Export TO Catalog?

[John Caldwell]

If I'm correct, we can't do this. My workaround has always been to Export (selected files) To Catalog, and subsequently Import From (that selected files) Catalog. But it would be great to choose a set of images, and Export those images to an already existing catalog and, in the process, retain all those features that exchanging files between Catalogs allows.

Any thoughts as to why this isn't possible? Better yet, am I missing that it's already possible? I've not noticed this in any of the new feature list discussions.

Thanks,

John Caldwell

[Schewe]

Uh...my version of LR has the ability to Export To Catalog in the File menu...if you select images in your catalog you can export them as a catalog. You can also export a collection as a catalog...So either I don't understand what you are doing or else you don't. Could be me...so exactly what do you want to do?

[msbc]

Why Export at all? In LR4 open the destination catalog and choose File>Import from Another Catalog

[John Caldwell]

No, we have Export AS Catalog. But I could have been more clear in my post, so I understand the questions.

Imagine catalog "Best of Animals" has 1000 images. I have a separate catalog "Dogs" that has 20,000 images. I would like 50 images from Dogs to join and become part of the Best of Animals catalog. The feature I am asking for would permit, in one step, that I select and Export the desired 50 images from Dogs directly to Animals through Export To Catalog, meaning TO an already existing catalog.

As it is now we can select the 50 Dogs images, and Export AS Catalog, creating a brand new catalog in the process, say "Dogs Edit". We would then open "Best of Animals" and Import From Catalog "Dogs Edit", importing all 50 images from that Dogs Edit catalog. Since Dogs Edit is only a 50 image catalog the import process would be quick, and there would be no lengthy hunt for the desired images to import - because we want all 50 images. But we needed to create this otherwise useless dummy catalog, "Dogs Edit" to make this work.

Alternately we could skip the dummy catalog. To do that we need to have the "Best Of Animals" open, and Import From Catalog, pointing to the "Dogs" catalog as the source of images to import. Remember "Dogs" has 20,000 images and we only want 50 of them in the Best of Animals catalog. The import will be tediously long, and finding the 50 desired images will be difficult in the Import thumbnail dialog. The bigger the Source catalog is, the greater the difficulty.

Another method would due to export not a catalog, but to export DNG files with all metadata edits Saved, and import those 50 DNG files to the Best of Animals catalog. But here we loose catalog-specific features such as History States and Collections.

This should make more sense than my OP did about what I wish for and why. I am one of the who maintains separate project catalogs, usually by date, but include the best of those smaller project catalogs in a Master catalog. As it is now, I use interim dummy catalogs to marry small numbers of files from project catalogs to the master. It's the best way I know of, but would find the idea of Exporting selected images TO an already existing catalog very useful. Once you have imported from catalogs that contain large numbers of unwanted images you might better understand the request.

John Caldwell

[michael]

I understand what you'd like, but it can't be done, and likely isn't on the rader for the LR team.

It would mean that from one open catalog you'd have to export to another open catalog, and by design LR doesn't allow two open catalogs at the same time.

I also have a separate catalog per project or trip, and a Master for my Selects. Doing an export followed by an import is fast, and the "temporary" export catalog can be erased when done, so it really isn't any sort of a practical issue.

I don't erase them though, because they form a convenient resource for when organizing large groups of separate catalogs. They take little space since they are just the .LRCAT database file. You can trash previews if you don't want them.

[john beardsworth]

Exporting to a catalogue would also mean that the same images would be catalogued in two or more catalogues, and you can be sure that this will cause a lot of confusion and lost work/time. Which catalogue now contains the correct set of adjustments? How do you know - other than having a big brain - that image X may actually be in the other catalogue? How do you find that picture containing the dog in Paris when you don't know if it's in the Travel catalogue, or in the animals one - only by wasting time?

You're better off using metadata of various kinds (keywords, collections) to group and categorise your pictures, and not attempting to use separate catalogues for that purpose. Limit the multi catalogue feature to taking work onto a laptop and bringing it back, for temporary project catalogues, processing new pictures, for a particular event - ie specific purposes - and roll them back into the main catalogue afterwards.

If you want to export to a catalogue, you're going to have to do it yourself and accept the awkwardness is the price you're going to pay.

[John Caldwell]

Michael and John, I have no programming skill so I'll accept that it may be impractical to achieve, or maybe of zero priority for the engineers. But why would both source and destination catalogs need to be Open? As it is now, when we import from a catalog, only the destination catalog is open. The source is closed, but the program can still "see inside" the closed catalog. Perhaps the basic point that I'm missing is that for any file to be altered, it must be in an open state.

As for the idea of a single image living in two separate catalogs and that being a source of trouble, that's a personal matter I feel. I don't really care for the behavior of the LR program when catalogs are huge, so my personal style is that I often organize, Develop and Print a given project from smaller, much snappier catalogs, and coalesce later into a large master. If a large master catalog worked better than it does in my hands, I'd do as you say.

Thanks to you both,

John Caldwell

[john beardsworth]

There's no good programming reason, though it's usual to say it's the SQLLite database being single-user. I know that experiments to make it networked have caused corruption, so it may be there's no way around that limitation with this particular database. You just need to choose a different database, and there are examples of other cataloguing apps which do so and have multiple catalogue access (eg iView / MediaPro).

Sure, it's a personal matter, and no-one will force you to change, but it doesn't mean it's an optimal way to work or should be facilitated by LR moving in that direction. The bigger picture collections become, the less we should be fragmenting our control of them, and LR can comfortably handle hundreds of thousands of pictures in a single catalogue.

[John Caldwell]

The hundreds of thousands comment raises my eyebrows, John. Maybe my system is just too underpowered, but even LR4 catalogs of a few thousand images aren't crisp on my system. My master catalog is 120,000 images, still a LR3 catalog. It's pretty bulky, and adjustment brush tools really drag.

Do you personally do a lot of Develop work in catalogs that size? I'm not doubting you - wanting to learn from you.

Thank you,

John Caldwell

[john beardsworth]

It's not my own, but I work very closely with the guy. It's all D3s raw and with a lot of mixed theatre-type lighting and very high ISO which gives an idea of the kind of adjustment work. He has roughly 1200 images per shoot, 4-5 shoots a week, with all being reviewed and about 50% being kept. In Develop, AutoSync is always on, meaning bursts of shots can be processed efficiently. Few images have Clarity adjustments, which may be relevant to LR4 speed. Metadata is relatively light with few keywords (which may help). The computer isn't ridiculously powered - an i7 based system with 12 gb of RAM. Current jobs are on 10k internal drives. Optimisation is weekly. And he processes it all himself, and just about keeps his head above water!

[john beardsworth]

http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html is an important checklist.

[John Caldwell]

Thanks John.

[One Frame at a Time]

Dumb question: When you create the intermediary catalog there is the a need to copy the source images too?  Never having done this yet, I'm guessing that can wait and be done during the final "import catalog" step?

[Jeremy Roussak]

Dumb question: When you create the intermediary catalog there is the a need to copy the source images too?  Never having done this yet, I'm guessing that can wait and be done during the final "import catalog" step?

Correct. If even then.

Jeremy

[John Caldwell]

Export as Catalog permits you to copy or not copy image files and image previews. To create these interim catalogs, I usually choose to include neither. Once the assets of the interim catalog make their way into a master catalog which, as a rule, lives on a separate drive from the original source or interim catalogs the image files need to come over. Otherwise the images are just being aliased on a separate drive.

John Caldwell

[Rory]

The hundreds of thousands comment raises my eyebrows, John. Maybe my system is just too underpowered, but even LR4 catalogs of a few thousand images aren't crisp on my system. My master catalog is 120,000 images, still a LR3 catalog. It's pretty bulky, and adjustment brush tools really drag.

John, have you tested the lightroom lag on large and small catalogs?  Can you confirm the catalog size is causing adjustment brush lag?

[john beardsworth]

A different John, but it makes no difference. The slowdowns weren't related to reading and writing to the database .

[michael]

There is no way that the number of images in a catalog has anything to do with slowness of a brush. Unless you have some background task running (such as building previews) you could have a million images or ten and the brush speed would be the same.

Michael

[luxborealis]

http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html is an important checklist.

An excellent article with many great tips - thanks!