# Working With A Temporary Catalog



## MelissaA (May 7, 2019)

In the past, I have always kept my LR Catalog on a portable external hard drive which made using it while traveling with my laptop very simple.  However, I have decided that I would like to keep 1-1 previews of all my images and the catalog will no longer fit on a 2TB hard drive.  (I prefer to do this so as to speed up the process of loading images that haven't been accessed in awhile. LR is extremely slow to load without the larger previews.)  In any event, after reading about the various options in Victoria's book, I believe that importing from a temporary catalog is probably my best option.  However, I'm having difficulty completely understanding how to do this.  I'm hoping that someone can explain the process to me so that I will be able to follow the instructions and use it in the future.  Thank you so much!


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## clee01l (May 7, 2019)

Your "temporary"  Catalog  involves the process of merging two catalogs.  

I have a "master" catalog that I keep at home ( on my iMac).  And when I travel I travel with a "travel" catalog.    The "Master" catalog has all of my images, previews and all of the work that I have done  on those master images.   My "Travel" catalog starts the trip empty although it does not need to be.   Because the "Master" catalog has all of the collections, publish services,  keywords and presets that I use in the day to day management of my master images. 
I want all of that on the travel catalog file but I don't want the images.   So, what I do is make a copy of just the "Master" lrcat file.   I rename that file to indocate it is the "Travel" catalog and copy it to the laptop.  This gives me a catalog with all of the collections, publish services,  keywords and presets that I use.  It also gives me the inventory of cataloged images BUT not the images or previews.    You can REMOVE these images from ONLY the "Travel" catalog but this is not strictly  necessary.
During my travels, I import new images to the "Travel" catalog  as  I would normally.  Keywords, Edits etc. get added to this catalog. 
If this "Travel" catalog and the newly added images are on the same portable external hard drive, merging the "Travel" catalog into the "Master" catalog  is a simple process:

On returning,  connect the portable external hard drive  to the master computer.
Open the "Master" catalog  on the master computer
Choose "Import from another catalog" from the Lightroom File menu
Navigate to the portable external hard drive and select the "Travel" catalog 
Follow the steps in the "Import from another catalog" dialog to merge the "Travel" images into the Master catalog. 
You will want to choose to  move the "Travel" images to a permanent location during the import so that they do not remain on the portable external hard drive.


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## Victoria Bampton (May 7, 2019)

Which bit of the steps were you getting stuck on Melissa?


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## Zenon (May 8, 2019)

Get a 4TB drive. They are so cheap these days. Use your old one for something else.


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## MelissaA (May 18, 2019)

clee01l said:


> Your "temporary"  Catalog  involves the process of merging two catalogs.
> 
> I have a "master" catalog that I keep at home ( on my iMac).  And when I travel I travel with a "travel" catalog.    The "Master" catalog has all of my images, previews and all of the work that I have done  on those master images.   My "Travel" catalog starts the trip empty although it does not need to be.   Because the "Master" catalog has all of the collections, publish services,  keywords and presets that I use in the day to day management of my master images.
> I want all of that on the travel catalog file but I don't want the images.   So, what I do is make a copy of just the "Master" lrcat file.   I rename that file to indocate it is the "Travel" catalog and copy it to the laptop.  This gives me a catalog with all of the collections, publish services,  keywords and presets that I use.  It also gives me the inventory of cataloged images BUT not the images or previews.    You can REMOVE these images from ONLY the "Travel" catalog but this is not strictly  necessary.
> ...


Thank you so much for this, Clee.  I think I understand what you've explained here, but I'm having a significant problem.  I've tried to copy the catalog to a 2TB external hard drive and I keep getting a system error message.  Just to be certain that I am trying to copy the correct file, I have attached a screen shot of my LR folder.  I've tried to copy the one that says "Lightroom 6-2lrcat".  This file is almost 1TB in size.  Does that make sense?  This is the only drive I currently have large enough to handle the file.  I tried using a flash drive before I knew that it was too large, and didn't get the same error message.  But, obviously, it won't fit on the flash drive.


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## Victoria Bampton (May 20, 2019)

That Lightroom6-2lrcat looks like  folder instead of a catalog file. Is that right? What's the error message you're getting?


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## MelissaA (Feb 9, 2020)

clee01l said:


> Your "temporary"  Catalog  involves the process of merging two catalogs.
> 
> I have a "master" catalog that I keep at home ( on my iMac).  And when I travel I travel with a "travel" catalog.    The "Master" catalog has all of my images, previews and all of the work that I have done  on those master images.   My "Travel" catalog starts the trip empty although it does not need to be.   Because the "Master" catalog has all of the collections, publish services,  keywords and presets that I use in the day to day management of my master images.
> I want all of that on the travel catalog file but I don't want the images.   So, what I do is make a copy of just the "Master" lrcat file.   I rename that file to indocate it is the "Travel" catalog and copy it to the laptop.  This gives me a catalog with all of the collections, publish services,  keywords and presets that I use.  It also gives me the inventory of cataloged images BUT not the images or previews.    You can REMOVE these images from ONLY the "Travel" catalog but this is not strictly  necessary.
> ...


Clee
I have finally gotten around to using that "travel catalog"!  The pictures, along with the travel catalog are on a portable hard drive.  I have added the pictures from my most recent travels to my desktop computer.  I will need to delete the pictures from the portable drive in order to make room for the next trip.  Can I just delete the images without causing any problems to the catalog that is also on the portable drive?


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## clee01l (Feb 10, 2020)

If you started with a new empty "travel" catalog, you now have images and a catalog with metadata about those images.  If you have merged this into the master catalog you can clean up the travel computer.   If you want you can "remove/delete" all of the images in the "travel"catalog by deleting everything in the travel catalog so that it is empty once again. If you don't mind the catalog with metadata about those images and just want to delete the image files them selves, you can do that instead.


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## MelissaA (Feb 10, 2020)

If I delete everything, wouldn’t that mean that I need to start completely over and copy the main catalog again to the portable hard drive?  Or, if I understand what you’re saying, I could just delete the images, and the metadata would remain as part of the travel catalog?  If that’s the case, I’m assuming that extra metadata would just sit there not taking up much space?  And it wouldn’t affect the future images that I would add.


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## clee01l (Feb 10, 2020)

MelissaA said:


> If I delete everything, wouldn’t that mean that I need to start completely over and copy the main catalog again to the portable hard drive? Or, if I understand what you’re saying, I could just delete the images, and the metadata would remain as part of the travel catalog? If that’s the case, I’m assuming that extra metadata would just sit there not taking up much space? And it wouldn’t affect the future images that I would add.



If you select all of the images in your travel catalog, you can delete them and the metadata changes and edit adjustment that you just transferred to to the master catalog. This will leave you with the empty catalog that you started with. All of you keywords in the keyword list, all of the collections (now empty but intact) all of the Publish Services will be there for your next import.
Alternately you can delete the image files from the file system and all of your currently cataloged images will still be in the catalog but their locations will be marked empty. This is OK if that is what you want. Either way is fine as long as you know what to expect.


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## MelissaA (Feb 10, 2020)

If I do your first suggestion, would I be deleting the two folders circled in blue on the screen shot?  I have attached a screen shot of what the drive contents look like and also one of what the catalog looks like.


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## clee01l (Feb 10, 2020)

If you choose my first option (empty your catalog) Lightroom will delete those folder IF that are no other files in these folders except the image files that were in the catalog. If there are other files of any type. LR will only delete the cataloged images file and leave the other non cataloged files in these folders. 


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## MelissaA (Feb 10, 2020)

Ohhhh!  I think I might finally get this. I was forgetting the the images that had been stored on the same drive as the catalog also show up as part of the catalog!  So if I wanted to delete the images from the catalog as well as from the drive, I would delete in 2 places - from the drive itself and than open LR travel catalog and delete from within the catalog.  Is this correct?  Since I won't need to have the originals available in this catalog any longer, it seems to me that I could just delete the folders from the system and keep the thumbnails with a ? in the catalog.  Are there any problems with this option?  While I'm at it, if I were to add or change some presets, etc., would I need to delete and recreate the travel catalog?


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## clee01l (Feb 10, 2020)

Just selecting the images from the catalog will also automatically delete them from where they are stored



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## MelissaA (Feb 10, 2020)

Yes, but can I delete from the system and keep images with a ? in LR Travel with no problems?  What about adding or changing presents on the main catalog?  What happens in the travel catalog if I do that?


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## clee01l (Feb 10, 2020)

MelissaA said:


> Yes, but can I delete from the system and keep images with a ? in LR Travel with no problems? What about adding or changing presents on the main catalog? What happens in the travel catalog if I do that?



That was the second option that I mentioned in #10


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## MelissaA (Jun 27, 2021)

I have returned to this thread from more than a year ago.  I have been working with a travel catalog for the past 2 years with no problems.  However, I just returned from a trip, and when I attempted to merge the travel catalog with the master catalog, it brought up everything (all 200,000 images) that is in my master lightroom catalog.  In fact, it brought up everything BUT what is new in the travel catalog.  I'm sure that I have done something wrong to cause this problem.  Any ideas what that might be?


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## Hal P Anderson (Jun 27, 2021)

Likely you were in the travel catalogue trying to import your main catalogue. You need to do it the other way round: open your main catalogue and import your travel catalogue.


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## MelissaA (Jun 28, 2021)

Hal P Anderson said:


> Likely you were in the travel catalogue trying to import your main catalogue. You need to do it the other way round: open your main catalogue and import your travel catalogue.


No, Hal, I was definitely in my main catalog.  Also, I just tried it again-definitely in the main catalog-and the same thing happened. I had selected the travel catalog for import, not the main catalog.  Even if that were the case, why would it bring up every single image from the main catalog?  I thought it would avoid importing duplicates.  I am able to open the travel catalog and switch back and forth-so it is definitely there.  But, for some reason, LR is not importing the correct one.  I have attached a screen shot of the Import Dialog, and as you can see, it shows that it is importing from Travel, but Travel is nowhere to be seen.  It is showing all of the folders/images in my main catalog.  The new Travel Catalog folder does not show up in this dialog.


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## Victoria Bampton (Jul 1, 2021)

Was the travel catalog a copy of the main catalog? And has the main catalog been changed in the meantime as well? If it was a fully copy and the main catalog hasn't been changed, you could just copy back the entire travel catalog.

That said, your screenshot shows it's only trying to import 8253 new photos and would only update 13271 (if you update that bottom pop-up to allow it to update) so it's not trying to copy all of them.

What do you mean by "Travel is nowhere to be seen". What are you expecting to see?


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## clee01l (Jul 1, 2021)

If the travel catalog was a copy of the master catalog, it will contain every image in the master plus those you have imported into the travel catalog. If you edit threse in the travel catalog they will show up as dirrerent from the same image in the main catalog.  Lightroom Classic will want to import these as Virtual copies  It will use the master image file but create a virtual copy alongside the  master copy.  You can decide which to keep.


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## MelissaA (Jul 1, 2021)

"That said, your screenshot shows it's only trying to import 8253 new photos and would only update 13271 (if you update that bottom pop-up to allow it to update) so it's not trying to copy all of them."  This is true, but I only have less than 1200 new images, not 8253.  What I meant by Travel is not to be seen is that when I scroll through the list of folders, I don't see the folder with the new images.  I see all the other folders in the main catalog, but not the travel catalog folder with the new images.  I'm still very confused as to what to do with this!


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## clee01l (Jul 1, 2021)

MelissaA said:


> "That said, your screenshot shows it's only trying to import 8253 new photos and would only update 13271 (if you update that bottom pop-up to allow it to update) so it's not trying to copy all of them." This is true, but I only have less than 1200 new images, not 8253. What I meant by Travel is not to be seen is that when I scroll through the list of folders, I don't see the folder with the new images. I see all the other folders in the main catalog, but not the travel catalog folder with the new images. I'm still very confused as to what to do with this!



Can you describe how you created the travel catalog and what folders were used to add new images. If the image folder structure for both catalogs are the same, then the only new image folders to be created when merging will be the folders that are new since the travel catalog was created. 


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## MelissaA (Jul 1, 2021)

Problem solved!  And I apologize for being such a putz!  The folder I was looking for was buried deep in the dialog, and even though I scrolled through the dialog multiple times, I didn't see it until just a few minutes ago.  The new images have been successfully imported.  Thanks for all the help!


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