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,
Accidentally deleted that they were imported via Elements11. Sorry
Hi David,
I imported my photos via e 11 and I do see my photos in the catalog. Looking at the window to the left though, they are all in a subfolder called “Masters”, in “iPhoto”,in “Organzer”, in “Adobe”,in”Pictures”. I don’t have a clue how this happened. I had created a catalog called “Jerry’s Lightroom 4 Catalog.Ircat and int top bar indicates that is where it is. Should I change this configuration and rename the “Masters” folder and maybe get rid of the “Organizer” folder, as it seems like an unnecessary level. Thought I did everything right before importing but I guess not. When I open my shortcut from the dock LR opens right to the catalog. at this point I have not yet imported shots directly from my camera, only this initial import from iPhoto. Sheeesh!
Dear Jerry,
First, congratulations on the progress. Getting your iPhoto images into Lightroom 4 via Elements 11 is a huge accomplishment and one that continues to frustrate thousands of Lightroom users. Second, creating a shortcut for your Catalog and pinning it on the dock is a great trick and one that will help you avoid the “what Catalog am I in” frustration that plagues so many Lightroom beginners.
The folder names that you are seeing in Lightroom–”Masters”, “Organizer”, etc.–were created by iPhoto and Elements 11. They are doing you no harm but if it makes you feel better than you can rename them or adjust them from within Lightroom. See http://thelightroomlab.com/2009/09/moving-folders-with-adobe-photoshop-lightroom/
Renaming the folders, and removing that extra top-level, will do you no harm but folders, and folder names, are not all that important to me. Metadata is a far more powerful organizational tool. Re-arrange them if you want but your time will be better spent working with keywords, star ratings, colored labels, etc. See http://thelightroomlab.com/2010/08/searching-with-metadata-in-adobe-photoshop-lightroom/
Likewise, Collections and Smart Collections which function like the Albums feature in iPhoto are more powerful than folders. See http://thelightroomlab.com/2010/11/introduction-to-collections-in-adobe-photoshop-lightroom/
Again congratulations on the successful migration from iPhoto to Lightroom!
–
David Marx
David:
I want to move a large number of photog files (9 years worth, about 1 GB) currently indexed in Picasa (PC) to Lightroom/ Photoshop/ DxO. The only thing I’d like to preserve are the tags and folder structure (yymmdd-subject.notes). I’ll be moving all of them to a new 1.5TB dual Raid-0 enclosure as you recommended (thanks for the comprehensive info!) holding both LR data and catalog.
Can you advise if this is possible and how?
Also, secondary question, I’d like to be able to access that drive from both PC and laptop. Will I need to get an additional license for LR/ Phsp ?? (not looking forward to it )
Dear Andre,
Your licenses from Adobe for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop enable you to use these programs on two computers so that should not be an issue. Moving these files to the new drive and adding them to your new Lightroom Catalog should be easy. You can probably accomplish this task in a just a few mouse clicks using the Import and Move Command.
You might want to view our tutorial on what the term Import means in this context first. See Getting Started: What Does “Import” Mean in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom?
–
David Marx
Hi David,
I`ve been troubled with my LR catalog issue for a week now and finally I have come across a page that looks like people actually help each other here
I have an issue with opening my last year catalog. It`s empty. When I want to open it (I have it on three different disks saved) it has 0 photos and it want`s to import photos! I didn`t move any of my old photos (learned that one a long time ago) and I`m not missing any photos and folders, all is where it should be.
But I`m missing my virtual view of the photos from the last year! I`ve been opening this catalog this year already so I have no idea what went wrong.
Thank you for your help. I really appreciate it.
I use LR 3.
Ivana
Dear Ivana,
This sounds like a classic case of the confusion created by multiple Lightroom Catalogs. Try using the File > Open Recent command in Lightroom to see if that puts you back in the right index. If that fails then I suggest that you do a search for all of the files that you have that end in “.lrcat”. Hopefully one of these will be the Catalog that holds reference points to all of your existing work. My last resort would be to suggest moving back in time via your robust redundant backup plans.
Best of luck,
–
David Marx
Hi David,
It was not backed up on my HD nor any of my other mediums for backup, it was backed up on my old HD I don`t use anymore and of course, I would never think of looking for it there.
thank you so so so much. Because I found it!
So thank you – again
Ivana
David, My external hard drive is full and I want to set up a new hard drive to save images to. Being as hard drive number 2 is the same size as number 1 I can’t copy everything over and just keep going. Can you give me some direction on how to do this? Just want to get it right as I’ve been down the road of not doing it right the first time and its not a fun road to travel.
Dear Barney Riley,
If I understand your question properly what you are really asking is how can I use multiple external hard drives to store all of my images while still indexing all of the photos in a single Lightroom Catalog. It this is correct then I would:
Don’t forget that the new disk and the old image storage disk now need to be included in your daily backup plans. See Professional-Grade Backup Plans if needed.
–
David Marx
Enjoyed your videos but have a couple of questions…
1. I use a Synology Diskstation DS212 as an external server, and then I back up from that server to an external hard drive regularly. I followed your advice and moved the lightroom catalog folder and photos go here folder to Photo Station on the Diskstation, but when you chose the catalog location when reopening Lightroom I got the message ‘Lightroom cannot open the catalog named “Jack’s Lightroom 4 Catalog” located on network volume “photo”. ‘Lightroom Catalogs can not be opened on network volumes, removable storage, or read only volumes.’ Why is Lightroom stopping me using an external drive? I didn’t need to do any specific formatting of the Diskstation for it to allow me to store/serve files from/to both my macs and pcs. Any thoughts why Lightroom isnt liking my external/removable storage?
2. When you explain to move the two folders I mentioned above there is one folder present that you dont reference and it doesnt appear on your videos. It’s called ‘Lightroom Settings’. Does this also get moved to the external location or should that remain in the original ‘Lightroom’ folder? I presume that ‘Lightroom settings’ folder and contents appeared because I followed advice on another video of yours which went through the Lightroom Preferences and in one section said to check ‘store presets with catalog’.
Thanks
Dear Jack,
Apologies for the delayed response. You cannot move your Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Catalog to the server because Lightroom Catalogs cannot be stored on any type of network attached storage. Your Catalog can be stored on an internal or an external drive but not a network drive. Your images can be stored on any device but the Adobe engineers explicitly forbid the use of networked attached storage for your Catalog.
When you turned on the “store presets with catalog” preference switch Lightroom created a sub-folder called Lightroom Settings within the folder that holds your Lightroom Catalog files. Since this is a sub-folder moving the parent–the Lightroom Catalog folder–will move the presets folder too. This is one of the reasons why I advocate turning on this preference switch. If you have set yourself up this way then you can move your Catalog from drive to drive, or computer to computer, without needing to re-create your presets.
–
David Marx
Another question, if you don’t mind! After putting all my images and my catalog on the external hard drive, I wanted to download and work with brand new images while on vacation. I did not want to bring my external drive with me. I also wanted one folder of images with me to work on. I tried to move it to my laptop but think I goofed and created a new catalog. Can I move the new images and the metadata back into my original catalog so that I don’t have two? I guess I know how to move the images but not the catalog. Thanks for any help. If you have a tutorial on this, just direct me! I couldn’t find one.
Barb
Dear Barb,
This is one of the uses for Lightroom’s Export Collect As Catalog and its opposite the Import From Catalog Commands. You could gather up the photos that you want to take with you in main catalog ans then export the collection. You can in theory do your work on the road then use Import from Catalog to merge the data back into the master catalog.
(Personally I wouldn’t do this. I think that these import / export from Catalog tools are weak and that the Adobe engineers should have rethought them years ago. If you decide to go this route then Introduction to Collections in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Using the Import From Catalog Command in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom might help.)
–
David Marx
Thank you! I have merged the two catalogs into one and am back in business. Thanks again for your great tutorials and for taking questions when we can’t quite get it!
Barb
David,
I recently moved all my images to an external hard drive. However, I did not realize that I needed to format the drive first. I have seen your tutorial now. It seems to be working but I may be naive! Should I be figuring out how to remedy this or am I okay to just move forward? Thanks so much for this and for all your tutorials!
Barb
Dear Barb,
Failure to properly format your external hard drive is not going to kill you if it is currently working. Reformatting now would wipe everything off the disk which would probably be a major disaster! The price that you might pay is a loss of efficiency, complexity in backup, and the inability to utilize all of the disks storage space. But again if its working I wouldn’t mess with it unless you have a rock-solid backup.
–
David Marx
Thank you! I will definitely leave it as is. I appreciate your info and help.
Barb
Hi David,
First of all, thank you for the wonderful and easy-to-follow tutorials. I have had a blast watching these videos and reading the articles.
I have just purchased a Macbook Pro 15″ and the newest Lightroom, and I some questions about getting started!
I am going to purchase an external hard drive, and intended on following your personal setup, with the LR catalogue and a “Photos go here” folder stored on the external HD. My budget does not allow for a top-notch SSD drive though.
I understand your reasons for this particular setup (access to the LR catalogue on different computers, and access while travelling), but I do not have these needs, I only have an issue of space on my Macbook.
So my questions are:
1 – Will I experience a noticeable slowing-down of Lightroom if I store both my catalogue and my photos externally?
2 – Can I circumvent this potential issue by storing the catalogue on my Internal drive, and my photos on the external drive? How much space does the LR catalogue tend to occupy?
Regards,
Danny
Dear Danny,
Thanks for the kind words about my tutorials. I appreciate it. I am going to answer your questions in reverse order. I should add too that I can’t afford any SSD drives yet either :>
Your Lightroom Catalog takes up megabytes to gigabytes worth of space. It’s size depends on two factors: 1. How many images you index. 2. Yours settings for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1:1 Previews. Relatively speaking though the Lightroom Catalog is nothing to worry about compared to the storage space required for your thousands and thousands of images.
Storing the Catalog and the your images on your internal drive is probably the simplest and most efficient way to get started. Keeping everything internally for now requires no additional hardware purchases and as you travel around with your MacBookPro you have access to all of your work. If you eventually come close to filling your internal hard drive then you could move either the images and / or the catalog over to an external.
Storing either or both the images and the catalog will not slow anything down if you use the right hardware and the right drive connector. Via FireWire 800 or Thunderbolt the difference between internal and external drive performance is not likely to make much difference.
–
David Marx
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.
–
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,
–
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,
–
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.
–
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.
–
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.
–
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