Storage and Sharing: Although Lightroom catalog files don't contain the actual images they're referencing, over time they can become relatively large files. This structure will make finding older archived work across multiple catalogs much easier.
For bulk images you can keep separate catalogs for your different photography genres or clients (example: 2018_nature.lrcat). You can start a new catalog each year and name it accordingly (example: 2019.lrcat). Organization: Although you have Lightroom Collections at your disposal as Lightroom's ultimate organizational tool, catalogs can be used for archiving purposes as well. Other Reasons for Working With Multiple Catalogs My "All Photographs" display in Lightroom currently shows under 2,000 images in my catalog. To keep tabs on your catalog size, go to your Library module and under Catalog on the upper left-hand side, check the number next to "All Photographs." How do you know if it's time to start a new catalog? This may not apply to hobbyists, but for event photographers and other professionals who often shoot several hundred (or more) images in a single day and experience slowness, chances are you'll benefit from a new catalog when the time comes. Nowadays however, computers have become much better at handling processing needed for quite large catalogs. The past consensus is that once you're over 10,000 images (or if you shoot over 10,000 a year) it's best to start fresh with a new catalog. It's also a good idea to also keep at least 20% of your hard drive space free.ĭepending on your computer's processing power, a bloated Lightroom catalog could reduce your speed and efficacy. Having at least 16GB of RAM will likely be enough to circumvent this issue, and that's what Adobe recommends in order to run Lightroom. With Lightroom, poor performance can be caused by a number of factors (available RAM, hard drive space, GPU power, LR cache size setting, etc.). Typically Photoshop is the culplit for eating up RAM, but Lightroom can cause issues as well. General computer speed is one of the biggest performance problems photographers face. Most commonly you'll experience lagging while processing your photos. When running an outdated computer system, speed issues are the clearest signs that you've let your Lightroom catalog grow too large.
But we often make the costly and frustrating mistake of letting our Lightroom catalogs grow too large. For almost every photographer who shoots bulk works of images, Lightroom is an essential tool.