Getting Started: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog Creation and Image Storage Fundamentals
Author’s note: I originally wrote multiple short articles to explain the complete process involving image storage and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog creation. When I first wrote these articles and recorded the video tutorials, I assumed that our readers would move from post to post as if they were chapters in a book. After studying this site’s traffic data, I am not convinced that this approach worked, so I am replacing the short article that used to live here with a much longer post that covers both the image storage and catalog setup process. I believe that the time that you spend absorbing these lessons and thinking about your image storage system will greatly benefit you as you incorporate Lightroom into your photography.
What is Adobe Photoshop Lightroom?
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is a software program that streamlines a serious photographer’s digital workflow. Photoshop Lightroom is a powerful image management tool that takes some of the best features from many other programs and combines them together to make finding, enhancing, and sharing your favorite digital images fast and easy. I will demonstrate Adobe Photoshop Lightroom’s speed and elegance in this brief video tutorial:
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom has many capabilities, but its core function is digital image organization. This is an image management solution for serious photographers who need help organizing thousands of digital images. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom’s image cataloging system is over-kill for most “point and shoot” photographers. Programs like iPhoto, Picassa, or Adobe Photoshop Elements are more appropriate tools for the average photo enthusiast. The Adobe corporation classifies Photoshop Lightroom as a “professional-grade application,” which means that this software includes very little internal guidance or instruction for the novice user. The Adobe software engineers assume that all Photoshop Lightroom users bring a rich understanding of the “ins and outs” of digital image storage to the table before they start using this application.
Our experience leading Adobe Photoshop Lightroom training seminars and digital photography workshops for the past six years has convinced us that most new Photoshop Lightroom users lack the appropriate background knowledge to be able to be comfortable using Lightroom as soon as they install it. Most of the new Photoshop Lightroom that we meet at our seminars and on this website jump into this software without taking the time to really think through their image storage needs. This lack of planning becomes a bigger and bigger issue as the volume of images that are being stored increases. Photoshop Lightroom is a wonderful image management tool, but this software cannot devise a well-reasoned mass data storage plan for you, nor will it help you protect your precious digital photos from total disk failure.
Professional-grade image storage and file organization is a complex issue. It is tricky because data storage is not a “one-size fits all” problem and there is no universal “best” solution. Every photographer has different needs and different equipment, but there are some universal truths. First and foremost, you must realize that Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is not responsible for the safety of the files on your computer. You need to formulate your own backup plans to protect everything that you store in your computer or on your external hard drives. Warning: all hard drives will eventually fail. Moral: building a robust backup system is crucial! For more on backup plans, see our tutorial on Professional-Grade Backup Plans.
Second, you must understand that Adobe Photoshop Lightroom creates its own database files. The files that Lightroom creates are collectively referred to as the “Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog.” The Photoshop Lightroom Catalog is an index of your photographs, but the Catalog is separate from your digital image files. Novice Lightroom users often mistake Photoshop Lightroom’s thumbnails and previews for their actual photos. The thumbnails and previews that Photoshop Lightroom displays are just visual placeholders that make the database more colorful. The images that you see inside of the Lightroom Catalog are actually reference points inside of the index. While these placeholders are nice to look at, they are not replacements for the much larger digital file that is stored elsewhere on your hard drive.
Think of these files as if they were separate “puzzle pieces.” Your numerous folders full of digital images are one of the puzzle pieces. Your Photoshop Lightroom Catalog files are a separate puzzle piece. Moving your photos or your Photoshop Lightroom Catalog from one disk to another is not a hard process, but the big question is: what arrangement of these puzzle pieces best suits your needs? Let’s start with a discussion of our image storage options.
Getting Started with Photoshop Lightroom: Software Installation
Installing Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 is easy. You can install this software either from a disk or you can download the installer from the web. Most users will want to install the application to their main internal hard drive no matter where you choose to store your images. Lightroom is a program, and like most programs, it will run best if it is installed into your internal hard drives “Programs” folder. Once the software is installed I suggest creating a root folder for your photo storage. I call this folder my “Photos Go Here” folder. First time Lightroom users might also want to create the a new Lightroom Catalog. We will discuss storage options for the root photo storage folder and the Lightroom Catalog through out this tutorial.
Getting Started with Photoshop Lightroom: Where Should I Store My Digital Images?
The easiest way to begin exploring this question is with an analogy. Think of your computer’s hard drive as a giant filing cabinet. Now, imagine that you have thousands of important paper documents to file away. You could throw all of these documents into the cabinet’s drawers at once or you could carefully sort them and put them away one group at a time into separate dividers. If you throw all of the papers into the cabinet at once without taking the time to first organize them into clearly labeled, logically-arranged groups, then the results are going to be a big mess and it doesn’t set up a good system to find them later.
A computer’s hard drive is no different. Where I use the word “drawers” to describe the parts of a physical filing cabinet, substitute the term “hard drives.” Where I use the word “dividers,” the digital equivalent is “folders.” The point of the analogy is that we need to use the same organizational tools in the digital world that we use in the physical world. Organizing any massive collection of important information requires dividing the assets up into logical groupings, carefully filing the groupings away, and giving each folder a clear, meaningful label. Storing a single digital photograph is not a big challenge; the complexity of digital image storage doesn’t emerge until we have hundreds or thousands of images to store. Dividing images into folders is only helpful when there are clear and obvious rules that govern which images land in folder “X” and which images belong inside of folder “Y”.
Both Windows and Mac operating systems automatically create a root folder that is designed for photo storage, called the Pictures folder, inside of each user account. This is a good starting place if your collection of digital images will fit on your computer’s hard drive, but simply having a top-level folder named Pictures is not a carefully-crafted image management solution. If your computer was built with a high-capacity internal hard drive, then maintaining sufficient free space for your computer to operate and also store all of your digital images might not be a problem. If your mass of digital images exceeds the amount of free space available on this drive, you will need to figure out a different storage option. This is particularly important because the factory-default Pictures folder is always located on the computer’s “startup disk,” which also contains the computer’s operating system. Filling any hard drive up completely is a bad idea, but it is even more so with your computer’s startup disk. For safe computing, you must leave at least 10% of your startup disk’s total capacity blank or bad things will start to happen!
My laptop has a 250 gigabyte internal hard drive. I have hit the point where my internal hard drive is not big enough to hold all of my photos. If we take my startup disk’s total capacity, and subtract out the essential free space, then we can calculate the drive’s actual storage space: 250 – (250 x .1)= 225 gigabytes of total useable storage space. If I were just getting started in digital photography, this would be plenty of storage space for the computer’s operating system, my programs, and all of my digital images. My photo library now exceeds more than 40,000 digital images that have been shot over the past ten years and storing these files requires about a terabyte of storage space. Using the SI scale we can say that a terabyte equals 1000 gigabytes, a gigabyte equals a 1000 megabytes, and a megabyte equals 1000 kilobytes of information. Storing my current digital images requires a hard drive that is at least five times larger than my laptop’s current startup disk!
If you get to the point where your internal disk lacks sufficient free space for your storage needs then you face four choices. You could either: a) delete thousands of photos; b) replace your internal drive with a larger capacity disk; c) move all of your photos over to an additional hard drive; or d) distribute your images across multiple hard drives. If your computer’s hardware will allow it, then adding an additional internal hard drive into your system might make sense. Most desktop computers, and a few laptop chassis, can hold multiple internal hard drives. We are increasingly seeing desktop computers ship from the factory with a relatively small startup disk and a much larger, second internal hard drive meant for massive data storage. Some computers even mix drive types for this configuration. A really slick new computer might use a Solid State Drive (SSD) for the startup disk and a Serial ATA Drive for massive data storage.
Solid State Drives are in some ways the wave of the future. This drive technology uses flash memory and lacks moving parts so your programs can run faster. SSD drives are built into snazzy new devices like the iPad. SSD drives launch applications extremely fast, but this technology is quite expensive for mass data storage. Serial ATA Drives, however, may not be as snappy, but they are a much more affordable option for storing an enormous volume of files.
If my computer could hold two internal hard drives, then I could install all of my programs on the startup disk and use the second drive to store all of my photographs. This elegant storage solution is easy to achieve with most desktop computers but, unfortunately, it is not option with my current computer. I could choose to replace my computer’s original 250 gigabyte internal drive with a much larger capacity disk which would require me to take the computer apart, swap out the current hard drive, and then clone all of my existing files onto the new drive. This is possible, but it requires a bit more work.
My favorite external hard drive. The OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Mini.
Using a folder that you create explicitly for your image storage is a great idea no matter where you choose to keep your images. I use a top-level folder that I have named “Photos Go Here” to separate my image sub-folders from my other files. Making this division between the root folder for your images, what I call my Photos Go Here folder, and your Photoshop Lightroom Catalog folder helps to keep things nice and tidy. It also helps new Photoshop Lightroom users understand that their Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog database files are separate from their actual digital photographs. You will see some of the reasons why I like to use a folder for my Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog files and a separate folder for all of my image folders in the next section.
Getting Started with Photoshop Lightroom: Where Should I Keep My Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog?
Thinking about where to keep your digital images is only part of the data storage conundrum. We also need to consider where to store our Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog files. Fortunately, these puzzle pieces–meaning your Lightroom Catalog and your digital image files–remain malleable. It is a hassle, but you can move both your images and your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog from one disk to another an unlimited number of times as your needs change.
With Photoshop Lightroom, your images can be stored on either an internal or an external hard drive. Images can even be stored on a networked (NAS) storage device but you cannot use this type of external storage for your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog files. This limitation was intentionally designed into the software to protect your Photoshop Lightroom Catalog files from simultaneous input requests.
This limits us to three options. Each of these video tutorials explains the strengths and weaknesses of each Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog and image storage arrangement.
Option 1: Internal Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog Storage + Internal Image Storage
Option 2: Internal Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog Storage + External Image Storage
Option 3: External Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog Storage + External Image Storage
As you might have guessed, I am currently using Option 3: External Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog Storage and External Image Storage. With my current hardware, this arrangement makes the most sense. This article on the details of My Photo Storage System: Using Multiple External Hard Drives goes into more detail about the advantages and drawbacks to my external image storage system, but I need to emphasize again that external storage is not be the best solution for everyone. The ideal arrangement is a question that you need to ponder.
If you decide that external storage suits your needs, these tutorials will help you move your existing Photoshop Lightroom Catalog and/or your images from one drive to another:
- How to Move Your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog to an External Hard Drive
- How to Move Image Folders from Drive to Drive Without Upsetting Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
We need to be sure that Photoshop Lightroom opens the right catalog once you have figured out your own solution to the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog and image storage location puzzle since Adobe Photoshop Lightroom allows you to have more than one set of catalog files. For Photoshop Lightroom beginners, creating multiple catalog files makes learning this software more difficult. Multiple catalogs might help some advanced users, but working with multiple Lightroom Catalog files is complicated and only creates needless confusion for most of us. We will discuss ways to ensure that you are working with the right Photoshop Lightroom Catalog files every time in the next section.
Working With The Right Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog
Renaming Your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog
Unfortunately, it is easy to create multiple Photoshop Lightroom Catalog files by accident. This problem is compounded when the Lightroom Catalogs are given vague, nondescript names. Using a descriptive catalog name makes it much easier to distinguish between your Lightroom Catalog and an accidentally-created factory default.
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalogs are always named Lightroom 3 Catalog.lrcat. The factory default behavior is to store this file inside of a folder named Lightroom that the program automatically creates inside of your Pictures folder. I encourage all Photoshop Lightroom users to change both the name of this folder and the name of your Lightroom Catalog files to something distinct and different from these factory default setting. Renaming both the Lightroom folder and my catalog’s filename to something more descriptive makes it easy for me to see that I am working in the right catalog every time.
The Factory Default Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog Files
Renaming your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog and the folder that contains them is easy if you know which files need to be renamed and where these files live inside of your computer. This short video tutorial demonstrates the entire process. The whole procedure will take you less than five minutes and it will make it much easier for you to distinguish one Catalog from another.
Here’s a rough step-by-step guide to the catalog renaming process for those who would rather read a list of steps than watch a video. To rename an Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog:
- Launch Lightroom and open your Lightroom Catalog.
- Go Lightroom > Catalog Settings > General (Mac) or Edit >Catalog Settings > General (Pc.)
- Press the Show Button. This will open an operating system window.
- Leave the operating system window open but click back into the Lightroom application.
- Quit or Exit out of Lightroom.
- Inside the operating system window find your Lightroom 3 Catalog.lrcat file.
- Change this file’s name but be sure to keep its extension. (The “.lrcat” part of the file name is essential.)
- Change the name of the Previews.lrdata package (Mac) or Previews.lrcat folder (Pc) so that it is now an exact match of your catalog’s new name. Be sure to keep the word “Previews” at the end of this file’s name and to preserve its .lrdata extension.
- Double click on your renamed .lrcat file to relaunch your catalog.
Creating an Alias or a Shortcut that Leads to Your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog
Renaming your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog files and their parent folder is a good start and it is a setup step that you can perform no matter where you decide to store your Catalog. Hold off on this next trick until after you have given your Photoshop Lightroom Catalog a descriptive name and moved it to your ideal Catalog storage location. Replacing the generic program startup icon with an alias (Mac) or creating a shortcut (Windows) that points directly to your Lightroom Catalog (.lrcat) file is the best way to guarantee that the correct Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog launches every time.
Using an alias or shortcut is a great way to avoid multiple Catalog confusion. With an alias, you can guarantee that the right Catalog loads up every time. The results are guaranteed because the alias or shortcut can only open the right file. With this trick, you can guarantee that the right Photoshop Lightroom Catalog loads up every time you launch the program!
How to Create an Alias that Leads Directly to Your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog (Mac)
It is almost exactly the same with Windows but locking down the drive letter before creating the shortcut is a big help. Controlling the Microsoft Windows “Dynamic Drive Letter Assignment System” is a huge help for PC users. Following these extra steps before creating a shortcut is strongly advised for Window’s users.
Controlling the Microsoft Windows Dynamic Drive Letter Assignment System
How to Create a Shortcut that Leads Directly to Your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog (Windows)
If you have followed all of our suggestions, and carefully thought through your image storage needs, then you are almost ready to start using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom! I suggest moving to this tutorial on the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom’s Preference Menus next. Set up the Preference Menus and then read this tutorial on “What Does ‘Import’ Mean in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom?” before you jump deeper into mastering this program.
Filed Under: (01) Getting Started • Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Tutorials • Featured Articles
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 Photoshop and Photoshop Lightroom Expert. David has led Adobe Photoshop / Photoshop Lightroom seminars and digital photography field workshops for The Rocky Mountain School of Photography, FirstLight Workshops, The American Society of Media Photographers, and the world-renowned Blackberry Farm Resort. To learn more about David's software seminars and field photography workshops, please visit 
David,
I’m new to Lightroom and have not used any software like it before, I followed your tutorials religiously and patiently to install Lightroom 3 onto my iMac, using an external drive for my catalogue and photos go here file. I now want to install Lightroom 3 onto my MacBook pro and thought I’d just follow all the tutorials again, but I’m confused now as I don’t know how to link the MacBooks catalogue to the external drive. I already have a folder in the external drive called Karen’s Lightroom 3 catalogue and a photos go here. I’m not very computer savvy either I have to point out!
Thanks
Karen
Dear Karen Knightly,
Well if Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and computers are new to you then you are certainly taking on a big challenge. This is complicated stuff even for experts and experienced users. If you look inside the Karen’s Lightroom 3 catalogue folder on the external drive what do you see? If there is a file whose name and extension are something like “Karen’s Lightroom 3 Catalog.lrcat” then you have successfully put your Lightroom Catalog onto the external disk. You can open up this database file with any computer that has the Lightroom 3 software installed simply by double-clicking.
Double-clicking the .lrcat file launches the Lightroom program. You could open this folder and double click on the appropriate file every time you switch machines or relaunch Lightroom. Setting this Catalog as your default in the preferences menu, and creating an alias / shortcut that leads right too it, is another way to insure that this Catalog launches every time without having to navigate to the appropriate file on the appropriate external drive again and again.
This is tough stuff so please don’t be afraid to ask for more help.
–
David Marx
Hi David,
Thanks for your reply and help. Yes I do have the Karen’s Lightroom 3 Catalog.lrcat file on my external drive, along with a data file and an alias that I created for the iMac. So I have right clicked on the Ircat and created another alias which says ‘alias 2′ and dragged that onto the desktop, then put it in the dock to the right of the bars.
I’ve gone into preferences and changed the default catalogue to open volumes/mypassport/Karen’s lightroom 3 catalogue/Karen’s Lightroom 3 Catalog.Ircat.
I hope this is right?
Thanks
Karen
Dear Karen Knightly,
It sounds like you are doing everything right although there was no need for the second alias. The “2″ is your Mac’s way of telling you that it is identical to the alias that you had already created for your catalog. Still it has done you no harm and hopefully this plus setting your preferences has solved your troubles.
–
David Marx
Hey David,
A question I hope will be easy and quick. Is it possible to designate a default folder for imports and have Lightroom 3 go right to it? Presently, it defaults to a users/pictures folder. I have a folder on an external harddrive called PhotoDownloads that I’d like to direct my imports to. Then I’ll make a date-named subfolder in which to download that day’s take. Right now I have to click to the external drive, scroll down to find the PhotoDownloads folder and then right click to have it make the subfolder.
Carl
Dear Carl Socolow,
The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Import Dialog can be frustrating but building an Import Preset can solve this problem. The Import Preset can direct files to your chosen folder each and every time. See Creating an Import Preset in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3. I will be replacing the videos with new ones for Lightroom 4 soon but the buttons, and the technique, has not changed any.
–
David Marx
[...] in Lightroom, as I wanted to get it right, first time. I found this blog and video series … The Lightroom Lab … which I found enormously helpful. There are a number of videos helping beginners get their [...]
Hi David:
I’m sorry for the double and now triple post. For the life of I couldn’t find the original. Not my day.
Thanks,
Dave
Hi David:
I have a new system, PC Win7 Lr3.6 64-bit. I installed a clean version of LR, I point to catalog on my ext HD, but LR acts as though all my photos have never been imported into LR. If I select the import tab and find the photos, they are all there waiting to be imported.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Dave
Dear David Breazeale,
Apologies for the delay. I have been swamped getting materials ready for the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 release and the class the workshop that I am currently teaching. I suspect that you are working with a new Lightroom Catalog. If the “don’t reimport suspected duplicates” preferences switch is turned on then Lightroom should gray out images that are already connected to your index. If this switch is indeed turned on, and the images are not grayed out, then you must be in the wrong Catalog.
–
David Marx
No apologies necessary. Not sure why this would matter, but I changed my parental/administrator settings and I’ll be danged if they didn’t show up. I was in the correct catalog. Can’t explain it.
Hi David:
I purchased a new computer. I’ve followed your videos on creating a catalog on an external HD. This is how I had it set up on my previous system. On the new system Lightroom acts as though the photos in my ‘Photos Go Here’ file on the ext HD were never imported into Lightroom. I imported 2 new photos into Lightroom, and moved that folder and the lrcat file to the ext HD and those work fine. I’m using a PC Win7, LR3 3.6 64-bit.
Thank you,
Dave
Hi !
Excellent explanations , the tuts for how to use LR with external drive is exactly what i wanted, very well explained even if I’m not fluent in English, thanks a lot ! very cool man !
Larry from France
I exported all my pictures to a file on my desktop, and then I selected to move the pictures into a new destination, which I called LR photos stored here…When I selected import, everything shows up as gray boxes? There are no images!
Dear Lane,
I believe that you are confused about what import and export mean in the Adobe Photoshop vernacular. See Getting Started: What Does “Import” Mean in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom? and What Does Export Mean in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom?. Lightroom’s Import Dialog grayed out the copy of your images in that desktop folder because everyone of those images is already in your Catalog.
–
David Marx
Hello David, thanks in advance. Great site!
I am going to go with the external HD images and catalog.
I have one laptop, a external HD where i keep everything and then a backup external HD.
Question is say I am going on a trip and I want to take a specific shoots photos with me (that already have some LR work to them) to work on my laptop on the plane, and i cant take my desktop external hard drive. How do I take those images and that part of the catalog with me to work on the plane? Then when i get back home how do I apply/merge those changes to my main catalog and images on my desktop external HD.
Thanks
AE
Dear AndresE,
There are many ways to solve this one. One option is to use Collections and the Import / Export from Catalog feature. See Using the Import from Catalog Command in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Introduction to Collections in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Unfortunately, the Import / Export from Catalog commands have been ignored by the Adobe engineers for far too long. Many of the features that you might want like auto-synchornization, or the ability to control the imported folder structure, have been missing for many years.
Another option is to use a synchronization program like Dropbox. This works as long as you need access to a relatively small set of images. A third option is to use software like the Adobe Bridge while you are out on the road and save the Lightroom work until you can get home. For many professionals this is the simplest solution though it requires additional software and work.
–
David Marx
David,
1 Feb 12 I tried to follow your suggestion for renaming catalog files in your Getting Started…Catalog Creation and Image Storage Fundamentals.
I lost my catalog and have not been able to restore or use LR since.
At step 3, MY Pictures (Windows 7) came up where you indicated an OS screen would come up, but it had the same folder with .lrcat & .lrdat files I thought you described. I right clicked each and added MY to change them. Now, next day, I believe, for unknown reasons to me, the right OS Window did not open for me?
The rest has all been down hill, a tremendous loss of time. I had windows remove my 3.6 copy of LR and I reloaded from original CD my 3.2 start version of LR. But although it installed, I cannot open it? I have a warning window:LR-Opening Catalog: Root-Pixel.db.lrcat followed by a dialog screen: Adobe LR 64 bit has stopped working.
I have a call into Adobe Tech Support and have been waiting 30+ minutes. This will cost a minimum of $39 if I get through.
I thought youn should know about this. If you know how to get out of this, please let me know.
Thanks.
Jim
Dear Jim McDowell,
I am sorry to hear about your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom troubles. Renaming your Catalog should not have been such a difficult process. If you are still having trouble please send me an email at david@thelightroomlab.com and I will see what I can do to help.
–
David Marx
“The Adobe software engineers assume that all Photoshop Lightroom users bring a rich understanding of the ins and outs of digital image storage to the table before they start using this application”. I take issue with this statement, it was not on the box. Come on.. this program is a little “overcooked” requiring hours attempting to understand the -engineers- as evidenced by the amount of confusion I read on everything pertaining to Lightroom.
I think a lot of photograhers are not unlike me in that they have a few thousand chromes and negatives that they are now digitizing and with their new digital cameras keeping way too many images that need a place to go . I purchased Adobe Lightroom to assist me in this and along with some really great tools hopefully make my life easier.
OK, I’ve vented. Lightroomlab.com is by far the most informative source of information I have read(viewed), including a very large book I purchased. Keep up the good work.
When I (save as) a edited NEF picture from photoshop to lightroom. The picture saved from photoshop is overexposed? I saved the picture as a PSD..Please Help!! Scott
Dear Scott,
It maybe just semantics but you cannot edit a NEF file in Adobe Photoshop CS5. Photoshop is a pixel based manipulator and raw files do not yet have fixed pixel values. You can however use the Adobe Camera Raw processing engine to edit the NEF file and then create a pixel based version. This version is your psd or tif file.
I am wondering why you are using Photoshop to work on your NEF files rather than using the same exact code but with a different interface using the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Develop Module. I am also wondering what color space and bit depth you are using for the psd file in Photoshop. Also wondering why preview quality you have selected in Photoshop Lightroom and if you have accidentally increased the exposure for the psd file once it has been added back into your Photoshop Lightroom Catalog.
Chase down each one of these variables and you might find the reason why the Photoshop image differs from the Photoshop Lightroom preview.
–
David Marx
Hello, I am having some pretty complicated and confusing issues with my enormous Lightroom Library that I hope you can assist me with. (I realize that this is an older post, but I noticed that you are still responding to most comments so I figured you could help.)
I use a macbook pro with a 500gb hd. I like having all my photos on the internal drive so I won’t have to mess with carrying around an external drive everywhere I want to use my laptop. Through the years, though, my photo library has become ridiculously large, filling up my internal drive and it has begun bogging everything down consistently, so I needed to move my older photos to a 1tb external drive but I still kept them in the same LR catalog. I also used that same external to do time machine backups of my internal drive. Eventually that external became full because of redundant time machine backups that I’ve been unable to fix. So I had to get another 1tb external and begin storing my new photos there. So I have about 57,000 photos on my first external, 28,000 on the internal drive, and about 18,000 on my second external.
I just purchased a 3tb external drive in hopes of consolidating everything and making room on the other drives so they can be used as time machine backups and/or to keep another working copy of my photos. I plan on clearing off my internal drive and using it for storing only my most recent photos that I will be working on most frequently. In a perfect world, I would be able to: keep my 10,000 most recent photos on my internal drive, keep my entire photo library (including periodically added new files) on both the 1 tb and 3 tb external drives. These drives should function as time machine backups as well as a readily accessible home for identical copies of my LR catalog and it’s actual photos so at all times, I have at least 2-3 copies of every photo in my library.
So to recap, I have one LR catalog, but all my photos are scattered throughout several external drives as well as in the internal drive. In the future, I would like to be able to import all my new photos directly to the internal drive and, maybe once per week, just plug in my external drives and have them do a time machine backup and also add the newest photos I’ve added to their LR. Essentially, I want my LR catalog (and it’s actual photos) to exist in both the internal drive (but only my most recent 10,000 photos) and also on two external drives that will automatically add any new photos I have imported to my internal drive since my last backup.
I suppose my main questions are:
1. how would I create a system in which I have at least 3 identical copies of the LR catalog and its original files on each drive, but omitting everything except the latest 10,000 files on the internal drive?
2. How would I go about setting up my external drives so that they automatically update to reflect any changes that have been made in my internal drive’s catalog since the last time I plugged them in?
3. How would I get the catalogs on these external drives to import the new photos I add to the internal drive without me having to specify where to put the new photos each time?
4. Does time machine already do what I am wanting to accomplish here? (I am confused about how time machine interacts with Lightroom.) can you launch and operate lightroom from within a “backups” folder?
I’m sorry for such an extremely long comment; I may be overcomplicating this whole thing, but having so many files is just overwhelming to say the least. It have spent a lot of time trying to sort this out to no avail. I really appreciate any advice you can give!
Thank you so much,
-Peter Nelson
Hi David,
Thank you so much for these tutorials. Here is a question. Right now I have everything as you described in the internal storage tutorial. Everything is on my iMac. I bought a G Drive to move all pictures to. After your tutorials, I am convinced I should keep my lrcat there as well.
Here’s my series of questions: Since I already have lr on the computer with the lrcat, to move the lr cat to my G Drive, can I simply do the option click while opening LR and select G Drive, then delete the lrcat on my iMac (pictures folder) if it is left there?
If I create the folder name as you suggest then move the lrcat using the option click method, will LR understand everything when I just go to open it on any computer with LR?
If, now since I already have a catalog and pictures, if I can’t do the option click to move the lrcat and use the finder to do it, will LR get confused by me naming the folder differently on the G Drive.
Lastly, when moving the Pictures folder, do I need to come up with a folder besides “Pictures” which houses the pictures and folders within it?
I guess where I’m really confused is, right now my Mac has both the LR folder (with catalog and previews) and all my photos in the “Pictures” folder. That I see you tell us about, because I didn’t tell LR to do anything differently when installing LR. However, if I move the Pictures folder to the G Drive, if I just pick it up and move it in Finder OR I use your Import method, won’t it take the lrcat with it since it is in the Pictures folder?
Also, iPhoto is in that Pictures folder and I just want that left on the Mac.
So I guess I thought the Pictures folder just contained photos I imported and now my mind is slightly blown–I’m OCD and want to make sure I do this right. I also thought my Pictures folder was my Parent folder/or, containing folder for all my images.
Anyway, I hope the questions make sense. I feel like I’m so close to getting it, but I just want to make sure I completely understand.
Thank you so much for all your help!!!!!!!
Monty
Dear Monty,
Moving your Lightroom Catalog and / or your images to an external hard drive is easy. I discuss each of the possible configurations and explain how to move the parts from drive to drive in our Getting Started: Where Should I Keep My Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog tutorial. The video that I title “Option 3–External Catalog Storage and External Image Storage” should answer many of these questions.
Dragging and dropping your entire internal Pictures folder to an external drive would indeed copy your Lightroom Catalog and all of your images but its not a good idea. As you point out dragging this top-level folder to the external disk would indeed copy your iPhoto Library. I fear too that it will cause you lots of needless confusion since you will then have two folders labeled Pictures–one on the internal drive and one on the external–and until you tell it otherwise Lightroom will continue to read and write from the Catalog that still lives on your internal disk.
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David Marx
I have a disaster question…I’m new to LR, and decided to use it for a job I just did, where I had to choose and edit over 1,000 pictures. All well, everything fine, good editing, easy… until I decided to go into the external hard drive where the catalogue was stored and created two separate folders to better divide photos from movies. Once I started LR again, it told me that the catalogue was missing… so I told it to go and get those pictures again…. and now they’re all there BUT ALL THE EDITING I HAD DONE IS TOTALLY LOST!!! Of course, it re-imported the RAW images… so what do I do now???? Any chance of retrieving all that? I hope you can help…thanks!!!
Dear Fabrizia,
Slow down and don’t panic. If you can find your original Lightroom Catalog then you might be able to recover all your work. Search your computer for files that end with the “.lrcat” extension. I bet that you have at least two of them. Hopefully one is your original catalog and the other is the new default that the program automatically created when you moved or deleted the original.
It is also possible that your original catalog still exists in one of your computer backups. You do make daily backups of every drive and every file, right? if so then you might have the chance to step back in time and recover the original catalog.
You would be in better shape to if you had turned on the critical “Automatically Write Changes to XMP” preference switch back when you first started using the program. If you had turned on this critical switch then your files would have all of the changes you made saved into them even after your old catalog was lost.
You don’t want to hear this now either but this mess was completely avoidable. A: You could have left your storage system alone and just asked Lightroom to separate the photos from the videos for you using the Search with Metadata tools. B: You could have moved the video files from folder to folder within the program. Sadly, there was no need to do this at all much less at the operating system level.
I don’t mean to scold. This is the learning curve that we all must endure to understand the importance of Lightroom’s Catalog and its relationship to our actual image files. Hopefully you can find your old catalog and then this will just be a lesson learned and not a huge setback!
Best of luck,
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David Marx
Hi David
I’m printing from Lightroom 3 with an Epson 3800. Until now, happily. Suddenly, I can’t bring up the Advanced B&W printing option from the print dialogue box when I select an ICC paper profile in LR print. However the B&W option is available if I set MANAGED BY PRINTER. Also – suddenly the names for the paper sizes are different after I’ve selected them in Page Setup. For example instead of saying ‘US LETTER’ next to the image in LR, it reads ‘Letter.LManu4SideNmg…’
any thoughts about what I should do? Most of the printing I do is B&W, so this is a real pain.
Thanks so much for your time and consideration
Best
Adam
Dear Adam Brooks,
I am not an Epson printing expert. My uninformed guess is that either your Epson is not connected right now or it is no longer set as the default printer. My other guess is that you have changed the paper load path. I have seen the B&W options appear and disappear sometimes if you change from tray to roll feed etc. If you want a better answer to this question though you really need to ask someone who uses an Epson and likes inkjet printing!
Best of luck,
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David Marx
Hello David,
First, thanks for this great website, it is a useful job for a lot people.
Then, my question: I currently have a Windows laptop and an old HDD. I plan to buy a Mac in about one year. Of course I didn’t know about the catalog configuration, so I have it in my pictures. If I follow your instructions of yesterday 5.58pm to rebuild the catalog on a HDD, will I have a lot of problems when I go to Apple? But on another hand, I don’t want to work in a bad way waiting for that moment… Please guide me to the best solution.
D.
Dear Damien,
If there is enough free hard drive space inside your current laptop then I would suggest leaving things as they are until you get the new Mac. If you are running out of internal storage space then my advice is to format the external drive using the Windows NTFS file system. If you need the extra space then use this drive to store your images and your Lightroom Catalog. See Where Should I Keep My Lightroom Catalog? If you don’t need the extra space right now then just use this external hard drive to backup your laptop.
If you do end up using the external drive as your primary storage then you will want to use another disk to back this one up too. When you get the Mac you will be able to transfer your Lightroom Catalog, and all of your images, to the new computer. Your Catalog files, and your images, are already cross-platform. The only complexity is the drive’s file structure. When you get the new computer you can transfer everything over to the Mac and then you can then reformat the external drive using the Mac’s HFS+ file system.
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David Marx
Hi David, I have really enjoyed your videos on LR. I wish I had watched this before I started up lightroom on my Imac.
I have messed up my filing and folders and where everything is.
Currently want to import all photos your way of LR setup!!
My question is can I import my photos without the folders and have the date folders and bring in the collections from the old catalog only.
Dear Frank Pali,
Sorry for the delay. Unfortunately you cannot import collections without also importing the old folder structure using the Import from Catalog option. At this moment in time, importing your images using the move to new folder option too won’t solve this problem either. To solve this problem you need to outsmart Lightroom.
Steps required to build a new Catalog and then rebuild your existing Collections:
1. Open your existing Lightroom Catalog.
2. Turn on the “Automatically Write Changes to XMP” preference switch.
3. Go into your first Collection. Double-click the Collection’s name so that Lightroom will show you only these images on the grid.
4. Select them all. (Click here for help with selection methods.)
5. Add a new keyword to all of these files. Use your current Collection’s name for your new keyword. I sometimes add the letters “T-” before the keyword. “T-” for temporary. This part is not essential but I find it helpful.
6. Repeat steps 3-5 for each and every Collection. The goal is to mark every file with the appropriate keywords–keywords that mark the image as part of this or that Collection.
7. Back everything up. See our articles on Backing Up a Mac with Carbon Copy Cloner or Backing Up a PC with Acronis True Image.
8. Create a new Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog. This is a great time to think about where to keep your Lightroom Catalog. This is also a good time to give your new Lightroom Catalog a meaningful name and to create a shortcut or alias that leads right to it.
9. Import all of your existing images into the new Catalog. The Import with Add option is a great choice for this step if you are not needing to move or copy your images from place to place. If that is not your goal then use either the Import with Copy or the Import with Move option.
10. Now search through your images using each temporary keyword. Our tutorial on searching with metadata might help.
11. Turn the search results back into Collections.
12. Done!
It sounds like a lot of steps but it is not very hard.
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David Marx
Hi, David. I want to leave my Aperture 3 and move the whole works to Lightroom 3. I have a new iMac with a lot of spare space so I could keep everything internal; or, I can move all my photos to an external hard drive. I understand the importance of getting it right the first time, so I want to get it right the first time. Thank you very much for your suggestions.
Dear Robert Bell,
Where to keep your images and your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog is an important decision but it’s not a one-chance deal. Both of these “puzzle pieces” are movable and each configuration has its advantages. See http://thelightroomlab.com/2011/03/where-should-i-keep-my-adobe-photoshop-lightroom-catalog/ and its video tutorials for a more in-depth discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of each arrangement.
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David Marx
Hi David,
In RMSP you helped us set up Lightroom with external drive to our laptops. Now that I want to work off my Desktop (and I just installed Lightroom on it) how to I set things up? How do I get Lightroom to recognize my hard drive?
Kelli M.
Dear Kelli,
The question is where do you want to store all of the puzzle pieces. Do you want your Catalog on the desktop, the laptop, or the external disk? Likewise, where do you want to store your images? See http://thelightroomlab.com/2011/03/where-should-i-keep-my-adobe-photoshop-lightroom-catalog/ and all its links for more specifics on your options.
Best regards,
David Marx