Maximum catalog size

[Ben Rubinstein]

How many images can you use in a C1 catalog before starting to slow down as a result? Time was that internet wisdom said 10K and then Phase One said 25K with anecdotal evidence on the web saying either more or less. In the age of C1 20, do we have any up to date and concrete information about a sensible maximum amount of images in a C1 catalog?

[Avalanche]

I am using a MacBook Pro 15" (2018) with 32GByte RAM. I do not allow catalogs to grow over 30,000 images before I split them. Beyond that, C1 really feels slow. The magic threshold seems to be somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 images. For example, you will start to notice the time that is required to open or close the catalog as annoying. I have found catalog sizes beyond 30,000 images unbearable.

Your experience may vary depending on how you use the application, though. For example, Catalog Collections > All Images is basically unusable with larger catalogs (even if they contain less than 20,000 images). If you're a wedding shooter that wants to put all 5000 images into one album you might run into problems far earlier. The maximum number of images might also decrease depending on how many edits and layers there are.

Because you mentioned performance: Editing is really slow on LG 5K screens. Drawing masks with the brush is more like hit and miss. That works a lot better if you're only using the internal screen.

[UnfamiliarLight]

Your experience may vary depending on how you use the application, though. For example, Catalog Collections > All Images is basically unusable with larger catalogs (even if they contain less than 20,000 images).

Yes, this is the issue with large catalogs. My catalog now has 67 000 images in it. I don't use the All Images collection. Which is annoying and I have an on going discussion with support about it. I do have smart albums that filter on years and other metadata. That allows me to search for images over a wider area. That is not really ideal but it is the work around I am using. Most of my folders have between 200 and 1000 images so 1000 images is pretty much the largest I have on screen at one time. I find no other performance problems. Really the problem C1 has is searching the full catalog.

I'm on a Windows i5 machine with 16Gb of memory.

[Ben Rubinstein]

I will indeed be using the 'all images' for this project.

[UnfamiliarLight]

I will indeed be using the 'all images' for this project.

How big is the project going to be? You could also use a Session for this project - it still supports an All Images collection and that way you can have only the images you actually need be part of it.

[Ben Rubinstein]

How big is the project going to be? You could also use a Session for this project - it still supports an All Images collection and that way you can have only the images you actually need be part of it.

In total 1.6 million raw images, 36+ megapixels.

I am importing tens of thousands of sessions and I need to maintain the folder structure. Some changes will be made on import, some to 'all images' (mainly the actual processing of all to TIFF) and some on a folder/session basis. I'm just trying to work out how small I need to slice the pie, i.e. split up the images into smaller catalog's for manageability.