afletcher777 Loc: Texas

I use Lightroom 5 on my mac to organize and process my photographs. My hard drive is almost full (after only 6 months!). If I move my collection to the external HD, I have all of these question: 1)If I start a new collection, how will I remember which collection a photo is in, especially if one collection is on the computer, and the other is on the external? 2)Can I search 2 collections at once? 3)How can I use the cool smart collections if I have pictures in different collections?

romanticf16 Loc: Commerce Twp, MI

If you bought Kelby's book you'd know to make a folder in your Pictures folder called my Lightroom. Now you could drag that to your external drive and all your files would be in one place.I suggest you create this file now and move everything into it- it'll make your life much easier in the future. And yes, you'll want another drive or the "cloud" to back up your external drive with all your images in it, or both.

afletcher777 Loc: Texas

Okay. So I move my collection to my external hard drive. Now I create a new collection? How do I keep track of what photos are which collection? Can I search two collections simultaneously?

altheman Loc: Christchurch, New Zealand

It seems to me that you are mixing up the terms collection and catalog. If you want to start storing you images on an external hdd you can without needing to start a new catalog simply change the destination when you import your images. It is also possible to move all your images to an external hdd which perhaps is more desirable if you are filling up the hdd in your computer and there is no reason for you not have images in more than one collection. It is important to remember that you Lr catalog is a data base so your images aren't physically in your catalog or collections just their address which is why if you move your images around you should do it from inside Lr.
So to answer your questions: yes move your images to an external hdd but do it from within Lr.
You don't need to move your catalog leave that on the internal hdd.
Yes you can have images in more than one collection.
Tip: go into Lightroom: Catalog Settings: Metadata and select/check Automatically write changes into XMP
Tip make sure you backup your catalog regularly.
Tip: Watch these Videos here: http://en.elephorm.com/tuto-lightroom-4-complete-training/lightroom-4-introduction.html#video
I know it is for Lr 4 but not that much has changed and they are now free to watch

Rongnongno Loc: FL

Lightroom is a DBase program first. As such it can search and find anything but not the location if you have not used LR to move the files.

What it means is that you can record any number of file record with LR and find them again, as long as you know on what disk they are.

afletcher777 Loc: Texas

Thanks for your reply. I think I understand now. The collection is a "card catalog" and I can store my "books" both on my computer and an external HD at the same time (as long as I move them while in LR). Does that analogy make sense? I do back up my catalog to my external HD.

minniev Loc: MIssissippi

I think you have the idea. LR does not care where you keep your photos as long as you make sure it knows where they are. They can be strewed across multiple drives if you want. You can have one catalog as big as you want, no real need for more. Collections serve as virtual albums of photos but they don't require you changing the REAL location of anything, you are just marking and labeling. (For instance, I keep a running collection of the grandkids). When I got in the predicament you are now in, I moved ALL my photos to an external, (and made a second copy on another external for backup) and it really made LR work faster and better to have some breathing room. I will not keep photos on my hard drive again, I'll just add externals as needed.

CTTonymm Loc: Connecticut

LR is database organized, so if you assign keywords to each image file (use batch assignments on import or later), you can then use text search to find any set of images that contain a keyword. Greatly reduces need for collections.

brucewells Loc: Central Kentucky

Do everything from within Lightroom. Do a search in Google for Julieanne Kost. She has tons of videos that will tell you everything you need to know about accomplishing this.

K7DJJ Loc: Spring Hill, FL

Just a thought about your disk space. The lightroom catalog backups keep accumulating. I got back a lot of space by deleting all but the last 2 of about 60 after a few months of usage.

sueyeisert Loc: New Jersey

Very important if you move you folder to a new hard drive do it in lightroom. I would advise that before you create problems for yourself you spend some time learning Lightroom. This is a free course on Lightroom 4, good even for 5. Scroll down and it's free. I would google your question. Also Laura Shoe might have answered that question.

texaseve Loc: TX, NC and NH

This was very helpful to me.

sueyeisert Loc: New Jersey

I forgot the link. http://en.elephorm.com/tuto-lightroom-4-complete-training.html Hal Schmitt is an excellent instructor.

kitcar Loc: Liverpool.Merseyside. UK

It may sound a bit laborious, my way out of your problem (I may not have as many saved files as you), is that I enter them in folders in chronological order (i/e 1/2/3 etc) & forward to external HD. I open a Words doc’ & while I’m doing this over a period I enter the Folder identity with brief details onto a Words doc’ & Save.
Saves space on your PC’s HD.
Shazam open your Words doc’ & all you need to know is there.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

Keep the same collection on both drives and just use LR5 to move your images to the external drive. Just drag and drop. They all stay in the same collection.