Im glad you found a strategy that works for you, but I don't know that this is great advice for most shooters. A catalog for each shoot isn't really how Lightroom was meant to be used. I can see doing it once a year but even then the performance degradation of a large catalog is minimal. I've got more than 10,000 photos in my current catalog and it performs the same as a new catalog. Maybe worth another video testing the limits.
@@audunskrindo5877 Fair enough :) Although for the majority of commercial projects, I think this would still apply at least for me. If it's a commercial piece for a tourism company I'm going to want everything separated from say a weekend trip out to the lake or a portrait shoot I did for an actor etc.... But you do you! No right answer, just my way of doing it :)
I've got 50,000 photos in one catalog all organized in to relevant folders. If this really is an issue then I'll start more catalogs but I like the system I have going. It seems to be working fine so far.
@@e.g.1218 WOAH! That's a lot of photos! For sure if it works for you, that's what you should stick with. LR might also have fixed the catalogue issue since this video was made, as it USED to be a real thing, but apparently not so much anymore!
@@e.g.1218 4 shure. I've got about the same. But the issue is having all the originals in one space. It's impossible, as the harddrive don't expand =P The organizing was great here, impressive and simple. But the catalogue thing is just a thing for this kind of industry. For ex. landscape photo, it's not ideal. But then you would have a stack of hdd's with originals you'd have to switch between, when going back, editing or exporting, then always having to correct LRC pathways and/or find the darn files what drive they are on. It's why ppl have the huge RAID's set up. well, I think I need to keep looking for a solution here.
Your described workflow utilizing the fast internal SSD and then moving the assignment (within LR) to your external drive is just what I've begun doing. Couldn't do it before as I didn't have a large enough internal. Thanks for your vids!
the "because I'm yolo" had me especially after you took the time to show all the copyright options lol. Thanks for a simple workflow perfect for a newbie like me!
dude i cant bless you enough youre so awesome. this made my life so much easier after 2 years of scratching my head and losing a whole 2 year catalog. subbed and hope to see more videos from you mate 👌🏽
Ryan, thank you so much for this video! It was so helpful to see your process. I gained a lot of helpful tips that I am excited to apply to my work. I really appreciate how you heard me out and put in the effort to answer all my questions so thoroughly. You are the best!
If your Lightroom works less than well, it isn't because of a large catalog, it is because of other things that aren't set up correctly. I have been a photographer for many years and I have one catalog and Lr hasn't slowed down in the least. Having to switch between multiple catalogs to access certain images is just too time consuming and needless. Lightroom gives you collections for the purpose of setting aside favourites or what have you, once again, within just one catalog. Efficiency speed are foremost in my opinion and creating many catalogs is just counter-productive.
Completely agree. I recall watching a video several years ago on Tim Grey's channel where he advocated for having only one catalog and indicated he had over 150,000 images in his catalog. At the time I had less than 50,000 in mine and had been wondering if I should split my catalog...he convinced me otherwise. I'm at 120,000 and climbing at this point and suffer ZERO performance issues. The significant advantage of one catalog is when you search for something...whatever criteria you use, it's one time, without having to load up various catalogs to hunt. The other big advantage is when you're doing "analysis" like going through all the keywords you use, or looking at metadata to understand how you use certain lenses, or cameras, etc... again, one database (catalog) means you see everything. Strong advocate for ONE CATALOG.
@@CostaMesaPhotography well good for you. I have 1.5 million images, I have been a location scout in Hollywood for 20 years. I have 34 Cataloges, some are 8000 images but many are 20k, 50k and the biggest is my Houses catalogue, 325,000 images and it is a ball buster to sync, sluggish. I know I can use Bridge to view ALL at the same time, so that is my solution for now. Happy to hear any other opinions. I have my JPGS Picutres in Dropbox and my Catalogues in the Desktop Pictures folder. The Syncing to DB is problematic so I am considering getting a huge External to do my mass editing to see if that is faster. Appreciate any feedback. Still learning believe it or not.
Thanks so much, Ryan! This is super helpful. Quick question - once everything is backed up twice on external hard drives, do you just delete/move the folder on your desktop to your trash? Nothing sensitive to take in mind about how Lightroom CC imports/links to desktop for those files? Also, do you delete that lightroom catalogue from your library in Lightroom once you're done with it? Thank you!
I'm not convinced a single catalog on system hard drive degrades processing. I have 1,000's of images and don't see any performance degradation. I keep all raws on an external hard drive. Back up hard drive to another external drive. Only time consuming task is copying master catalog from main hard drive to a backup drive. I copy my images from SD drive to external drive with FInder and then import. Do not use LR COPY.
Thanks for the video, my catalogues are a mess and looking to tidy up my workflow so this was a great help as I'm a fan of simplicity. I do have a question though. When you copy the folder to the external HDD (including the catalogue and the RAW files) does LR automatically update the links to the photos, or will it still be trying to find them on the desktop's HDD? Unless I've missed a step somewhere.
Ryan, not sure if you will see this since this is an older video of yours but I have one question. So I have 2 HDD's as I do all my Lightroom editing on one of them and keep the other for storage. I just bought a SSD for faster writing speeds and I was wondering if I should just use the SSD as the drive I work off of and use the other 2 HDD's as storage.
The video was really good, but I felt like it was a bit on the fast side. I found myself pausing and rewinding pretty frequently. Maybe it's just because I'm not super accustomed to messing with Catalogs in Lightroom yet, I have one massive one, but it was just a bit hard to follow at times. Just a thought.
Thanks Federico! In this video I'm on a rode videomic pro for the intro bit and then the computer screen capture I'm on a shure sm57b plugged into a focusrite saphire pro. I've since switched to a cheap USB condensor mic however for simplicity and I'm LOVING it!
Hey! When you have backed up your catalog in the external drives, do you delete them from your computer drive, where they are saved my default in the Pictures folder? Thanks! :)
Great idea, Ryan. I'm going to create a 'hits' catalogue for each year, then a master hits catalogue containing all my best images. Excellent project whilst imprisoned at home while the politicians mess with my freedom of movement.
Great tutorial! I'm a recent sub after your channel popped up on my feed and I'm slowly working my way through your content; it's simply excellent stuff! I am new to Lightroom and Adobe products in general but I am starting to get into it for food photography/videography so please don't stop! About that copyright info though, how do you even go about figuring that out? Completely lost on that one...
Thanks for the insights. I have tried several approaches over the years and think I settled on something similar for my personal photographs. I have a catalog for each year since I don't shoot a lot of personal photographs. After the year has passed, I create a new one. I do keep a so-called "master" catalog to easily locate specific photographs with a certain tag. As I don't want to go through all yearly created catalogs to find all images of my dog for instance. I also created a "template" catalog for each year so that I don't have to redo all the catalog-specific work (set the import settings, etc.) I used to be a big fan of the single catalog but once I got over 10k photographs in there, things started to really slow down. However, I still have a very slow master catalog since it contains everything. So I might give your "top" photographs approach a try since those are probably the only ones that really matter in the "master" catalog.
My mom is a hobby photographer with a single Lightroom catalog. I’m helping her set up a new computer and I’m realizing that she needs more catalogs in addition to using an external hard drive. She gets easily frustrated but is committed to Lightroom, so I am going to do my best and hope we aren’t plagued by the dreaded ? in the folders!
One you edit on your desktop and move the files to the hard drive won't they not be able to locate on lightroom anymore? Or are you okay with that because the photos are done anyways?
This was a good help , I was not sure how to create a catalog or file and was not sure if I even wanted it on my desktop or external drive. This was the most up to date one I could find...I am not sure i cold be 100% wrong, but now (9/22/2021) when you create a new catalog it auto creates the folder too and puts it where you tell it. Where on this it was a two step process (create a folder on the desktop and then create the catalog). So when I clicked NEW CATALOG, it popped up with create a catalog and folder, so I had to pick the desktop and you could only have one name too. all in all I learned a lot even if LRC was updated a little over a year ago from this. The only thing I do not like and maybe I am doing it wrong. is after I move my folder off my desktop to my external hard drive, I still have to delete it off desk top. Then when I click on LRC to start it up I get a ERROR box saying they can't find the catalogs...i just open it in default and then create a new one.....I just wish it would just open up with a blank catalog automatic and you would either have to create a new one or open it up from the HD. So if you know a work around I am all ears. I just started and I am 3 days old in terms of LRC.
Nice video here’s a little heads up for the real world burn all your images on DVDs or Blu-ray for storage do not leave them on a hard drive all you need is some magnetic device and the hard drive is toast!
Hey great video... I think I need the video for the guy who did it wrong for years and needs to untangle the whole mess! After that I can really see myself using this system or something extremely close to it. Basically my LR Catalogue is one big messed up thing right now and moving very slowly; computer HD is maxed out, SD cards maxed out... This is what happens when you give a film guy a cool digital camera and say go have fun. I like the idea of maybe going back and breaking the LR library into smaller catalogues and then starting to back those up on mirrored Hard Drives, but I just don't know where to begin... Could potentially break it up by film vs digital and going by year, problem is that I shot film for a long time and the scans don't all have the date info. I'm sure I could guess or get close enough to catalogue them. Anyways, wish me luck and thanks for this video!
Oh man, I do wish you luck Hunter! Honestly if it were me... I'd just leave the old stuff and catalogue as is, back it up, and start fresh with all your new stuff moving forward. For the amount of times I actually need to go back to old projects, I don't think it would be worth the effort if it were me. Good luck either way!
Ive watched this video a ton and the only thing Im not grasping is how the photos within your lightroom catalog arent getting lost? I thought if you moved the folder around outside of the catalog youll end up with the scary "?". I can move them once and find the missing folder by setting the catalog to open up using the new folder within my external hard drive, but I dont understand how you can do this on a secondary hard drive (which is what Im wanting to do) without it not recognizing it the next time you open on your primary and vice versa.
As long as the RAWs are inside the SAME folder as the catalogue and you move it all together, LR doesn't lose track. If it ever does, you would just locate ONE of the photos and the rest would automatically be found :)
Interesting to see. I'm with you on the "lots of small lightroom catalogs" for speed, but i'm definitely not with you on the keeping the main catalog and files you're work on, on the system drive. The most likely thing to happen to your computer is a data corruption on the system drive. And computers now, particularly Macs, make their hard drive/storage chips so difficult to get out of the machine that if your system drive goes on the fritz you've lost it. Have you tried working from an external SSD? Seems to cover the best of all words for me - fast, easily moveable between computers, less likely to fail at any moment. Nice video though, thanks for the help.
well if you went through the full video, he specifically emphasizes that he has 2 copies of the files at any given moment so a catastrophic loss on his system drive wont pose a problem as he would still have the picture files on his SD card (he doesnt delete them until he's finished editing them on his desktop, once edited, he transfers it all to his external HD and backup external HD). hope that made sense
Hey, thanks for this! You say " at the end of the year this is going to be my backup hrddrive". Does that mean you keep that years work on one HD or two (one backup)?
You're welcome! Oh great question! After a year has gone by, I only keep the photos on ONE harddrive. This is partially because a) In about 7 years, I've had clients come back needing raw photos... one time. and b) Because I work remotely, the raw files from the photographers who shoot for me are sent to me online, thereby creating a cloud backup in the process. I don't bank on these being around forever, but it does add an extra layer of safety just in case :)
Just bought a Samsung 2TB NVME and WD Black 8TB HDD 7200 RPM. 2TB NVME will be my LR Catalog. Small storage will force me to edit right away so I can move them to the 8TB HDD.
What are your thoughts on having my Microsoft OneDrive on the external drive? I would still post process on the internal drive but just save once to the external drive in the OneDrive folder which gets automatically backed up in the cloud. All my photos would also be on the external hard drive under the OneDrive folder getting auto backup. That way I don't have to have a 2nd external hd.
@signature edits. When you imported the images. On the right hand side, it looks like the raws were being moved into the "Pictures" folder in your Harddrive? Should the raws not be held on the external drive to save space on the computer?
Yes actually! I upload to the computer because if I take the computer traveling, I don’t need to plug the hard drive in every time I want to edit, and I can leave the hard drive safe at home. Plus this way the speed of the hard drive really isn’t important. Whereas if you edit on the harddrive, you have to spend more for something faster. Not such a big deal anymore as they get cheaper but still. Mostly it’s about portability and flexibility.
is your WD passport the one specifically for mac or not? and do you have other external drive recommendations? and thank you for the video, super helpful!
Hi Sarah! No it's not... I just format it for mac when I first get it so the included WD software is removed. Honestly I have no recommendations.. I just use them for backup, not for editing, so I buy the cheapest one available and then it sits on the shelf after things are backed up. If you want to edit or access the photos regularly, go with an SSD
Best external hard drive for video editing? I do a lot of editing (on Final Cut Pro) and need an external hard drive to save all my files. Currently I am using a WD Elements 4 TB drive that works great, however I have already used 3.5 TB of storage on it. I'm looking for a new hard drive that will give me more space to save files.
Do you have any advice on constantly running out of mac storage? I barely have anything on my computer but the system itself takes up so much storage. I am constantly running out of space. If I work off a catalog that is associated with my hard drive, would that help?
Hmm well first advice for the future would be ALWAYS make sure to get a larger harddrive than the lowest option. If your mac is older you can upgrade the harddrive. If that's not an option, getting an external thunderbolt SSD and putting everything on there is your best bet!
Hey! I am really confused with the LR catalogues, do you have any tutorial on that? I usually just drag the photos to lightroom and save them at the end.
Great suggestion! The simple answer is that catalogues are just like file folders but for lightroom. You put your photos into whatever catalogue you like... You can have multiple catalogues, or just use one big catalogue and put everything in it!
@@SignatureEdits I can see the advantage of making a folder for each shoot--for me, I will probably just do monthly folders --but I have four years of blog photos in one catalog (I think!), or by date. How can I move them all out to reclaim space on my computer? Do you have a video for that? Thanks, Ryan.
This was very helpful! I have a question! What do you do with the photos in the internal hard drive after you are done editing the most recent shoot? I am aware that you back them up in to the external, which is a smart idea but I just do not know what to do with them after I'm done with them in light room after all of them are edited and backed them up. Delete them to make space? :(
Hey Brianna! Personally I just delete them as I have a full backup on my external harddrive. If they're photos I know I'll use later for other things (social promo etc) then I'll export those few select photos and delete everything else. Mind you, this is AFTER I've backed up as well as uploaded the entire gallery online.
hello, thanks for this video. there is a part where i am kind of getting lost on, its the part on when you are making your Master Best Hits, on 11:12, you already imported photos from the Arya&Kane Wedding original catalog within your externdal HD to the Best Hits Catalog on your external HD, then right after you made ANOTHER catalog on the Best Hits with the same photos that you already imported initially from Arya&Kane earlier, albeit on a different master Best Hits folder? wouldnt that duplicate the photos from the original Arya&Kane catalog AND the initial catalog created within Best Hits? causing it to eat more space in your external HD? just trying to understand the reason for this and if it will use up extra space is this strictly so that LR has quick access and you having a good organization of photos of the selected Best Hits taken from your shoots in that year? Sorry if i didnt make sense :( i really like your yolo approach haha, easy going, yet optimized..thank you in advance!
Hey Jose! Yes, it will create duplicates of the files - But that's what I want to happen. Why? Because I want every catalogue I make to have ALL the raw files in the same folder, so that if I ever move or delete one project, I won't have missing raw files in any other project. Yes it takes up more space... But when a 1tb HD is like $75... Losing a couple gb in space is totally worth it to ensure I don't lose my fav images.
Wow thank you! Your video is very clear and is going to help me a lot. Since recently I put more effort and time in my pictures before I just transferred them in lightroom. So I didn't make catalogs so my lrcat. files is one big file with all my edits. How can I change that? Cause I would love to storage everything like you do without losing my previous edits.
Glad it helped! Somewhere in one of my videos I covered this but I can't remember which one! Essentially the easiest way is to open that huge catalogue, separate your various shoots into smart collections, then export those smart collections with the raw files into separate folders. LR will automatically create a new catalogue for each exported smart collection. You'll have to do this one at a time for each shoot but it would work. Alternately, just create separate sessions moving forwards and don't worry about the past ;) That's what I'd probably do... The large collection isn't that big of a deal. Don't overthink it, and do what works for you!
@@SignatureEdits how can I send my edited raw pictures to clients without the mg being so big? I use Pixieset but I don’t know if they get a super huge file or what not.
Hey Ryan, Thanks for sharing. I just made a complete copy of my external HD using Carbon Copy. I tired to open LR on the new HD and it opened, but the catalogue could not find all the images?? Any tips. I can only assume that possibly the HD name might be mucking it up??? Is a that possible??
Quick question.... I already have folders like you but just with the RAWS in. I'm going to recreate my lightroom catalogues. If I were to select all pictures in one folder into the new catalogue, does that mean I don't need the original folder with the RAW in now as they're in lightroom? Or do I always need the original too?
Good question. You 100% need the originals, UNLESS you have clicked "copy" in your import settings and made another copy of the original raw files somewhere else on your computer. External hard drives are pretty cheap. If in doubt, make a backup first and then give it a try.
@@SignatureEdits that's great thank you. What I'd love your help with, maybe in a video is this. I have the full suite of products and most of the time now trying to be portable I edit on my iPad. So add my pictures to lightroom CC. Would love to see a good workflow for getting pictures from the iPad to main Lightoom. Using Adobe cloud seems messy. Any tips would be ace
Such an inspiring idea. I could also have a master catalog, then sync my master catalog with Lightroom mobile if I want to edit on the go, since LR can only sync one catalog. I could then export the photos that Im done editing as a new catalog as a backup and clear those photos from the master catalog. Right?
I'm following your method which looks great but no matter what I do, all the RAW files import to my user folder/Pictures folder. The Lightroom catalog is on the desktop using your folder structure. I want the imported RAWs to be on the desktop with the catalog file. I'm using the latest version of Lightroom Classic. Hope you can help me out, thanks!
Not sure I understand. Instead of editing on the external hard drive directly, you are editing on the Mac then copying that folder to the hard drive using Finder? That goes against every other video I have seen that warns against changing locations of images and folders outside of Lightroom. How does Lightroom know where those files are when you search for them? That would seem to be a huge issue and deal breaker.
Hey James! Not sure which videos you're watching, but in 7+ years of doing this I've never had a single issue with Lightroom finding images. As long as ALL your raw files are in the same folder as the catalogue, it doesn't matter what hard drive you move them to, Lightroom will see them. But do what works for you!
@@SignatureEdits An important point of clarity. Did you not say in the video that you moved images outside of Lightroom (using Finder) from one place to another? If so, how would Lightroom know you did that? The link would be broken, the images(s) would be locked from edit, and you would have to tell Lightroom where you put them. Instead, you could have just moved them in Lightroom and you’re done.
@@jamesgerboc Nope. As long as the entire folder with the catalogue and raws is all together, LR has no problem locating them because the original file structure is still the same. IF you moved just your raw files to another harddrive, then yes. But because the catalogue goes with it, LR seems to be able to track it down without issues :) That said, if for whatever reason LR needed some help, all you do is literally select 1 raw file location and they the rest of the catalogue will auto redirect!
How do you make your second hard drive copy the first on it's own? Is that additional software? I have the two hard drives and so keen to clear LR as I can see it slowing down big time!
I personally have used Chronosync in the past - Paid software that will automatically update and duplicate the hardrives. However now I just manually drag the shoot folder onto the backup drive once I'm done editing. For me simple is best. Of course if I had hundreds of shoots like some photographers, this method might not be so good!
Hi, just starting out with LR , so may be a daft question , but after editing on one hard drive and then transferring to the second . How does LR hold onto the edit history ?
If I already have Premiere, Lightroom, & Photoshop installed on my computer C drive, do I have to move the programs to my new SSD? ** I want to edit on my SSD not from my internal drive. How about the files with all of my presets, files, etc.? ___ After my shoot, I want to upload my content onto the ext. SSD. From there, I want to edit all of my work from the SSD. Afterwards, I will transfer all of the finished content and files to my Archive HDD. The ext. SSD will no longer contain my files on. If I want to open the files and edit anything again, how do I do this? ___ Is this complicating things? I don't get how to make this workflow happen
If you only want raw files on the SSD, then no, you don't need the programs on there. If you want to run your entire OS off the SSD, then yes, you need to move everything on there... Personally I'd just start with the raw files and see how performance goes.
Yeah I can't maintain organization. I always have shit becoming unorganized. It's obnoxious to find stuff too. Whatever. I also hate catalogs now too. It's annoying to organize in Lightroom classic
Started out very well, but then strayed into a very fast talking, clicking of favorite photos, favorite catalogs and although he is "keeping it simple" the clicking and talking made it Difficult to follow. Also, if part of a demonstration is to show a back up hard drive, although it makes perfect sense, plug the darn thing in so its on your video, that bothered me, as you took the time to record, write and edit the video, the 2 seconds to plug it in instead of telling the viewers to pretend its there would have made you a bit more professional. ( Just saying for future videos) Thank you for the information and will come back for more views, and very nice pictures !
For some of us, 'click click, boom' while you talk at 100+ MPH is a pretty difficult way TO LEARN! What is so difficult for you guys to understand about the difference between EXPLAINING how you do something...and TEACHING how you do something to novice viewers? Sorry to be so critical, but this is a common error on You Tube committed by people who think they're instructing...but are really only reviewing a process that they are very familiar with. So go back and just listen...and watch...as if you had little to no experience. Better yet, find a video that has a topic that you are not proficient in...and that is explained in rapid fire mode like yours. See if you get it! If you can't understand that, then warn your target audience prior to them investing in your process orientation that they should have 'xxxx' familiarity or be at a certain experience level.
Hey Thomas! Great feedback and I totally agree, this could have been much better explained :) For future videos I'm trying to slow down and explain more thoroughly, but in the meantime you can try SHIFT< on your keyboard, which will slow down playback speed and perhaps be of some help. Cheers!
Nice vid but why do young people today all move their hands around when speaking, like they are in a street gang ? It's really distracting....and unprofessional (IMO).
