The Right Way to Set Up Your Lightroom Catalog For The New Year

This is just a friendly reminder that if you create a new Lightroom catalog for each working year (and I recommend that you do) then it's probably a good day to do that. I can't tell you how many years I had the new year's shoots imported in the previous year's catalog simply because I forgot to make a new one. Enjoy!
Chapters
00:00
Setting up a New Lightroom Catalog
01:26
Using a Master Epic Catalog
02:19
Optimizing Performance in Lightroom
03:47
Configuring Preferences and Settings
05:06
Catalog Settings for File Handling
06:00
Metadata and Backup Options
07:09
Customizing the Lightroom Interface
08:03
Importing and Renaming Files
09:24
Organizing Images with Keywords
10:19
Exporting and Backing Up Files
11:46
Using the PickTime Plugin
12:39
Working in the Library and Develop Modules
My entire image workflow including local/cloud backup, optimizations for speed, and more
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[@johncalhoun4806]

Been considering this since my current catalog contains almost 10 years of photos....so great timing to post this along with a bunch of performance tips. Off to create my 2024 catalog before I need to import anything. Thanks Sam!

[@csc-photo]

Wow some great tips here! Will re-watch and make some adjustments. Thanks Sam!

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

Glad it was helpful!

[@ThePhotographerGuy]

Rad. Thanks for the tips.

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

hope it helps!

[@nicoshireyphotography]

Just the video I needed. Thank you!

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

glad it helped!

[@MatteoCremaBL]

ok, wait, let me buy a 8 tb macbook pro M3 max first, then i come back here to see the rest of the video. See you soon! ;)

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

haha, the 8tb option was actually some of the best money i’ve spent in years. WAY over priced, but to not have to ever shuffle stuff from internet to external all year is a huge relief

[@BrianPhoto]

Happy New Year Sam!

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

Happy new year!

[@stewartmunrovideo]

Great video Sam !

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

Thanks!

[@danielaargandona6825]

thank you very much. I don't need to copy my sessions as I have them already on an external hard-drive, mostly because my mac is rather old and the disk is just 2 tb. Do you have any other video explaining how to use the "Smart" stuff (catalogs etc) ? Thanks again and best wishes from Uruguay.

[@kavehjohn]

I am officially confused as hell over this catalog business. I have heard people say they create a catalog for every project, or one for the year or just 6 main catalogs covering various projects. I have no idea who to listen to and what to do. if you have a catalog for every year, then why do you merge that into another one for the new year?? PLEAE EXPLAIN. THANK YOU

[@JFitzsimmons]

I do it basically the way he is describing. I have an archive catalog that is all of my photos from previous years. I then have a working catalog for the current year. The reason I do this is because I keep the working catalog and images on my laptop. This is where I do all of my reviewing and editing for the year. Moving it into the archive catalog, which I keep on to separate external drive acts as an archive and helps improve the performance of my working catalog. If I had every one of my photos from all previous years always in my catalog, I would always have to have an external drive connected to my laptop. It can also slow down the performance of Lightroom if you work with a catalog that huge all the time. The reality is, I rarely go back to previous years so it is really more of an archive. As for individual project catalogs, sometimes I will quickly create a new catalog to work on smaller project. It’s not necessary and probably more of an ADD thing, but once I am done, I can import that catalog into my current catalog and all of the edits, etc., come with it.

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

yup, this is the way! I also sync my favorite photos in my "archive" catalog with Lightroom cloud so everything is in the Lightroom mobile app

[@daleantolik3956]

I can not find the Destination module in my Lightroom CC 2024 13.3.1 nor the Apply During Import.

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

hmmm - don’t think they changed anytime soon

[@aloysiuscalvin9467]

Hi Sam! Do you also gonna do review about new godox Lux cadet with Nikon cameras DSLR and Mirror less ? Just came up on mind thou 🙏🏼 cheers

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

maybe! i’m aware of the product but haven’t had a chance to try it out yet

[@ericmichaud5880]

Un gros Merci

[@az33ria85]

Im really curious how you deal with the file naming when you have such large amount of files? I have the issue that for every 10k photos the file naming is reset to the same, and thus I cant just keep on adding to the same folder, but have ended up instead basically making 10k 1 folder, 10k2 and so forth. I am guessing I am missing something really important? Any tips for me?

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

yeah, that’s a good question! I rename every photo to be the year month date our minute second that it was taken. I can’t tell you how important and critical this is and i highly recommend it

[@irenecolgan4449]

Sam you are the best! Thank you for this information. Can you tell me why, when importing, you chose to COPY rather than ADD option? what would be the difference? I had mine set to ADD, so thinking that I may have missed some important options available. Happy New Year!

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

because I want a new copy from my memory cards and into my destination folder. I believe add just imports your images at their currently location. for me, that current location is usually my memory card so that's not helpful after I eject and format the card!

[@KrzysPalacz]

I just use Lightroom to cull and edit photos, when im fine with edits im just exporting and then removing the session from LR Could you xplain how smart previews make postprocess faster? I stopped generating them because I heard that they only help to work on files without having ssd with working-files connected and I did not see any change in speed when I’m not using them

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

they’re about half the size of the full res raw so when you’re working in the develop module you should notice a performance boost both switching between images, and more computationally complex edits

[@user-td2ho7yf5j]

Great video. My photos are stored on an ext. drive in specified folders. How do I integrate them with Lightroom?

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

complex question. my patreon has the answer

[@Thundr4x]

Will definitely do that. I have concern. your RAW file is in your local hard drive, the smart preview has been created but does the preview in LR significantly faster? I mean, when doing smart preview, the RAW should be in external hdd, right? Pls correct me if im wrong, that is my understanding about smart preview

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

doesn't matter where the raw files are, if smart previews are rendered then Lightroom will perform faster - just make sure "use smart preview instead of RAW" is enabled in your Lightroom performance preferences

[@lawaii2024]

Hmmm I don't understand why people don't commit a separate catalogue for each shoot? That way it's also in the same folder as the shoot, and allows for speed. Thoughts?

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

it’s not necessary for speed, and it makes it very difficult to sort and organize archived images later on. as someone that just redid my entire website it was really great to be able to pull up every image i’ve taken in one catalog and sort by stars to easily export at proper resolutions and tweak editing etc.

[@lawaii2024]

@@iamsamhurdphotography I find it so easily accessible to each shoot, to create a new catalog for each and keep the catalog in the same folder as the shoot. Hmmmmm

[@johnyotka6072]

What is the size of the catalog file for an average year and what is the size of your epic catalog, thanks

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

Depends

[@annijoshle-th8kp]

Now since you have double cat (EPIC & 2023), on which one you do the edits? And how you update the other on then, or is ir then outdated?

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

good questions. so, the master catalog (epic) in theory is done with edits because its previous years work, but that’s also the one i have sync’d to lightroom cloud, so i can access those images (and edit) anytime. the current year’s catalog (now 2024) i use and edit separately until the end of the year when ill merge it with Epic. hope that makes sense!

[@davidscottbowlesphoto]

I’m curious when importing new images from other weddings do you put them in folders? Within the catalog?

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

yes! they go to a dated folder that Lightroom creates on import that set up in the destination tab of the import dialog box

[@paulm8157]

Do collections and collection sets span multiple catalogs, or need I set up new ones for the new catalog? Thanks.

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

unless you’re importing from a previous catalog I’m pretty sure you’d have to set up new collections with every new catalog

[@davidscottbowlesphoto]

Cool I’m curious how this works when using Imagen can you select the dates folder within Imagen? Definitely interested in making a singular calendar for this year.

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

yes, you can see the entire directory tree of your lightroom catalog within the imagen app and select from there!

[@davidscottbowlesphoto]

@@iamsamhurdphotography awesome!!! As a new Imagen Ambassador this is great news haha thanks Sam.

[@jamescampbell1862]

Whats the thing on the top.of your macbook?

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

magsafe mount for iphone

[@AdrianNiveau]

New Catalog really recommended for speed?

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

mostly for organizing and optimized cloud backup - i keep a giant catalog with millions of photos for all my previous years work and that gets synced to adobe’s cloud for quick access over lightroom app etx

[@BrianPhoto]

also great for gathering data on your most used lenses of the year!

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

100000%@@BrianPhoto

[@koenpijpersphotography]

3 million photos, i hove 60.000 and i allready think it is a lot.

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

since 2012 or so

[@dandonovan1]

Adobe highly recommends for the vast majority of users to only use 1 catalog. The speed issues have been fixed over the years. kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y4ragZ1nqt2risk

[@iamsamhurdphotography]

that’s great! it would be impossible for me to use literally one catalog as i don’t have enough internal storage to deal with it, but if you don’t shoot 250k images a year then it’s probably a fine idea!! multiple catalogs is a nightmare for all kinds of reasons