Julieanne Kost's Blog

A while ago I posted how to create an incremental Backup of your Lightroom catalog:

• To create a backup of your Lightroom catalog, select Catalog Settings > General.  In the Backup area, select how often Lightroom should create an backup of your catalog. (Remember, this is only creating a backup of the Lightroom catalog – NOT your images.) 

• You might also want to change the location of the backup catalog. When prompted to backup (depending on the schedule you set above), select a secondary drive (if possible) so that if the primary drive fails, you will still have your backups on the secondary drive.

I wanted to take a moment to add that this incremental catalog backup was designed so that if the most current catalog is harmed in some way (becomes corrupted, is accidently deleted, etc.), you can go back in time to the most recent backup (ideally losing little or no work). The incremental backups were not designed for catastrophic failures (floods, fire, theft etc.). So please, adopt a backup system that works for you that includes multiple copies of the most recent catalog (as well as your images) on multiple drives – ideally in multiple locations.

Note: I have multiple LaCie RAID drives that I backup routinely using Intego Backup Manager software (which comes with the drive). I keep multiple copies of my entire image library at home as well as at work. Obviously there is a wide range of backup strategies: I encourage you to find one that meets your needs.

When you upgrade from Lightroom to Lightroom 4, be sure to upgrade your catalog. The first 2 minutes of this video will show you how.

Holding the Option (Mac) | Control (Win) key when launching Lightroom will display the “Select Catalog” dialog box which allows you to choose to open recent catalogs, choose a different catalog, or create a new catalog.

In the Library module, holding the Option (Mac) | Alt (Win) key toggles the Import and Export buttons (at the bottom of the panels) to “Import Catalog” and “Export Catalog”.

In this video (How To Move & Archive Images and Export A Catalog), you will learn how to create a smaller subset of your images to take home with you to work on “off-line”. Because this tutorial answers three questions, you will want to jump to 6:20 in the movie. And yes, it is the same video as in yesterday’s post – I have now learned NOT to mix different topics in one video – even if they’re all popular questions!

(This Episode was first published on 2010/03/09 but I neglected to blog about it.)

In this episode of the Complete Picture, (How to Migrate Lightroom to a New Computer), I explain how to transfer all of your Lightroom Catalogs, backups, presets, preferences and supporting files from one computer to another. I will also provide tips on how to re-link any missing files and folders if the paths to your images change along the way.

In this quick tip (How to Prevent  Lightroom’s Previews File from Taking Over the Hard Drive), I explain what makes Lightroom’s Preview file (.lrdata) grow and how to set your Catalog Settings to prevent it for getting out of hand.

If your workflow includes making a new catalog for each client, you might want to think about making a “template” catalog to save time. Simply open a new catalog (File > New Catalog), and customize it the way you want ( by adding smart collections, your identity plate, watermarks etc.). Then, instead of having to recreate this process every time, simply duplicate the template. Note:  you might want to rename the template to differentiate them from one another:

Click here to learn how to rename a Lighroom catalog.

Click here for more information on when to use a single vs multiple catalogs in Lightroom.

In this Episode of The Complete Picture (Merging Individual Lightroom Catalogs into a “Master” Catalog) I will demonstrate how to combine individual Lightroom catalogs into a single, “Master” Lightroom catalog to simplify a photographers workflow and enable multi-shoot searching.

The option to store presets and templates with a specific catalog is particularly useful when there is a need for the photographer to work on several different computers. For example, in an educational “lab” environment, a student might have all of their images and catalog on an external drive making it easy to move from one machine to another during each “open lab” session. If they choose Preferences > Presets > Location  and check the “Store Presets with Catalog” option, any user-created preset (such as metadata templates, develop presets etc.) will be stored within the same folder as the associated catalog (instead of in the default location).  The advantage is that whichever computer you launch your Lightroom catalog on, you will see your presets and only your presets (as opposed to all of the other students’ presets).

If, however, you are working on a single computer, I would suggest that you do NOT check the “Store Presets with Catalog” option. Instead, save your presets (and templates) to the default location so that your presets will be accessible if you decide to create multiple catalogs.

Lightroom’s presets can be found/copied/deleted here:

• Mac (user)/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom

• Win (user)/ Application Data/Adobe/Lightroom

Or, Control (Mac) / right mouse (Win) -click on any preset in Lightroom’s Develop module (or any Template in the output modules) and choose Show in Finder (Mac ) / Reveal in Explorer (Win) to automatically display the corresponding presets folder. Then, copy and paste (using the operating system) the preset files to the same location on the other machine.

To create a backup of your catalog, select Catalog Settings > General.  In the Backup area, select how often Lightroom should create a backup of your catalog. Remember, this is only creating a backup of the Lightroom catalog (NOT your images).  The backup might use a little disk space, but it’s well worth the investment just in case something happens to the primary catalog.

It is also wise to change the location of the backup catalog. When prompted to backup (depending on the schedule set above) select a secondary drive (if possible) so that if the primary drive fails, you will still have your backups on the secondary drive.

As some of you may have noticed, there is no way to rename a Lightroom catalog from within the program. Instead, locate your catalog (see yesterday’s post) and then quit Lightroom. There are TWO files that you need to rename. They are:

(your catalog name).lrcat

(your catalog name) Previews.lrdata

Make sure that you leave the space between the catalog name and the word Previews on the .lrdata file.

The default Lightroom catalog is stored:

Mac (user) /Pictures / Lightroom

Win (user) / My Pictures / Lightroom

If, however, you have made another catalog and have lost track of it,  easiest way to find it is to select Lightroom > Catalog Settings (Mac) / Edit > Catalog Settings (Win) and click General. In the Information area, it displays the path to the currently open catalog. Click the “Show”  button to reveal the catalog in the Finder (Mac) / Explorer (Win).

On the Mac, the title of the catalog is also displayed at the top of the Lightroom window but this is area is hidden when in either of the Full Screen Modes. If it is visible, Control (Mac) or Right Mouse -clicking on the title will display the path to it’s location (this feature is a function of the Snow Leopard OS – thanks to Kelly Castro for that info!).

I have created a video explaining the pros and cons of using single versus multiple catalogs that you can watch here. With that in mind, I know that there will be some photographers who’s workflow require using multiple catalogs. However, there are a few items that need to be set up every time you select File > New Catalog (such as Identity Plates and Collections). To avoid this repetitive step, I would suggest that you create a “template” catalog. In the template you could set up your Identity plate and Collections. Then simply duplicate the catalog for your new client and go right to work.

Note: To create a new catalog select File > New Catalog, choose where to save it and give it a name. Set up your identity plate (for a video about Creating Your Own Identity plate click here). You will need to  import one photo into the catalog (any photo) to set up your Collection Sets and Collections.