Tessa23 Loc: Concord, NH

I use Lightroom to organize my photos. I have a ton of photos (over 30K at last count). A teacher suggested I organize the catalogs by year. All of the photos are in folders by the date. For example I have all the photos that were taken in 2019 in a catalog named "2019". My problem is, if someone wants a photo of a beach I have to look through the years catalogs to find them. Can someone tell me the way to make a catalog called "beach" and have those photos imported from the "year" catalog to the "beach" catalog without losing the updates? I do not want to do this one photo at a time. I want to take all beach photos from a "year" catalog to the "beach" catalog. All photos are key worded with location. Any recommendations on other ways to organize photos? I am open to all suggestions and workflow ideas! Thank you!

JFCoupe Loc: Kent, Washington

I am not a LR expert, but previously I have read many times that it is best to have just one catalog in LR. Then, you can still have a master folder by year and folders by date within each year.

For example
2019 Photos
2019-01-15
2019-02-10
2020 Photos
2020-03-15
2020-04-21

etc.
Then if you want to search for photos with a key word, "Mountains," just highlight all the folders, enter Mountains in search and in less than a minute you would have all photos with that key word added.

Laura Shoe has a really good video on You Tube covering steps to combine multiple catalogs into one catalog.

ejpeters Loc: New Jersey, USA

I use keywords to organize my photos in Lightroom. I went back and keyworded all older photos and now always keyword my new photos.
Makes it very easy to find wheat you are looking for.

Alyn McConnaha Loc: Lebanon, IN

What

rbmitch123

Keywording is the best sorting technique.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

There's a few things go consider:

First, be sure to distinguish between 'folders' as an organization on disk and controlled by your computer's operating system and 'collections' that are virtual organizations that exist entirely inside the Lightroom catalog. Remember too that "catalog" is a database that holds LR's entire knowledge of your images and their locations on disk. Catalog and Collection and Folder are not interchangeable terms.

Using multiple catalogs, that is any number greater than one (1), is just an utter waste of time unless you have very specific requirements that justify this added overhead and effort and subdivision of your digital assets. What you've described in your post does not hint at a reason to have more than one master and complete catalog of all your digital images. My single LR catalog contains 92,443 images this morning. My images are properly date-stamped and keyworded so I can find any image going back to scans of images from the 60s in a second or less.

Given you're already running into the limits of a multi-catalog approach, you should seriously reconsider consolidating all your catalogs into a single catalog approach. This can be done quickly and easily:

1. Determine a unique and useful name for your new master and consolidated LR catalog file. The name can be whatever you want. Make it unique and easily identified such as 2021-Consolidated.LRCAT.

2. Use LR to create a new (empty) catalog using the unique file name you've decided to use. Place the new LRCAT file in the standard location, inside the \Lightroom folder inside your pictures folder.

3. Create a worklist of all your older isolated catalogs and use the "File \ Import from another catalog" command and import the images from each of those older catalogs, checking off the processed LRCAT files one by one until all are processed.

4. Never work in these isolated LRCAT files again. To enforce this approach, copy the now out-of-date LRCAT files into your permanent backup storage and delete them from your current active storage.

5. Use collections inside LR to assist in organizing your images around themes. Your individual images should have the 'beach' keyword applied. Consider also using a "collection set" of Beaches, and then individual collections inside the "set" for each beach location.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

As CHG_CANON suggests, your problems are rooted in keeping multiple catalogs, so if you merge your catalogs into one master catalog - problem solved! My Lightroom catalog has almost 200K images - no problem at all. You can either create a new catalog or designate one as the master - then import them year by year.

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

I have over 30K photos and they're in two catalogs. One catalog has all the photos from THIS YEAR. The other catalog has all the photos from before the beginning of photography up to last year (some of the images are not photos, but scans of family documents dating before 1830). In January of every year I import all of the catalogs from the short catalog into the master catalog and start a new short catalog for the current year.

The reason I use two catalogs is because I'm impatient. Lightroom is set to back up the catalog once a week. When that happens, the short catalog backs up in seconds. The master catalog takes a while and I don't want to spend a lot of time waiting. The short catalog gets more use because they're current photos. The master catalog gets less use, but it does get used.

My short catalog is named LR2021. The long catalog is named LR Master 2020. The old long catalog is still there (LR Master 2019) but has gone to permanent backup.

In both catalogs, the metadata tells the year of the image (scanned documents are sometims pretty much rough estimates). My photo folder has a subfolder for each year. In the newer images, there is a keyword giving the year. That allows me to move all the images from a given year into a folder containing images from that year, but I can sort on other keywords to get images from any year.

Lightroom allows you to edit the metadata, in particular the capture time and/or date so you can adjust the appropriate date/time for scanned images.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Try setting your backup to when you close Lightroom -

- a fellow impatient Lightroom user

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Moreover, DirtFarmer, look at and use your available LR exit options. As a best practice, I try to remember to close LR on my desktop every night. It doesn't do the database any good to have Microsoft force an unexpected reboot when the LRCAT open. So, if I close LR and I'm prompted for the back-up and it's not convenient right then to let that process lock up my LRCAT for about 45-minutes, I just use the option to skip until next time / next week. When I specifically want the backup, I can also update the catalog preference to back up on-next-exit. I then exit and let it run.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

Another vote for one catalog!

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

I exit LR when I'm done with it. I don't usually let it hang while I'm off doing other things. Do that with most programs. Been rebooted too many times.

And I do skip the backup when I'm in a hurry and sometimes when I haven't done anything but look through and maybe export a couple things. But I do like to have things backed up since I haven't got my computer updated (daughter's wedding is next week and the cash is flowing outward rapidly) and sometimes it doesn't reboot well.

sodapop Loc: Bel Air, MD

Virtually every tutorial I have followed recommends ONE catalogue.

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

I must admit that although I maintain a master catalog of my photos (plus a temporary catalog of recent stuff) I have a third catalog that contains only experimental stuff that is transient and not of interest to anyone else. The only reason for that is that it is useful for experimenting with LR/PS and other programs and does not impact my useful photos. Sort of my photographic junk drawer.

Of course I have a lot of backup catalogs, but they are not maintained.

tcthome Loc: NJ

In my opinion, this is the way to go. 1 catalog with all your others inside of that. Then only one search should be needed.