Remember back in the day when you’d shoot a roll of film, have it developed, maybe put some of the photos into an album, and then dump your negatives into a giant box or drawer full of other photo store envelopes loaded with negatives? Did you ever go back to try to find a single image to reproduce? Sometimes this meant hours of sorting through envelopes or slide containers, pulling out negative sleeves to stare at them and guess if this was the roll of film with your image on it. Maybe you were a pro and had a better filing system, but even then there was the chance of getting busy and falling behind.
I have good news and I have bad news for you. Most digital photographers shoot more frames than they ever did (or would have) when shooting film. The potential to lose your images on your hard drive grows massively every year that you add more digital files to the pile. The good news is, that if you exert the same discipline to organizing your images as they come in, you can locate and access image files far more quickly and efficiently than you ever could have with a physical storage system.
I’m talking about managing your image libraries with collections, meta data, and keywords of course. I’ll talk in terms of Adobe Lightroom 3, but the same principles apply to most popular photo cataloging software available today. Aperture, iPhoto, Picasa, all share similar folder creation and tagging elements. The more entry level programs might not go into the same detail, but you can still apply the principles to your workflow.
This post is part of a series that will cover my Lightroom hierarchy and general workflow up to the point of actually editing photos. First on the list is…
Catalogs
This year I revisited my LR catalog structure. Previously I’d managed separate catalogs for each year, and for any major trips I’d taken. That theory was born from the necessity of earlier versions of LR not being as fast with larger catalogs, and the limitations of my relatively small 120 GB hard drive. I used to store the current year’s photos on my laptop along with catalogs from recent trips (like my 30 GB South America catalog) , and then move older catalogs onto two external hard drives. Now I have 750 GB of space on my computer, and LR is able to handle large catalogs with a lot more speed, so I thought about it, did some research, and started merging catalogs. I now have all images shot between Jan 1, 2009 and today on one catalog. All prior images are stored on backup drives in their own archived catalog. At 180 GB, the catalog performs perfectly and allows me to take advantage of all organizational features built into Lightroom.
The real tipping point for me was watching Julieanne Kost’s excellent video, Single or Multiple Catalogs in LR3? As my photography career moves forward, I hope to be shooting a lot more travel and documentary images, and while I may need to access specific locations independent of geographic location. If I’m asked to supply photos of food carts around the world, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to search through all of my images in one location rather than isolating the food cart images from each of my separate trip catalogs?
Catalog Management While Travelling
So how do I deal with traveling and being away from my master catalog? While on a trip, I’ll be creating a new catalog on the older laptop I’m taking with me. During the trip, I’ll be shooting, importing, keywording, and organizing my images. When I get home, I’ll simply open Lightroom, and use File > Import from Catalog… to pull that catalog right into my master.
Downsides?
The only real downside to working with larger catalogs is the seemingly increased system drain when Lightroom tries to back up the catalog. There are a variety of opinions regarding whether you should back up you catalog or not, but I play it safe here and run a weekly back up. My last two catalog backups took upwards of 15 minutes and caused my computer to slow to a stuttering crawl. I’m running lean on RAM, which could be a possible fix to this problem, but it is something to be aware of if you have these backups enabled.
Decided that you want to merge your multiple catalogs into one? Another video by Julieanne Kost on merging catalogs in LR3 will take you the rest of the way.
Read part 2 in the series: Lightroom Collections.
Read part 3 in the series: Lightroom Kewording.
