Lightroom does NOT have your files in it
Lightroom does NOT store your files. Can I say that again? Your files are NOT inside of lightroom. Imagine Lightroom is a fancy digital index, not an actual storage room. That means it’s basically a list of pointers to all your files. If you backup your lightroom catalog, it is only saving your edits and list of files, NOT the files themselves.
Are you old enough to remember the card catalog at the library? That could be where they got the name from . You pulled out a drawer to find the card that had the name and location of the book you wanted. Then you went in the library to the aisle and shelf it mentions and you find the book. Your photos are the books in this analogy.
People have different ideas on how to organize their photos in Lightroom. Do you keep one huge catalog for all your images? Do you have one catalog per client? Per genre? Per year? Do you separate personal from professional?
I’ll start with the easier question - do you separate personal from professional? I highly recommend separating. It’s easier for backing up purposes and for finding things. If you hire people or sell your business, you don’t have to worry about your personal images getting intermingled.
Now the more difficult question - how often do I create a new catalog? I tried a few different ways; but early on I settled on one catalog per year. I re-evaluated this every year or two to see if it was the right way to go, and for me it continues to be the right choice. It should be noted that one genre I cover is sports volume and sports action which produces A LOT of files. I have catalogs with 50,000 - 70,000 files . This is AFTER culling. And that is each year. Many people will tell you that having more and more files in lightroom does not affect performance. Technically this can be true. However the question is “performance of what?”. When you update previews, update metadata, search on tags, backup your catalog etc, performance is affected by having more files in your catalog.
Why do I choose to have an annual catalog?
If a catalog gets corrupt, I don’t lose as much data.
For storage purposes, I can offload previous year’s catalogs to free up space on my laptop
The previews file is MUCH smaller when you only have one year per catalog (again - it saves space)
If I need to refresh the previews or write metadata to the files, it’s a quicker process when it’s only the current year’s files
I backup my catalog every time I exit (or almost every time). This is a quicker process with a smaller catalog.
I use collections a lot to organize my files and sub organize. If I didn’t do one catalog per year, my collections list would be insanely long.
If I created an album using Lightroom v6 (remember the standalone before they went to subscription model) and I have been upgrading year after year after year, that is just high risk for corruption to happen. Creating a fresh new catalog each year, ensures it’s created with the new version specs and it’s a clean catalog.
Downsides:
Sure, there are downsides to this choice. I find that the positives outweigh the negatives.
Everytime lightroom has a release update that changes the catalog, you have to upgrade your catalog….every catalog if you want to be able to read old catalogs. I don’t know how many versions backwards the catalog upgrade process supports but I don’t feel comfortable being any more than 2 behind.
If you have to go back to old files you have to remember what year that photo session was.
More files to manage (catalog files)
Harder to search ALL your work for a particular image.
If you want to gather portfolio files or photos for marketing purposes, it’s more work when they are spread across multiple catalogs (alhtough an argument can be made for you should be using your latest work anyway!
How do I backup my lightroom catalog? Here are steps to set this up automatically. I have mine setup to backup everytime I exit lightroom. It will prompt you everytime you exit your catalog. If I didn’t do any edits or if I’m in a hurry, I’ll just say “no” to the backup. This means you can set it up to prompt you every time you exit lightroom, but you don’t have to do it every time. This has saved my butt so many times. I have had corrupt catalogs before. I just go to the last backup and I’m back in action in seconds!
