# Catalog Management



## Robert Gallucci (Oct 27, 2016)

Thanks to Clie01l I am back up and running on a restored catalog which I synced missing images into. This marks a great spot for me to reassess my complete lightroom management and workflow. 

My current catalog has 500,000+ images spanning over 10 years. The majority of the images are from the past four years. Safe to say I have forgotten where the delete key is. 

I am going to try Clie01l's John Beardwork management suggestion and downloaded the catalog. Looking forward to using it. 

I will be using duplicate files on import. Yes, I do convert to DNG but like the idea of a raw backup. 

The question: How are other people managing catalogs? Do they create one for each year? How about every couple of years? I find that I revisit the year before enough to want easy access to the images, at least the ones I have completed processing on. 

Thanks in advance


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## clee01l (Oct 27, 2016)

A comment in favor of one catalog
_One Catalog to rule them all. One Catalog to find them,
One Catalog to bring them all and from the darkness bind them._
_(appologies to JRR Tolkien)_​


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## Robert Gallucci (Oct 27, 2016)

LMAO - LOTR will never be the same.


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## tspear (Oct 27, 2016)

clee01l said:


> A comment in favor of one catalog
> _One Catalog to rule them all. One Catalog to find them,
> One Catalog to bring them all and from the darkness bind them._
> _(appologies to JRR Tolkien)_​



LMAO, but I agree. 



Robert Gallucci said:


> My current catalog has 500,000+ images spanning over 10 years. The majority of the images are from the past four years. Safe to say I have forgotten where the delete key is.



I think you found the issue, it seems like it would be hard to even take 50K images a year, let alone 50K images that are worth keeping....


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## Robert Gallucci (Oct 27, 2016)

tspear said:


> LMAO, but I agree.
> 
> 
> 
> I think you found the issue, it seems like it would be hard to even take 50K images a year, let alone 50K images that are worth keeping....



Yes TSpear. I agree. ! I do a lot of avian photography in the wild (as opposed to those who bait birds in), much of it small songbirds like warblers, and tend to overshoot as a safety mechanism. I end up with a good deal of garbage which I must start to delete.


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## PhilBurton (Oct 27, 2016)

Robert Gallucci said:


> Yes TSpear. I agree. ! I do a lot of avian photography in the wild (as opposed to those who bait birds in), much of it small songbirds like warblers, and tend to overshoot as a safety mechanism. I end up with a good deal of garbage which I must start to delete.


I do a very different sort of photography than you, but I also do a lot of "safety" shots, since there are few opportunities for do-overs.  I use star ratings to separate out the safety shots from the ones truly worth keeping.  Combine that with folders and/or keywords and you can start to do culling.

Phil


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## clee01l (Oct 27, 2016)

Robert Gallucci said:


> Yes TSpear. I agree. ! I do a lot of avian photography in the wild (as opposed to those who bait birds in), much of it small songbirds like warblers, and tend to overshoot as a safety mechanism. I end up with a good deal of garbage which I must start to delete.


 I shoot a lot of Nature photography too.  In 2008,  I started using LR w/ v2.4.  My initial import was ~30K images.  I shoot about 30K images per year.  When importing, I cull rigorously to delete the missed shot, OOFs etc.    I still end up with 27 photos of the same pose of the same bird too.   During and After post processing, I try to  resolve those 27 photos down to one or two keepers.  It is something that is hard to do and requires discipline and determination.   My other passion is bugs. which are often focus stacks with up to 100 source images  (See how the problem compounds itself?)   I have been somewhat successful for my image inventory today is around ~30K images. I am proud to be able to make that statement. By my own estimate, 15% of those 30K images are worth keeping.  The rest should be tossed.

Having 500K images does you no good unless you can find the one image that you need when you need it.  I'd say you have your review work cut out for you.


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