and until now i backed up all my drive on the time machine in an external drive including my photos.
Do i need to rebuild my catalog from imported photos that are not on the back up files but on the external drive, and then back up again?
10X
Alon
Dear Alon,
I am not sure that I understand your question. If you are storing your images, and your Lightroom catalog, on your Mac’s internal hard drive then TimeMachine will automatically back everything up to an external disk for you. TimeMachine backs up anything and everything on your computers internal drive unless you tell it otherwise. For folks like me though, for photographers who store their images on an external disk, TimeMachine is less than ideal. In my system, where one external hard drive stores my images and my Lightroom catalog and other external disk holds a mirror image of every file on this drive, software like Carbon Copy Cloner is a better way to protect myself.
I hope this helps and if I misunderstood please re-post your question.
–
David Marx
David,
Your material has been oh so helpful as I navigate my way through my LR3 infancy.
However, I do have a question that I am hoping you can answer soon as I have a client waiting on some images.
I edited a slew of images in LR3, with the catalog on my external. I made a collection with my favorites and edited them within the collection. When I exported them, the files were only about 100kb, while the originals were large .jpegs (a few mbs)
How can I export the actual .jpegs and not just the metadata? I can’t even re-import the original images onto my internal drive from the external to re-edit them all, as the software can detect the information is already in the program.
Your help would be so appreciated.
Cheers,
Mallory
Dear Mallory,
I think that you need to pay close attention to the options in the Export Dialog. Think of the Export dialog as if it were a save as command where you need to specify all of the details: the file name, the file format, the file size, and the file’s quality. Try exporting your files again but do not resize the images and keep the image quality slider at 100%.
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David Marx
Great Tip, but you may come accross the missing file issue,
when using 2 computers and an external drive shared between the two. In my case the laptop did not see the linked files.
I had to change permissions to the folder to allow all (read & write) by right clicking on the folder, choosing properties and editing permissions.
This solved the problem, now i can work alternately on both my laptop or pc with the catalog living on the external drive.
Dear Jaap_98,
Thanks for the tip. Damn Windows and your insane permission system!
–
David Marx
David, I am a totally new to Lightroom. I just found your WONDERFUL material 24 hours too late because I bought and opened LR 3 yesterday creating a Cataloglr.cat in my internal drive instead of the external portable drive. There are no photos in there yet. I am running a MacOX10.6.4 in a MacBook Pro. I had bought a Toshiba 1 terabyte external portable drive with USB 2 and USB 3 compatible of the size of an iphone. This has been formatted as you indicated in your video.
Two questions:
1) how do I fix this mistake?
2) should I get a firewire compatible drive instead?
I am not a pro photographer my yearly volume is not that big. Your thoughts and/ or anyone on this forum would be very much appreciated.
Manuel
Dear Manuel Orellana,
Thanks for the compliments. This tutorial explains how to move your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom catalog over to an external drive. It’s easy but be sure to double check all of your preferences after the move. You will want to be sure that the preference switch which tells Lightroom which catalog to load on startup now leads to your catalog file on the external drive.
Personally, I would use your USB drive for backup and use a higher performance Firewire 800 drive for your primary storage. This article on how I use a high-performance drive for my primary photo storage and a slower drive for a backup might help fill in some of the file storage theory. I would suggest using a faster drive, and a faster drive connection, even though you are not a professional photographer because the price for a high speed drive is reasonable and the Firewire 800 connectivity is already a part of your MacBook Pro. Check out our article on recommended external hard drives for specific brand and model recommendations.
–
David Marx
P.S. Welcome to Lightroom! Enjoy.
David,
I downloaded a 30 day trial of Lightroom 3 three days ago and did not realize the program would send images to the C drive instead of directing them to my P drive, a designated external hard drive that has been set up for photos only. I tried to redirect them from the C drive to the P drive, but folders were emptied from the P drive instead. Lightroom is not allowing the images to move from the C drive to the P drive. I could not find help through links or tutorial sites to learn how to fix this and start over again. In additiion, the Adobe support staff is not allowed to help me until I buy it. I can’t try the applications until I reverse what Lightroom has done to my files. If I cancel this trial, will the changes it has made be reversed? Then I can try again and follow your instructions from the beginning with a new hard drive.
Thank you for any advice on this situation. I am concerned that if I keep trying to fix things, I’ll cause more problems. Could I drag the catalog it shows in the C drive to the P drive listed below it. A warning box appears when I tried to do this saying the changes are irreversible.
Dear Linda T,
Sorry to hear about your troubles but I don’t think that you have much to fear. I am going to assume here that drive P is already properly formated for your operating system. If the drive is properly formatted then I would:
1. Create a parent folder, what I call the PHOTOS GO HERE folder, on drive P.
2. Drag and drop all of the folders that hold your photographs into this folder using your operating system.
3. Backup this hard drive to another external drive.
4. Delete your old image folders from the internal hard drive and delete your old Lightroom catalog. (DON”T DO THIS UNTIL THE IMAGES ARE SAFELY BACKED UP!)
5. Create a brand new Lightroom catalog on your external drive using the steps in this tutorial.
6. Import your files and folders into your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom catalog without moving or copying them from place to place.
7. Once everything is working use the import dialog and the copy option to add new work into your index and to get new files onto your external hard drive.
I hope this helps.
–
David Marx
hmmm, oh, the choices. Makes perfect sense though. Thanks for that tidbit, didn’t consider the separate back-up consideration. Let me toss this out there. I was running my catalog(s) on an external 5400 rpm drive with an old slow laptop but am now on a much nicer laptop with a 7200rpm HD. My images and catalogs are on my externals which are 5400rpm drives. Will it make a big difference to put the catalog(s) onto the faster laptop (internal) drive even though all else would still be on the slower 5400rpm external drives or is a bottleneck still a bottleneck???
I have been running off two externals with no issues as Dave suggested in another tutorial. Works great. Also ran separate catalogs as my old dinosaur was tied and slow but with the new beast I am looking at running a single catalog again. My question is mainly this… is it worthwhile to keep the Catalog on the external or on the computer HD as mentioned earlier by Scott Rouse…”I do keep my Lightroom Catalog on my internal hard drive, though. I do enjoy the read/write speed boost there. Plus, I love being able to browse and show my images in my Lightroom Catalog without the external drives connected.” I like that idea a lot actually.
Any other input on that thought? Thanks all!
-John
Dear JohnP,
You have been reading carefully! There is no single right answer to the question “where should I keep my Lightroom Catalog files?” As you point out, I like to keep my Lightroom Catalog files on my external drive but Scott advocates storing the catalog files internally. There are advantages and disadvantages to either system.
I store my Lightroom catalog, and my images, on a high-quality Raid 0 (Stripped) external hard drive because I like to use the same catalog with multiple computers. I can plug my photo storage disk into my laptop, or into a desktop, and have instant access to all of my photos since everything photographic is stored on this one external disk. I never have to sync or update anything when I move from machine to machine since all of the work that I do in Lightroom is also saved onto the external disk! For me, this is a huge advantage. I find that maintaining multiple Lightroom catalogs, or syncing two catalogs together, is counter-productive. Plus, backing up this whole disk protects all my images and my Lightroom catalog in a single backup set.
Scott’s needs, and his hardware, are different. Scott, I believe, has a Solid State Disk (SSD) inside his MacBookPro. Keeping his catalog on this blazing fast disk gives him a performance advantage that I would not get if I stored my catalog internally. I wouldn’t get his performance because my laptop is using a traditional hard drive, ie. one with a rotational speed.
Likewise, Scott loves to flip through his index when he is traveling without his photo storage drive. Keeping the Lightroom catalog files on his internal disk gives him this luxury even when the actual photographs are “offline.” Since the files are not available he cannot do much with them but it is an advantage when he is sitting on an airplane killing time. The downside though is that Scott’s backup plan is more complicated. He needs to protect photographs, which are on his external disk, plus his catalog files which are on the internal. Protecting this, and that, is not a daunting task but it is not as easy as just mirroring a drive to another like I do.
This is one of the reasons why I love Adobe’s professional grade software. The good folks at Adobe have left it up to you, the informed user, to make your own decision about what’s most appropriate for your needs instead of forcing everyone to adopt the same storage system (iPhoto). Scott and I have different storage needs and different hardware. Thanks Adobe for giving us options!
–
David Marx
P.S. Don’t forget that you can always move your Lightroom catalog from disk to disk too should you change your mind!
Hi David,
After setting up the catalog on an external hard drive, are updates (LR 3.2) installed on the external drive or on the MAC hard drive? Thanks.
Mark
Dear Mark,
Good question and a common confusion. Lightroom is a program or in Mac speak an application. The program, and all of its updates, should be installed on your root drive: meaning the C: drive for Windows folks, or the internal hard drive on a Mac. The program needs to live internally even if it loads up an external database (your catalog files) every time.
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David marx
David,
Thanks for the steps – this was what I was leaning towards doing, but I was wondered if there might be another, possibly better way.
I’ve been going through all of your LR3 tutorials and loved the idea of giving the catalog a meaningful name – and then loved it even more when I saw that LR3 had given my default-named catalog a really crazy name after the upgrade!
Anyway, as always, I learn so much from you, so keep those tutorials coming!!!
Thanks,
Deb
David,
OK, I’ve just installed LR3 and have upgraded my prior LR2 catalog . . . and it has the delightful name of “Lightroom 2 Catalog-2″! Apparently this happened because my catalog from LR2 was called “Lightroom 2 Catalog”, which made more sense than what I’ve got now . . . So, is there a way to rename my catalog to something better from within Lightroom so that it doesn’t get all confused and upset with me?
Thanks,
Deb
Hello Deb,
This is one is easy! All you need to do quit Lightroom and find the folder where your Lightroom 3 catalog lives. With the program turned off, use your operating system to rename the Lightroom 2 Catalog-2.lrcat and the Lightroom 2 Catalog-2.previews files. While you are in this folder you might also want to trash the old Lightroom 2 Catalog file / previews folder.
Once you have given these files a name that you like just double click on your .lrcat file to relaunch the program. Once Lightroom loads I urge you to go back into your Preferences panel and set this catalog up as your default. See Getting Started Right: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Critical Preference Menus for more help with the very last part. These days I force my students to give their catalog a meaningful name. Using a meaningful name for this file makes it so much easier for us to detect when something goes wrong on startup in class. It makes it crystal clear when they accidentally load some other catalog file.
Hopefully, this will help you too.
Best wishes,
David
Thanks Scott for being there for us struggling techies.
I am beginning to understand negatives and catalogues (as we spell it in Ireland also).
This is what we are looking to do:- To import photo’s into a location on the local (MAC) disk using light room, import them into a catalogue, edit them and put the edited images into an edited images folder, we may need additional folders for different edits of the same original image for different people, when the project is finished we need to move all the original images and the edited ones including the catalogue information onto our network storage device for later retrieval when the customer comes back for additional work. It would also be nice to have a catalogue of all photos taken for one client over their lifetime as a customer (could this be accessed from the Network Storage device not the MAC?). Can this be achieved with LR3’s workflow or would it be too confusing as we are?
Can anyone in this thread comment on the idea of storing the working Lightroom catalogs and the corresponding image library on an eSATA hardware RAID 5 drive instead of a standard, internal HDD or external FireWire HDD? Is RAID 5 performance likely to be sufficient — and reliable — for daily Lightroom/Photoshop editing (with an internal HDD to be used as a PS scratch disk)?
Specifically, I have a new, 8TB Mercury Elite Pro AL Qx2 RAID with eSATA that I’m trying to figure out how to best use. It hangs off an eSATA card added to my Mac Pro, which also houses two internal 750GB HDDs (Snow Leopard and Leopard installs) and two matching, 2TB Hitachi HDDs that could be used for scratch disks and video editing.
I’m thinking I’ll move my Lightroom catalog AND image files from one of the internal HDDs to the new RAID 5 formatted eSATA drive (to achieve immediate redundancy. The RAID 5 is formatted as three drives and a hot spare, which provides 4TB of actual storage). I also have a cold spare 2TB drive on the shelf as well.
The alternative setup plan would be to just put the Lightroom catalog and images on a standard, external 2TB HDD (another eSATA or FireWire) and use the Mercury Elite Pro Qx2 eSATA RAID as another backup layer.
Can you keep all those acronyms straight?
I upgraded from Lightroom 2 to Lightroom 3 on my computer, paying $99 for the upgrade. I would like to download the upgrade on a second computer in my house (my husband’s, which is on our home network), and be able to use the program on both computers at once. Adobe tells me that I cannot run both copies at once, so that, for example, I have to quit LR3 on my computer in order to run it on my husband’s. If we try to run LR3 on both computers simultaneously, we will “encounter errors in the software”. This seems ridiculous to me, both from a business point of view and also in terms of the software. Does this mean that there is some connection between the software on the two computers that I don’t know about? Is it even true? We were both running LR2 at the same time and had no problem. Thanks if you can answer this.
Dear Carol,
You are confusing the legal language of the Adobe Terms of Service agreement with the real world. In the real world, Adobe has no way of monitoring what computers are running Lightroom at any given moment especially if your machines are not connected to the internet while the program is running. Have no fear; you can use a single license number on two computers.
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David
Dear Pitboy,
For Adobe Photoshop instruction I am delighted to refer you to two awesome instructors. Please visit my good friend Mark S Johnson’s website and check out his excellent video tutorials and ebooks.
If possible you might also want to take a hands-on Photoshop workshop from my good friend Tim Cooper. You can find out more about his workshops here.
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David Marx
I really enjoyed your series of lightroom setup videos, and used them to tweak LR to run effectively, the right buttons are available, and the settings work well.
Do you know of any online tuts that do the same for photoshop cs5?
The menu’s for ps cs5 are (as expected) big, involving and specific, and I am sure that having the correct settings setup prior to use would speed up and improve my use of it.
If you know of anyone who has some ready to go (or done some yourself), can you post them here
Thx in advance,
Pitboy
Great stuff! I just found this site. Awesome tutorials. I am migrating from Windows to Mac. Bought my wife a MacBook (not Pro) to test out Mac…now I have taken it over. Wish I had seen this tutorial before I loaded the trial version of Lightroom. This was my first experience with Adobe products and I love it. Just purchased it. Now I need to move everything to my external drives (unfortunately the MacBook only has USB connectivity).
On a backup note, my old PC crashed awhile back. If I had not had my Western Digital external hard drive I would have lost over 20k images. I recently moved all my data to external hard drive on PC, then run a backup to the PC and another backup to another external hard drive (which I keep offsite). As I move everything to Mac I am thinking about running backup to cloud storage. Any advice on cloud storage?
Victor
Dear David,
Help! I just upgraded to Lightroom 3 from LR-1 and it’s refusing to read my catalog which i keep on a Lacie drive as per your instructions which i followed and used successfully up until now. How can i convince it to read my old catalog? I so dearly do NOT want to go through everything again.
Thank you!
Keri,
Please follow the steps in the article How to Get your Lightroom Catalog onto an External Drive.
-Scott
I have been LR user, and just upgraded to LR3. I wish I had watched these tutorials from the beginning when I first started! My files are pretty well organized, but they are on my internal hard drive, and I want them on an external.
Now, I have just purchased a G-Raid and am looking to move my files to it. I have followed your steps, but have now realized that as I started to import that I am losing all of my catalog info from before. I am not sure this is the way I should have proceeded, as I already had info in the catalog. I don’t see a tutorial for moving the files from a previous catalog.Now I am pointing to a brand new catalog. All of the history is not there.
Is there a way for me to bring the old catalog info into this new Master Photos catalog?
PJ,
It sounds like you’ve put some real thought into your system. And, yes, your adage is as true as it’s ever been. Hard drives have a 100% failure rate.
I’ll just add to your list of suggestions that you routinely optimize the Lightroom Catalog. That operation can be automatically completed every time you back up your Catalog in Lightroom 3 or you can trigger it manually from your Catalog Settings.
Gary,
It also sounds like you’ve got quite a back up going. I must admit that you’re more on top of your backups than I.
Best of luck to both of you,
Scott
oh, and, it may be an old adage, but it’s still true:
it’s not a question if harddisks die, it’s a question of when
pj
The first thing I have done for the past 20+ years is to purchase a new drive that I place in the computer case. This drive is used for all my data files. The programs and system go on the C drive or main drive in a Mac.
I never trust a drive and prefer to replace my data drives every couple of years just to be safe as things tend to break. And I do backup. My machine starts backing up to local external drives around 10 pm and continues until two off site backups are completed in the wee hours of the morning 7 days a week. I also keep 7 backups of my key data files just in case.
Gary
Lightroom disk layout, yes, that’s something I’ve spent quite some time on, and I believe it’s a large part of the sluggishness we all experience with lightroom, at least from time to time.
Since the file system (NTFS, FAT32 or whatever) makes a big difference, I’ll say that I’m working on Windows (7 64 Bit) nowadays.
My Catalog holds about 135000 images today (I decided to put all eggs in one basket for a number of reasons and havn’t really suffered from it so far) and is about 2.2GB in size – just the lrcat file.
I found that the major issue is fragmentation – at least it used to be. After an import, my catalog often showed as many fragments as new images imported. The reason is the way that Lightroom and the underlying database (sqlite) and the filesystem (NTFS) don’t always work together for the ideal result.
The catalog file grows linearly, adding more and more data to its tail. Writes to the catalog go through the journal file (as they are transactional) and are committed to the catalog from there, clearing out the journal. This way, what the filesystem sees are alternating write operations to the journal and the lrcat file. The journal is emptied to the catalog, which effectively grows by the amount of data in the journal, then, for the next transaction, the journal is re-created. Since NTFS always assignes the first suitably large free block to a new file, it will usually be created right after the tail of the catalog file, leaving no more than 64kB of free space. If one transaction is longer than 64kB (which it will often be), the catalog file grows around the journal file, which then, when deleted, will create a whole in the catalog. That’s not enough, the image previews are written to the previews folder and despite the fact that a hierarchical folder structure is being used, on disk, the file layout is linear, so they compete for blocks with the lrcat file, the journal files, and the previews database itself.
If you put the actual photos into the same file sytem too, there’s even more competition hence fragmentation.
Now, I researched this in the Lightroom 1.x days and some of the issue might have been addressed by now, but the basic logic still holds true: there are many write operations to the same file system and they all compete for the same blocks on disk, essentially.
I have decided to separate the three major parts of the Lightroom file storage to different file systems:
/-+—Photos
/-+-Lightroom
/-Previews
I use either logical partitions or dynamic drives for those file systems and, instead of assigning a drive letter to them, I’ll mount them to NTFS directories. This way, my Photos folder will end up in the main root file system while Lightroom and Previews are separate file systems (both roughly 20GB in size).
If I use an external hard drive, I will just store the photos on it but keep the previews and the catalog on the internal drive. They don’t take up much storage and I can at least work with the images metadata even if the external drive is not connected.
On my desktop, I use a similar setup, however instead of an externally attached drive, my images go to my linux based server where they are protected by RAID and automatically backed up to a NAS device twice a day.
Breaking the different directories up into different file systems reduces file system fragmentation quite a bit, but most of all, the small 20GB partitions can be quickly defragmented, so I have configured Windows 7 to do this daily.
This may not be the setup for everybody, but for my rather large catalog, it works pretty well.
pj
Hello David –
The owner of a new Windows 7 laptop, I am not inclined to go to the [USB] external drive for several of the reasons elaborated on in previous comments. It seems madness to have that drive dangling about in any transportation of the laptop. Back it all up to an external? Sure. But not as the primary storage.
But while disregarding that advice (yes, at my own peril), I am immensely gratified to find your advice on setup: what are the files; where do you want to find those files; how to load images to the repository; how to set preferences and why; how to approach file naming…
All this is just amazingly helpful.
Thank goodness I’ve consumed this prior to installing and loading images into LR3.
Dear Ron P and John H,
Glad ya’ll found this tutorial helpful. I have been teaching this software for five years and am convinced that you are now on the right track. For us laptop users, the decision on where to store our images and our catalog is critical.
best of luck,
David Marx
David,
I have been looking for this little gem of information on how to set up LightRoom 3. Thank you so much for this information! I Just set up a raid to store all my images and import all my files to. I have been working with a macbook pro with LightRoom 2.2 and was going nuts because it was putting my catalogue in the mac picture folder and I wasn’t able to figure out how to stop that. Creating a mess and bogging down my macbook pro. I now look forward to my editing. Again Thank You!
Best regards,
John Hurley
This is by far the best explanation of getting things right from the very start. I have looked far and wide, purchased and studied books, and nothing comes close to this simple by direct explanation of what are the key folders, where they are located, and how to avoiding multiple catalog entanglements. IN minutes I have already re-set things up for a correct new start. Thank-you, David.
David, When you are referring to an external drive, are you thinking about it from a laptop owners perspective? I have always followed the architecture, where I place all my BIG data sets onto a drive other than my main C drive(pardon the windows reference, i.e. a drive other than the one where the programs exist). If this is where you are coming from, I agree 100%. These tutorials you are creating are awesome and I ALWAYS am learning from you, thanks for all your hard work.
Dear John S,
I believe that we are in complete agreement about where to store our photos. Storing a lifetime’s worth of professional digital photography on your startup drive (C: for Windows users / Macintosh HD for Mac users) is not a good idea. A separate drive just for your images and your Lightroom Catalog is a much better idea. See My Photo Storage System: Two External Hard Drives for more details.
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David Marx
Mitch-
Thanks for the kind words. I sure appreciate it and hope that you find the other getting started tutorials useful too.
David
This is by far the “best” tutorial on how to use and set-up LR from the get go. Other tutorials are OK, but i am very impressed with how the program should be set-up from the start. Looking forward to reading and viewing all of the video’s for this new product.
Thank you again !!!!!!
[...] Photoshop Lightroom 3 setup process. The videos in this post are not nearly as importantc as the one’s on building your catalog on an external hard drive or the ones on the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Preferences Menus. Still, setting the View Options [...]
[...] you step up to bat you need to know what the Lightroom Catalog is and exactly where it lives inside of your computer. You need to know the name of your Catalog file [...]
John-
Doh! Thanks for catching my error in grammar. It has been fixed and I sure appreciate the help.
David
Dear Rosewood,
You raise some excellent points and inspired me to I go back and updated this post with links to the video tutorials and articles that we have published over the years stressing the importance of maintaining redundant backups. I think that you and I completely agree on the importance of storing multiple copies of your photographs and your Lightroom Catalog on multiple drives.
Where we disagree though is on where to store our working files. As indicated in this article and video tutorial, I believe that external hard drives are the superior file storage location for most digital photographers. Even if I agreed with you though about the advantages of your internal drive, I could not follow your advice since I currently own a single computer and its a laptop.
Many of us live mobile lives now, and we do not have the luxury of a large desktop computer with multiple internal disks. My MacBookPro is a great machine but it does not have enough internal storage space for my 60,000 digital images. There isn’t a laptop on the market right now that can store my entire image library!
Most of the students, and the working professional photographers, that I teach are in similar shoes. For many of us external hard drives are the only scalable, portable, and practical solution for our photo storage needs. Likewise, a Firewire 800 or eSATA external drive offers some performance advantage over my laptop’s internal 5400 rpm hard drive. This advantage grows even bigger if my computer is connected to an external striped RAID drive though there are additional risks.
Ultimately, I believe that external hard drives make it easier for all of us to move from computer to computer as our image library grows and to move on to another machine as technology changes. By storing your photos and your catalog on an external disk you can move on to a new computer without having to setup a network or waste time transferring thousands of photographs from machine to machine. I’ll go one further too and suggest that redundant backup devices like the Drobo S 5-Bay Storage Array or the Guardian Maximus are more reliable and cost-effective then any form of internal storage for our backup needs.
Respectfully,
David
John, thanks for the correction. Typos and spelling errors really bug me!
Rosewood, thanks for sharing your insight on the subject. Like David, however, I am a fan of keeping my images on external drives. Most photographers that I encounter just have way too many images to try to cram them onto their internal drive. The external drives that I use are 7200 RPM FireWire 800 models, and I see little performance difference between working off the internal drive and an external drive. I do keep my Lightroom Catalog on my internal hard drive, though. I do enjoy the read/write speed boost there. Plus, I love being able to browse and show my images in my Lightroom Catalog without the external drives connected.
-Scott
Given that the “roll of the Lightroom catalog” links to a page beginning with a comment on Canadian spelling, may I point out that one has a roll of sushi, but that Lightroom plays a “role”? Cordially.
Normally I don’t get involved in Lightroom holy wars but I had to comment here because you are doing something that I spend a lot of time fighting against.
I think you are absolutely nuts to store your catalog and pictures to an external drive. Storing locally and backing up to an external? Ok! But storing and working off an external drive?
1) Very rarely do I see an external drive (with the exception of eSATA and good firewire drives) do as well as an internal. Most off the shelf externals are slow USB 2 and 5400 (or less) RPM drives. I couldn’t imagine trying to actually work from that type of handicap.
2) External drives are more prone to failure than internal drives. This is a very simple to understand because the more a drive moves around, on or off, the more likely it is to become damaged. Also, most off the shelf external drives pack cheaper internal components that have a very low MTBF.
3) I think it gets users in a bad habit of thinking that somehow because the data is now on an external drive, it is somehow better, safer, or more secure. As long as there is only one copy of that photo, it doesn’t matter where the drive is stored. So if you are working off an external drive and want to have backups, that obviously means you are going external to external which is nuts (in terms of speed; and it is even more nuts if you are backing up locally).
Look, to each his own. I’ve now read your other posts and you kind of address these issues but not really. All and all, this just seems like a god awful idea.
@Rosewood: I think you make an excellent point – given that the term “external drive” reference a single USB connected device, then I believe your statements are correct.
However, I am sure there are folks, liks myself, who uses a NAS device on a high-speed ethernet, that looks like a single drive to the computer but actually contains several drives (in my case, 4 drives, set up with raid parity). This kind of setup would be better and provides high speed storage. There is also the option of connecting the “external drive” as internal drive using iscsi (don’t know much about Apple so I’m guessing here, but these can propably be used with NFS as well).
So, my point is, I believe your statement is true depending on the definition of “external drive”.
NAS devices typically uses the same type of drives as desktop comps. There are of course better drives avaliable in professional solutions (like 10k or 15k rpm sas or fc drives etc), however, these are most likely out of reach economically for most “entusiast” photographers.
However, enough about storage…
@David & everyone using LR4.1
I have a problem moving my catalog in LR4.1
I’d like to have my LR catalogs stored on my “external drive” (ie NAS) – however LR won’t let me! It clearly says that it can’t be done! This is just crazy…!
I really don’t wanna wear out my SSD by multiple writes to something I’d like to keep off the system (“internal”) drive. I tried using the tip in the article above but LR just won’t open a catalog file on my NAS. Moving it was easy enough but it simply refuses to use a network drive to store the Catalogs. Insane decision!
Havn’t really tried to map it as an iscsi device yet (should be seen as an internal device) but that kind of counterfeit my purpose of being able to open the catalog from another comp in my home network… (iscsi means it would be tied down to a specific comp).
Any suggestions on how to solve this??
Temporarily, I’ll just put in my 2 spare 10k internal sas disks (Raptors if anyone like to know) and point the Catalog files to that drive (r0 for speed) and make backups to my NAS. Feels kinda backwards though (at least to me).
Anyonw having a good solution for putting the Catalog files on my NAS (as primary storage)??
Dear Kjelle,
It sounds like you have a very nice NAS setup and some very high-quality drives. Your hardware sounds great but what you are asking for is explicitly forbidden by Lightroom’s design. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is not a network ready program. Adobe’s software designers did not want to deal with the complexity that arises when multiple machines try to access the same data simultaneously. The Adobe engineers did not want to deal with the issues that arise when multiple computers try to read and write to the same MySQL database file–which is the core technology inside the Lightroom Catalog file–simultaneously so they designed the software so that Lightroom Catalog’s cannot be stored on a NAS drive.
I am sure that there are clever ways to work around this design limitation but I would suggest that the real solution is to wait. Wait a few years until the code that runs Photoshop Lightroom is re-written for a cloud-based networked world.
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David Marx
@David: Thank you for your comment. It kind of narrows my options in a way I didn’t anticipate. I can understand the decision, based on time to market aspect, since I believe it is more common for to be a single user at a single device, (ie one comp).
Personally, I use several comps and I pretty much like to be able to use the same, centrally stored, catalog regardless of which comp I’m on. I have no trouble in using just one comp at the time. I believe this scenario could have been “allowed” (solved) very easily, implementing basic file-locking methods.
The MySQL argument is imho not really valid and again points back to “time to market” and “presumed audience” rather than a technical challenge decision. Last time I looked, MySQL was quite capable of letting several comps and users access the same DB… -its pretty much what DB engines are designed to do.
Granted, it would be more complex and would require more time and effort from the developers which, most likely, would make LR more expensive. Its all about finding the balance between price and function, which I am actually ok with. I was very surprised by this limitation and I don’t believe any fingers should be pointed towards MySQL. I would still like to use a central catalogue, even if I am only able to do it from one comp at a time. Its not really THAT big of a deal, however, LR is still an excellent program.