When should you start a new Lightroom catalog instead of keeping one master catalog?
Asked 1/1/2015
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I use Lightroom and organize my photos with collections and collection sets. As my library grows, Lightroom seems to get slower, so I’m wondering whether it’s better to keep everything in one catalog or split work across multiple catalogs.
Is there a practical point where a catalog becomes too large and should be replaced or divided? Do photographers commonly use separate catalogs for different jobs or events and switch between them, or is one master catalog usually best? If multiple catalogs make sense, when should you start a new one?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
11y ago
2 Answers
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Lightroom 4 and older the general advice was to limit the size of a catalog because it would get slow and sluggish. The size limit varied, but 20-25K seems a good general consensus depending on the hardware you're running it on.
Lightroom 5 fixed those problems. I've been running a catalog with 40,000 images in it fine. If you're running on old, slow hardware or limited RAM, you may run into problems, of course, but the issues inside of Lightroom itself seem to be gone.
It's a good idea to optimize the catalog; you can set prefs to do that on a regular basis (and make backups!) -- I do that weekly.
Originally by user705. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user705
11y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
In general, most photographers can keep using one master Lightroom catalog unless they have a specific reason to split it.
Older Lightroom versions were known to slow down with larger catalogs, but later versions improved this a lot. Catalogs with tens of thousands of images can work fine, though performance still depends on your hardware and RAM. It’s also worth optimizing the catalog regularly and making backups.
Multiple catalogs can make sense for workflow reasons rather than just image count. For example, some people use a separate catalog per event or job while actively editing, then merge that work into a master catalog later. This can help with keywording, reduce the risk of making unintended global changes, and keep certain searches faster.
A new catalog is also useful if something has gone wrong and you want a clean start without affecting older work.
So: don’t split catalogs just because you assume you should. Use one catalog by default, optimize it regularly, and only create separate catalogs when performance, workflow, or troubleshooting gives you a clear reason.
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