Building a new LR catalog

[paigew]

I am trying to build a new LR catalog. Up until now I have only had one, and I am starting to have some issues with it crashing etc. It has been suggested to me to have several different ones.

I have followed this tutorial but the files are still in my original catalog (in addition to the newly created one). So should I just "remove from catalog" the files I have moved/copied into new catalog? Sounds like the obvious answer but I don't want to loose any information so I figured I'd ask the pros first

Signed...a computer illiterate photographer

 

[paigew]

anyone?? I just read an article saying that breaking up your catalog doesn't speed up LR or have any real benefit. Can anyone weigh in on this?

 

[MOREGONE]

Before Lightroom 5, Lightroom did slow down as you got more and more images in it.

I personally would not want to have multiple catalogs. It negates many of the benefits of Lightroom. If you have a single catalog you can search for your portfolio shots narrowing down to your 3 stars and above for example. Or if you keyword and want to find an images of weddings at a particular venue you can. You can review your habits in the Gallery view to see what focal lengths you use a lot etc.. Many benefits from having a single catalog.

I am going to scan that article to see whats going on. What I would suggest first is to see how many backups catalogs you have made and to see if you can revert to one that is error free and possibly add projects you've worked on since or you could try to export those as a catalog form the catalog that is going bad, and then import them into the backup catalog you are reverting to.

 

[Dave442]

I usually have just one catalog. I do have some weddings and such in their own catalog. All the photos go in my main catalog and every so often I decide to just export a catalog and take those references out of the main catalog (never moving or deleting the RAW files). Currently only have the last two years of photos in my main catalog. I keep my main catalog on my SSD drive.

 

[paigew]

There are not any errors (that I know of)...It is loading the previews very slowly (at times) and sometimes it says it encountered an error and needs to stop. Some days it runs perfectly fine...so strange.

 

[paigew]

I'm at 215,000 images right now. I just read it can handle 450,000+ no problem.

 

[MOREGONE]

Gotcha.

First this I would ask is what size is your hard drive and how much space do you have left on it? If you're getting low on space it will hurt the systems performance, not just LR. (Like under 50gb)

There are some things you may want to do to try and speed up LR. I'd start with running Optimization, got to File then menu and select Optimize Catalog. Not exactly certain what it does but its there for a reason.

Increasing the cache or buffer size is one thing for example that may lead to better performance.

Some good info found here - 10 Tips to Improve Lightroom s Speed and Performance Without Additional Hardware - Digital Photography School

Also one thing I learned, if you're just culling, make sure you stay in Loupe view. If you're in Develop, LR renders a new preview which slows it down. Staying in Loupe, it will use the existing preview and is much faster.

 

[paigew]

Thank you! I optimized it earlier so I will see if that takes care of the issues. I need to look into the cache size haven't done that yet. My hd has plenty of room and I always use loupe view to cull. Whats weird is even in loupe view on the smallest thumbnail size it seriously lags on loading the preview. And the constant "needing to quit" is frustrating. Hopefully the optimize thing works, but I have it set to backup/optimize every week so I doubt thats the issue. I really thought splitting my catalog was the answer but from what I'm reading now it doesn't help with speed.

 

[KmH]

Yep. Having more than 1 catalog pretty much defeats LR's main reason for being.

 

[paigew]

Yeah well I agree. If there is no benefit it seems pointless. But my catalog isn't working right and its not my computer so.... :/ what am I to do??

 

[Dave442]

I would export a catalog with just the photos you need to work on right now. I would make sure I have a backup catalog that is not crashing and I would then build a new catalog.
I also now have Smart Preview enabled as my RAW files are on an external drive, but I am not sure if that would make any difference in your case or if it would just complicate LR more.

I agree that one of the main features of LR is using the database to find photos and for that to work best the photos need to be in the same catalog.

Just a thought, go into Catalog Settings and check under File Handling and see how often 1:1 previews are discarded (a longer time should allow faster loads of a larger number of images) and then in Preferences under File Handling check the size the preview cache is using (increasing should render faster).

 

[paigew]

what should my preview quality and standard preview size at. I have it at medium and 1440px. Deleting 1:1 preview after 30 days. As for smart preview, I don't think you are supposed to smart preview your entire catalog.

 

[Dave442]

I would leave preview quality at medium, the preview size is recommended to be just larger than your monitor resolution. The Smart Previews I have cover part of my catalog, makes it easy to work on photos while on or waiting for a plane and don't have to disconnect an external drive before closing the computer. Right now my .lrdata (Smart Preview) file is about 10 gb and my 250gb SSD disk only has 110gb free so I do have to watch what I put on there.

 

[paigew]

Okay I see. I have never used the smart preview feature but now that I am storing my raw files on my external HD I am excited to test it out in the future. LR is running fine today. I swear I have had so many issues with LR over the years.