[dakight]

It's nearing the end of the years and I'm trying to decide whether to begin a new database in Lightroom, What are the pros and cons for starting a new database versus just continuing with the old one?

[jatrax]

Pro: ?
Con: Opening the correct database to find what you want instead of just starting Lightroom.
Possible confusion with backups
Generally more complicated

I did some research on this before and the only people who seem to recommend separate databases are those that do wedding or event shoots and use a separate catalog (database) for each client. All other 'experts' indicate there is no advantage to using multiple catalogs and recommend against it. This from pros with hundreds of thousands of images in the catalog. I have 58,000 images in my catalog at this time and see no reason to add a new catalog.

[rullrich]

Why are You considering to start a new database? I don't think it's that complicated, not even the backups, if you stick to lr's default storage pattern. Maybe speed can be a pro, but thats depend on how many items you have in your current database. SQLIte itself is quite fast, but LR as the application retrieving data from it may become quite slow sometimes.

[dakight]

Why are You considering to start a new database? I don't think it's that complicated, not even the backups, if you stick to lr's default storage pattern. Maybe speed can be a pro, but thats depend on how many items you have in your current database. SQLIte itself is quite fast, but LR as the application retrieving data from it may become quite slow sometimes.

I was just concerned about possible performance issues and just the size of the list. I do keep everything listed by year/month day and all the folders are collapsed except the one I'm currently working in. If there's not performance penalty I'll likely just continue in the same one.

[stevebrot]

Pro: ?
Con: Opening the correct database to find what you want instead of just starting Lightroom.
Possible confusion with backups
Generally more complicated

I did some research on this before and the only people who seem to recommend separate databases are those that do wedding or event shoots and use a separate catalog (database) for each client. All other 'experts' indicate there is no advantage to using multiple catalogs and recommend against it. This from pros with hundreds of thousands of images in the catalog. I have 58,000 images in my catalog at this time and see no reason to add a new catalog.

What he said. And even the matter of multiple clients may be handled through directory structure and/or collections.


Steve

[jatrax]

And even the matter of multiple clients may be handled through directory structure and/or collections.

That would be my preference (and current workflow) as well. I suppose there is a degree of security in having different clients in different catalogs but I don't do enough of that type of work for it to be a concern.

I was just concerned about possible performance issues and just the size of the list. I do keep everything listed by year/month day and all the folders are collapsed except the one I'm currently working in. If there's not performance penalty I'll likely just continue in the same one.

As far as I've been able to determine there is no performance penalty. Or at least not a detectable one. Lightroom seems to run slower with each version, but that's a different story. The latest update seems to have introduced more of a lag than anything before to the point that just scrolling through images eventually starts to crawl. But I do not think that has anything to do with the catalog size.

[amoringello]

It has been reported that with current versions of Lightroom, you can have hundreds of thousands of photos in a single catalog with no significant performance hit. I believe I heard of someone stating they had over half a million photos in their one catalog.
Really no cons to keeping everything in a single database now.

The basic database performance is decent.
You're likely to see more performance hit when viewing images with all the new correction features. So a good graphics card and lots of memory will help.

[Kerrowdown]

Working with just one catalogue is great for finding images quickly, provided you have done all the key wording... you have done that haven't you...

[amoringello]

Working with just one catalogue is great for finding images quickly, provided you have done all the key wording... you have done that haven't you...

I barely keyword anything. Total waste of time!
There are simpler ways of organizing things so they may be found easily...

Now, if you're a heavy stock photographer, or similar, and need to catalog every detail that is available and may be helpful.
But splitting into catalogs probably won't help either way.

[Kerrowdown]

There are better ways of doing things...

Tell me more...

I use key words, stars and flags and sometimes collections... which allow me to find any single image or a select few images with the same criteria in fractions of second.

[Murfy]

I use keywords, it helps when entering shows if they have a theme. then you can make smart collections based on those keywords. takes less than a minute or so to create smart collections based on keywords.

I would just keep one catalog, and then if you need to search by years, you can use the metadata search to find a specific year and month.

[jatrax]

I barely keyword anything. Total waste of time!

Tell me more... I use key words, stars and flags and sometimes collections...

Depends on purpose and need I suppose. Honestly one of the hardest things for me to convince new photographers about is the need to keyword their images. IMHO, just as important as taking the image or doing backups, it's just part of the job. If you have no need to sort and find things then it seems like a waste of time I guess. But if you ever really need that picture of aunt Ethel and her cat well, keywords make it a 30 second job.

Every image is saved into a folder system by date and then keyworded in Lightroom. So I have two independent filing systems. Stars and colors and flags all have meaning though I generally use all that just to indicate progress through my workflow.

I've argued to the point of getting people mad at me about keywords. Now I just politely suggest they do it and then let them alone. Who knows, maybe they don't need them.............

[amoringello]

Tell me more...

I use key words, stars and flags and sometimes collections... which allow me to find any single image or a select few images with the same criteria in fractions of second.

It is easy enough to create folders by date and descriptive name...
My Pictures
- Weddings
- - 2014
- - 2015
- - - 2015-01-01_Doe_Jane_John
- Vacations
- - 2014-01-01_Italy
- - 2015-01-01_Africa_Safari
- Portraits
- - 2015-01-01_Jane_Doe
- - 2015-01-02_John_Williams
etc...

It is easy enough for me to think, hmmm, I would love to see photos from our 2014 vacation to Italy. Or I need to remake prints for Jane Doe's family portrait, or for Mrs & Mr Smith's wedding.
Lightroom's simple text based search makes it trivial to find what I want, assuming I could not remember the date, or a specific name and could not go directly to the folder I needed.
I've shot 150K photos (not a lot, but a good number) in the past couple of years and rarely had to use more than Lightroom's text search.

I have certainly added keyword, 'pisa, tower' or 'venice', etc... for large sections of photos like a city where I spent a day.
It is sometimes a bit easier than breaking down large sets of photos into sub-folders.
I would not go so far as to keyword minor details such as a 'red car, venice, purple flowers, pigeons'.

For most of my purposes the time spent keywording has had very little return on investment.
Obviously for some cases, like stock photography, that may be a necessity and the more keywords the better.

[stevebrot]

I barely keyword anything. Total waste of time!

Truly!?

Tell me more...

Yes, do tell!

It is easy enough to create folders by date and descriptive name...
My Pictures
- Weddings
- - 2014
- - 2015
- - - 2015-01-01_Doe_Jane_John
- Vacations
- - 2014-01-01_Italy
- - 2015-01-01_Africa_Safari
- Portraits
- - 2015-01-01_Jane_Doe
- - 2015-01-02_John_Williams

Ummmmm...glad that works for you. I too have many thousands of photos in my catalog and despite using Lightroom since 2007, I only recently started doing comprehensive key word assignment. Why I failed to do it earlier is anyone's guess. My 35mm slides were all in a database with full keyword lookup. I think I was lulled by the knowledge that I could easily recall the place and subject details on seeing the thumbnails in combination with the date. That does not help me when I need to find all photos of waterfalls or Lower Lewis River Falls or Lewis River Falls in Fall.

The photo below is key-worded: "Lewis River", "Waterfall", "autumn", "fall", "lower lewis river falls", "rivers", "waterfalls", "Gifford Pinchot"



I could have quite reasonably added "water", "stream", and "fall color" as well. The keywords were parsed on upload to Flickr and are searchable on that site as well as in Lightroom. Similarly a descriptive title and caption in Lightroom will be parsed and used by Flickr and also be available to a text search in Lightroom.

As I mentioned above, I have been negligent in assigning key words and am back-filling images as I come I can for my better photos.


Steve

[amoringello]

Truly!?
Ummmmm...glad that works for you.

It does.

Hey, I'm not telling anyone their way is wrong. It is easy. It works. I have had no problems with it.
If keywording is what you need, more power to ya. I tried, for many months. It is a pain in the rear and I admire anyone's ability to stick with it and do it well.

Someone asked for pros/cons on keeping one catalog or splitting it up.
It was mentioned that keywording was important when keeping everything in one catalog.
I'm simply adding that the importance of excessive keywording may be over-stated, and that it probably would not be of much help with regard to using one giant catalog or multiple catalogs, as there are simpler ways of organizing the images.

You do raise a good point, for those that use Flicker, Instagram, etc... keywording is an important step to getting your images noticed.