jedcardio

How do you find LR catalogs And open pictures from them. I realize LR does keep pictures but where do they go and how can you retrieve them?

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Try utube videos from Anthony Morganti. Or, simply google "best lightroom utube" and just click down the results list. They're free to watch so it's only your time spent trying to learn more and get your LR journey started.

brucewells Loc: Central Kentucky

LR is NOT an application one can install and learn by 'working through it'. It takes some instruction, which is available from many sources. If you want to learn about everything LR can do, I typically recommend the book "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classroom in a Book". It is excellent for learning what LR can do, as it lays the information out in a structured manner.

Falcon Loc: Abilene, Texas

LR stores your catalog of photos on your hard drive in whatever folder you told it to. If you didn't designate another folder when you first started with LR it will probably be in a folder named "My pictures" or "Photos" or something similar. What the default name is depends on the computer and operating system you are using. Within LR, go to "Library" or "Develop" (look in the upper right corner) then look at the left panel. You will see all of your photos there. you may have to expand one or more of the little triangles you see. If you want to move photos or folders, do from within LR. DO NOT move them from outside of LR (such as in Finder on a Mac or whatever the equivalent is on a Windows machine). If you do move them from outside of LR then LR will not know where they are and you will have to follow a somewhat convoluted process to re-inform LR of their location.
I highly recommend a basic book or video course about LR. Much, much easier than trying to discover all of the little aspect of LR on your own.

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

Lightroom will store your catalogs where you tell it to. I have one large catalog on my 8tb D drive and have my wife's catalog on her 3tb USB external drive. She also has a catalog located on my 8tb F drive (drive e: is my CD/DVD burner.. My G: and H: drives are also 8tb but unused as yet and drive I is an 8tb drive with all of my other software data on it.. C: is my 1tb boot drive and has all of my software on it... all data generated by or for my software is on the other (data) drives. I also have a large WD-Cloud drive that has 3 8tb drives in it giving us access to anything on it from the computers via my internal network or via my Wi-Fi from hotel rooms etc. I upload ALL photos taken on trips from the hotel room to the Wi-Fi in order to have a backup that is away from my hotel/motel and (theoretically) safe.
You can easily tell LR (when you import a memory card or images) where to build the catalog.. watch a couple of Anthony Morganti Lightroom videos

jaymatt Loc: Alexandria, Indiana

To learn the ins and outs of Lightroom, including your cataloging problem, I suggest you purchase a CD of Laura Shoe’s "Lightroom CC6 and5.” It will tell you just about everything you need to know about LR, and it’s divided into chapters for easy reference of specific problems.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

Agree,,

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

You can find LR catalogs by a standard computer search for *.lrcat

LR does NOT keep pictures. It keeps the location of the pictures in the catalog. The easiest way to find where the pictures are so you can open them outside of LR is to go into LR and select the Library module. Find the picture you want to open and select it. In the right panel, select "Metadata". The first entry in the list is the file name. The third entry in the list is the folder where the file is located. It's the name of the folder, but not the full path. If you click on the arrow next to the folder name it will show you all the photos in that folder. Then on the left panel select "Folder" and the folder will be highlighted and you can see the path.

If you shoot jpg, the file LR is giving you will be a jpg and you will be able to just open it with whatever you use to view jpgs.
If the image you have selected in LR is a raw file, you will only be able to view it if you have installed a codec that extracts the embedded jpg for viewing.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

This post finally addresses the OP. The catalog stores certain important information such as where the file is on your HD, the edits, and thumbnails that appear in LR. The catalog never stores any imported or exported file. To find a picture, right click on it and go to the "Show in Explorer" option. Walla, all done. If you want to see where the catalog is, go to Edit>Catalog Settings. However, you never really care where it is. When you create a catalog, you specify not just the name but also the location.

And as someone else mentioned, once you import a file into LR, never ever move it in the OS because LR will lose it. As I said, the catalog stores the file's location, not the file itself, but does not "talk" with the OS if the file is moved. If you do move the picture, LR warns you and you can reestablish the location in the catalog.

Good luck and I hope this helps.

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

I use Elements but it's catalogue is structured like LR's. My first effort was a mess until I figured out what it was doing. I'm fairly PC literate and understand directories, file extensions, folders, and what a database is but I didn't know what was happening when I Imported my photos into the program. Primarily, the catalogue does two things: it keeps a record of where your photos are physically located and a record of the changes you make to them. There are lots of other things you can do for organizing but location and edits are the main things. If you move or delete photos after importing them, be sure to do it within LR or else you will have to learn how to make the program find them again. Also, if your photos are on an SD card or some other external device, it has to plugged into the computer for LR to locate them. I always copy my original photos to a folder on an external drive and then copy that folder to my HD to work on them.

Nikon1201

You need some instruction .LR Classic is different in importing photos than earlier versions