Another LR question

LRussoPhoto

Just upgraded to lr4. I switch back and forth to different catalogs often. Now with lr4 when i go to recent catalogs it still shows the lr3 catalog and also all the old catalogs are listed with a #2 next to them, im assuming because now it see 2 of the same name. is there a way to clear the recent catalog history?

basflt

i think it are duplicates

i would copy them to a different location , for safety , then delete from LR location
usually ; C:\Users\username\Pictures\Lightroom .........Ircat

if something goes wrong , simply copy back again

pathfinder

When I began with Lightroom v1.0 several years ago, I used several catalogs also, thinking I wanted a separate catalog for each year, and sometimes for different shoots.

Finally with Lightroom 4, ( and some prodding by some talented Lightoom instructors ) I realized that a single catalog was just SO MUCH simpler to manage, ( and any selecting or grouping is handled better by Lightroom than by me anyway ), so I consolidated all my catalogs and all my image files, and only have to be concerned about ONE LR catalog, and several back up copies of it on several different hard drives. Be aware that a Lightroom catalog contains two files, your lrcat file, and your image preview file. The preview file can always be rebuilt if lost, but the lrcat file contains all the location information about your images, and any edits you have performed on your image files along the way to a final image.

I was convinced at the beginning years ago, that Lightroom could not manage when my catalog reached thousands of images, but today I have over 66,000 RAW files in my Lightroom Catalog, with Raw images scattered over several hard drives, and things work just fine on my 6 year old desktop computer, with my SINGLE catalog with a single lrcat file, and my Image preview file. One can make a copy of their Catalog ( lrcat and image previews ) on a portable external drive, and have it to use on ones laptop while traveling, or for keywording in your down time while traveling, and then importing these changes into the main catalog when one returns home.

Like basfit says, the older catalogs are only important if you still need access to them, but if they have been incorporated into your more recent catalog, then they are superfluous. Think this decision through carefully, because the older catalogs do contain any edits you have made, and if they have not been added into a newer catalog, when the catalog is deleted, so is all the editing you have done, unless you exported finished files, either as jpgs, tiffs or psds.

This is one of the downsides of multiple catalogs, whenever you update to a newer version of LR, every catalog has to get updated, and you have to try to remember what was in each catalog. I do not have that concern, as ALL my image files, and ALL their edits, are within my lrcat Catalog file, so I update it, and move on to other things.

The default for LIGHTROOM, when you open LR, is that if LR cannot find your catalog, it automatically makes a new catalog in the Pictures folder. Thus, it is VERY Important that if you use a catalog stored on an external drive, you ALWAYS connect the drive, and VERIFY, that it is seen by the operating system, prior to opening Lightroom. THis prevents having multiple catalogs cluttering up drive C:

basflt

i prefer to have multiple catalogs
a new one for each year
this keeps it more organized
in preferences you can set what catalog to load on startup , or ask which one

i think it dont matter much

but catalogs that say #2 are unusual
i suspect it being duplicates , made by LR as extra back-up during the update process

arodney

One catalog is safer too until Adobe figures out how to handle all the various user assets (users settings for all modules, DNG profiles, Lens Profiles etc). Scattered all over the OS. Then there are the catalog specific stuff we build that has to sync up ideally across catalogs. There's a trick for doing this involving Export as Catalog only 1 image to 'clone off' all that necessary data. I just don't see the point of having any more than 1 catalog unless I have so many images it chokes. I'm not even close to that.

I have smart collections to filter each year. If I want to see everything in 2003 then 2004, one click and everything is there in a nano second. If I had to switch catalogs, that takes time, and for what benefit?

pathfinder

basflt wrote: »

i prefer to have multiple catalogs
a new one for each year
this keeps it more organized
in preferences you can set what catalog to load on startup , or ask which one

i think it dont matter much

but catalogs that say #2 are unusual
i suspect it being duplicates , made by LR as extra back-up during the update process

Bas, I thought I wanted a catalog for each year as well, but what happens when you are talking about 25 years worth of images - say scanned slides as well as current digital files? It gets clumsy with lots of catalogs, but one can set up special collections in LR and have images from any given year in less time than it takes to load a different catalog. And more importantly, it is simpler, easier, and like Andrew says, safer to only use a single catalog.

I was a hard sell on this point, as I said I avoided it for years, but with the advent of LR4 I am a believer, and have fully converted to a single catalog for all my files. I was sure catalogs of ever 50,000 RAWS would just tax my system too much, but my 6 year old desktop runs just fine even with 66,000+ files. Now, my system does have 18Gb Ram, and 2 2.8 Ghz quad core processors, but a slow bus speed of only 800Mhz.

Incidentally, Hal Scmitt, one of the LT instructors who helped make a believer of me, is offering video instructions for free until Jan 31 here - http://en.elephorm.com/tuto-lightroom-4-complete-training/lightroom-4-introduction.html#video

Hal was a carrier based jet pilot, and is the real deal. He also knows his way around LR4 and is well worth listening to. Also a great guy!

daylightimages

QuadRacer041 wrote: »

Just upgraded to lr4. I switch back and forth to different catalogs often. Now with lr4 when i go to recent catalogs it still shows the lr3 catalog and also all the old catalogs are listed with a #2 next to them, im assuming because now it see 2 of the same name. is there a way to clear the recent catalog history?

Whenever you open a catalog made with a prior version of Lightroom, it duplicates the catalog and appends a -2. My primary catalog has been through two upgrades of lightroom so MyCatalog from LR2 became MyCatalog-2 in LR3 and MyCatalog-2-2 in LR4. I never did delete the old catalogs and they are still there. In your case, the one with the -2 is the most recent version. Because LR upgrades can be tried for free for 30 days, I guess it duplicates the catalog so you still have the old (compatible) catalog you can go back to should you decide not to purchase the upgrade after the trial.

As for catalog size -- I need to cross-reference subjects and locations across my 35 years of shooting, so I have only one catalog. At the moment it references about 80,000 RAW digital files and another 60,000 slide scans. It worked a lot faster in LR3, but for what I use my photos for, I need everything in one place for sorting and referencing. I'm using a computer that is maxed out at 4gb of RAM -- my next computer will have to have 16 gb of RAM and that should clear my slowness issues.