Workable Size of LR Catalog?

[NorthernFocus]

If this has been discussed previously my apologies for not finding the thread.

Does anyone know how many photos LR can handle in a single catalog before it starts to noticeably affect performance(i.e. slow down)? The reason I'm asking is that I'm working on re-organizing my image files and considering options, one of which is to put everything into a single catalog.

[DanK]

All I can tell you is my own experience. I have over 14,000 images in my catalog, running on a fairly old system with a Xeon E5 3.0 GHz, 16 GB RAM, and Windows 7. I have photos on a hard drive but the software on an SSD (which makes a big difference). I don't find the speed bothersome, with one exception. I upload photos manually, with a card reader, and then import them in LR. when the number of subfolders and images gets large, syncing the directory can take a long time. I just start a new directory in response. For instance, my flower images are now in two parent directories, and I will probably start a third soon. I'd like it to render full-detail images faster, but I think that is a function of my processing power, not the size of the catalog.

[NorthernFocus]

Thanks, Dan. What are you referring to when you mention "directory"? I've currently got a catalog with about 18k images. That's about 1/3 of my files. I was considering putting everything in a single catalog.

[pnodrog]

Dan my LR catalog has 35K images of which only about 50 or so are really worth keeping... However I have no trouble in browsing through the others when the mood takes me. The only penalty seems to be once a month when on closes down it does the automatic backup. It takes a few minutes (maybe over 5 min I don't time it) but if I need to use the computer for something else immediately I simply postpone the backup until after the next time I use LR. The backup file is not large in comparison to all the other precious junk that is cluttering up my hard drive.

I have thought about splitting the catalog up but the convenience of being able to search all my photographs easily outweighs any slight time penalty that may result.

[NorthernFocus]

Thanks, Paul. Sounds like it's worth a shot at trying to combine things. Currently I've got multiple catalogs based on subject matter. When I started using LR I postponed making any decisions on revamping my method of organizing so I used multiple catalogs to mimic the folder system I had been using. As most usually happens in life the problem I avoided then is now three times as bad.

It sounds like we have similar ratios of useful photos to... other stuff. Every time I set out to cull a bunch of them I get distracted trying to recover one or two that have good content but are technically hopeless. Thus I effectively procrastinate and make little headway actually cleaning things up. But this time I'm determined....

[ST1]

Dan given that you currently have multiple subject based catalogs. I would suggest that prior to combining those catalogs in to a single one, you take the time to accurately "Keyword" the images in your individual catalogs.
It could be just one keyword that describes the major subject matter of each of your individual catalogs. You could do that by selecting the root of each catalog, selecting all of the images and adding the significant "keyword" to the selected images.
By the way you can merge catalogs rather than re-importing your images in to a new single catalog. That way you will retain any editing that you did to any existing images.
I have only ever used a single catalog. Keywording is invaluable when using a single catalog as it allows you to find a needle in a haystack.
My catalog is based on a dated folder system, e.g. :-
Year (200x)
Date 01/01/200x.

I import in to the above structure and then rename the day folder by adding a descriptive word to the date which means something to me. That could be the venue, subject matter or event.
I hope I'm not teaching my Granny to suck eggs here.
One final thing if you do keyword each of your existing catalogs you must backup each existing catalog prior to merging them in to a single one.


Peter

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk.

[Shadowman]

In Kelby's LR text he states that one photographer uses multiple catalogs and that 30k images can slow the system down a bit. Kelby personally uses just one catalog.

[davidedric]

Over on lightroomforums.net (second time I've mentioned that today) there are professionals with enormous catalogues, and there seems to be no practical limit so far as performance is concerned. No idea where Kelby got his 30K from.

The one are where performance is affected is when you back up, check integrity and optimise - but that's a once a day job, at least for me

With the later versions backup catalogues are zipped, so that reduces their size a lot.

Dave

[TheBigE]

This Podcast does some testing on large catalogs and seems that large catalogs do not have significant impact on performace.

[DanK]

What are you referring to when you mention "directory"? I've currently got a catalog with about 18k images.

I have all of the images that I may want to catalog in directories (folders if you use a mac) under a parent directory called photos." Under the parent directory, I put subdirectories that are topical--places I have gone, "bugs," etc. Each upload to one of those directories goes into a subdirectory named with the date. I now add some description to this folder name, but I didn't used to. To import these, I go to the middle level in lightroom and synch, which brings in the new subfolder. For example, the top of my catalog looks like this:



If I were to add photos from another date that belonged in "adirondacks_2009," I would create the new subdirectory in a file manager, move the photos there, and then sync the "adirondacks_2009" to import the new subfolder and its contents.

When one of these named directories gets large enough to slow me down, I create another. For example, I have three of them for flowers.

I keep a few separate catalogs for special things. For example, I have separate catalogs for each of my kids' weddings.

[NorthernFocus]

All, Thanks for all of the feedback and suggestions.

Peter,
What you describe is pretty much what I'm working on doing. Over the years before I started using LR I managed my photos with a filing system that I simply built in with Windows Explorer(the current name). But it became inconsistent as I got "better" ideas over the years. In the past few years my volume of images went up dramatically which is one thing that prompted me to start using LR. But I simply stuck with the kluged together file/folder structure that I had been using. So I have separate catalogs for Wildlife, Flowers, Places(vacations/holidays), Landscapes, etc. Problem is this causes me to have to split up images from a shoot into the various catalogs. Which defeats the purpose of LR catalogs So now my plan is to import everything into a single catalog, keywording in the process, and during import moving to the date based folders.

Unfortunately, unless I'm missing something, LR won't let you change the folder/subfolder structure when you use the catalog import/export function. But when doing a straightforward import into the new catalog LR edits can still be saved by setting the existing catalogs up to create XMP "sidecar" files prior to moving them. LR is smart enough to match the XMPs to the image files and bring them along. Then the only thing that is lost is stacking associations. If you're aware of a way to restructure the folder on import/export please advise.

DanK,
I figured that's what you meant by directory but thought maybe I was missing an LR specific term. What you describe as your workflow can be done more simply by LR no? Unless I'm missing something. That sort of file/folder/directory structure is what I'm working on now but doing it directly in LR.

[benm]

If this has been discussed previously my apologies for not finding the thread.

Does anyone know how many photos LR can handle in a single catalog before it starts to noticeably affect performance(i.e. slow down)? The reason I'm asking is that I'm working on re-organizing my image files and considering options, one of which is to put everything into a single catalog.

My catalog has almost 60,000 photos with no noticeable slowdown. I work on a 2012 MacBook Pro with 8GB RAM.

[NorthernFocus]

My catalog has almost 60,000 photos with no noticeable slowdown. I work on a 2012 MacBook Pro with 8GB RAM.

Thanks, Ben. That's similar count to what I'll end up with. I think...