With the arrival of 2010 it’s time for me to create my next Lightroom2 Catalog. What I’ve found in several years of using Lightroom is that I personally like having a “full” yearly catalog for everything shot that I deem “keepers”, even if some should be deleted! 😉
It’s so hard to delete sometimes, isn’t it?
Since I already went through several “setup lessons” at home this weekend I thought I’d share the right way to setup your new Lightroom library while at work, and while creating my new 2010 Library.
Yes, mistakes were made over the weekend when creating my new home version of the library. I did correct it quickly, but found myself saying, “Ugh…you totally forgot that again? Really? When will you learn?”
Here’s the steps I took this morning in order to create the new library:
1 – Open up Lightroom. Pretty simple so far!
2 – Go up to the “File” Menu and drop it down. You’re going to create a new catalog.
3- Now you’ll get the New Catalog Dialog Menu. Pretty straightforward. Pick the location and name of your new setup. In my case, I’m using an external hard drive.
4- You’re all done. The catalog is created. Pretty easy, right? Wrong. Something else will need to happen if you don’t want to have one of those “ugh” moments.
On my first import the default storage location is selected by Lightroom. I don't want that!
5 – On your first import to Lightroom you must make sure where your images are being copied to, how they’re being copied, etc. See, where the images are stored will go to a default. In the case of Mac, the default location is your “Pictures” folder. Personally, I don’t want the images stored on the computer, I want them on the external drives I have setup.
6 – Pick a storage location that works for you, make sure the import settings are as you want them, and then start importing!
So, what did I do wrong this weekend at home? Simple, when offloading the first round of images for 2010 I didn’t see where the photos were being copied. Totally forgot it! And they ended up on my laptop’s hard drive. Since my laptop has no room any more (4 year old Macbook Pro), the external drives are the way to go for me! After my import I had to delete and re-import. No big deal, just annoying!
There you have it. Pretty simple to make a new catalog / library, don’t you think?
Comments 3
Makes sense to me – and about to start that as well since I’d never thought to create new catalogs for different years. So, the question that one might have would be how to open an older catalog for viewing – perhaps a good subject for a follow-up post? 🙂
When you gonna come back on the podcast? LOL
.-= Jason´s last blog ..The Best Photo Blogs for 2010 =-.
Yeah! Same for me. I keep my LR catalogs by year.
I have not started my 2010 LR catalog.
For me, the -big- task every January is archiving the previous year photos. My working catalog is in my main Hard Drive, with a automatic backup (via Time Machine) into an external Hard Drive. At the end of the year, I burn the LR catalog and photos into archival grade DVDs
.-= Adolfo Isassi´s last blog ..The perils of post-processing (Part 2): Now and Then… =-.
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Jason, opening old catalogs is super easy. In the File Menu there’s a “Open Recent.”
In the case of my business, I have several operating catalogs. My images, my client images, and a final prints catalog.
Adolfo, you know, backing up is hard to do. 🙂 I’ve got to finish my last round of 09′ deletions and then archive! You and I have a bit of a job to do, don’t we. 😉