Any Lightroom Classic (v6) users here?

[Bill Carey]

My lightroom catalog is getting so big (150,000 pics) it's kinda slow. I want to move all the woodworking pics to a new catalog. Anyone tried this? Any tips?

[David Bolson]

Another way to approach this. I also have a huge amount of pictures. Photography is another hobby of mine. You probably don't need 150,000 pictures. If you're like me, you took multiple pictures of the same thing so you could pick the best one. Go through your pictures, pick one and delete the rest. If you've already processed the picture, you probably don't need the raw version anymore (unless it's a really special shot that you may want to enlarge later). Delete the raw and keep the jpeg. And so forth. It may take you a week or more to do this, but I think you'll be happier that you did it. You also may find some pictures that you forgot about and be glad you found them again. Speaking from my own experience.

David

[Jim Becker]

I use LR Classic, but the current version via subscription and don't really use the cataloging function. I wish I could help, but...hopefully someone else can.

[Bill Carey]

Another way to approach this. I also have a huge amount of pictures. Photography is another hobby of mine. You probably don't need 150,000 pictures. If you're like me, you took multiple pictures of the same thing so you could pick the best one. Go through your pictures, pick one and delete the rest. If you've already processed the picture, you probably don't need the raw version anymore (unless it's a really special shot that you may want to enlarge later). Delete the raw and keep the jpeg. And so forth. It may take you a week or more to do this, but I think you'll be happier that you did it. You also may find some pictures that you forgot about and be glad you found them again. Speaking from my own experience.

David

Sadly, David, I've already done this. I used to freelance for the Chicago papers and typically would shoot 3 or 4 hundred pics at a Bears game, and keep only 5 or 10, so the delete function is about wore out. I did however manage to winnow down the grandkids pics from 5,000 or so to 4500.

[roger wiegand]

I moved both my catalog and storage disk a while ago but have little memory of how I did it. Catalog on a new SSD and picture storage onto a NAS. Only about 60K pictures. Basically I read 3-4 How-to pages, including Adobe's and then followed the consensus instructions. It went perfectly. Of course I made two full backups of everything before I started and didn't dispose of the old version until I was sure everything was working. That was probably on v8 or 9 though, I'm on 10.1 now.

So, I'm afraid I'm only reporting that it can be done successfully.

I'd think about first updating to the current version and then moving. The "photographer's bundle" for both Photoshop and Lightroom makes the pricing not quite so painful.

For better or worse, I don't think I could function without Lightroom. I'm not going to live long enough to go through and re-sort all my pictures, storage is now so cheap there's just no reason to. I do triage when I import pictures, we'll get back from a month vacation and I'll typically have several thousand images and then will spend several days throwing out obvious trash, doing any needed image touch-up, processing HDR sets, and creating a "best of" category for that trip that get tagged with keywords and such. Oftentimes I'll also print a book with some of those best pictures for us and our traveling companions. It has certainly been the case that I've needed to reach back into the second/third tier pictures to get something I particularly need, or to reprocess the HDR sets in a different way for a different purpose. So it's much easier to just let the raw data lie than to try to decide what to delete. The beauty of Lightroom is that it seems well equipped to handle vast number of pictures, let you find them again and ignore the dross.

[Bill Carey]

Thx Roger. Ya, storage is so cheap now that I have 3 terra byte drives for LR alone. One is the active one, another is a backup in the fire safe and the 3rd is in a safe deposit box at the bank. Can't bring myself to get another monthly subscription so I stay with v6 - it does what I need. Something that I need to begin working on is the 30 gallon tote full of tri x negatives from before I had a digital camera. I'd come back from the game or accident or what ever, develop them, scan the negs and pick 1 or 2 to submit, put the rest in sleeves and never look at them again. And then there's the 30 gal tote full of prints and slides. Just thinking about it tires me out. Maybe I just leave it for the kids to worry about.