If you wish to change Lightroom Catalog location, you will need to make sure you’re not lacking out on any important steps.
Let’s begin from the start. Lightroom has three most important elements:
- Lightroom set up (program information)
- Lightroom catalog
- Lightroom picture library
If you wish to transfer Lightroom to a brand new pc, it’s good to transfer all three elements.
Nonetheless, should you’re going to maneuver solely images to an even bigger arduous drive, you need to transfer one part – the picture library.
I’ve devoted tutorials for each situations (see under)
On this article, we’re going to concentrate on find out how to transfer Lightroom Catalog to a brand new location!
What’s Lightroom Catalog?
A Lightroom catalog is a database that shops all of the details about photos you import and their respective settings on your Lightroom workflow. The catalog incorporates a preview of every photograph, metadata reminiscent of key phrases, rankings, develop settings, and galleries group construction.
The catalog helps Lightroom to maintain observe of all of your images and their respective settings. You’ll be able to have a number of catalogs for various tasks, or you should use only one catalog for all the things.
A Lightroom Catalog additionally shops:
- picture previews: they vary from low-resolution JPGs to full-size photos
- growing data
- metadata (captions, key phrases, and so forth.)
- galleries construction
Probably the most vital benefit of a Lightroom Catalog is that every one the edits you do in your images are nondestructive. Any change you make to your picture will probably be saved as extra metadata XMP format, and the unique picture will keep untouched.
Causes for Altering Lightroom Catalog Location
You Run out of Area on Your Arduous Drive
In case your import course of will get caught, the commonest purpose is that the pc has run out of house.
Even should you retailer all of your photos on a big exterior arduous drive, Lightroom wants loads of house subsequent to the catalog to retailer JPEG previews for every picture you import.
In case your arduous drive the place you retain the Lightroom catalog is getting full, it’s a good purpose to maneuver the catalog to a brand new location with a ton of house.
An alternative choice is to cut back the scale of preview information Lightroom generates on import. However it is just a brief answer.
- Go to Edit within the higher toolbar
- Choose “Catalog Settings”
- Choose “File Dealing with”
- Cut back preview measurement
You Need to Pace Up Lightroom
Lightroom can get extremely sluggish, particularly when coping with a big picture library. However there are methods of creating the app extra responsive: you possibly can transfer your catalog to an SSD drive to hurry up Lightroom.
Lightroom catalog runs a lot quicker on SSDs than on HDDs.
On the identical time, SSDs are typically much less cost-effective than spinning HD, and storing giant picture libraries on them is value prohibitive. However operating Lightroom catalog off SSD is a really efficient answer.
You Need to Again up Lightroom Catalog
When you’ve got just one copy of your catalog, shedding that catalog means shedding your photos! So it’s all the time a good suggestion to again up your footage.
Lightroom usually backs-up catalogs, however it does that utilizing the identical location. Transferring your catalog to an exterior drive ensures that your images are protected in case your arduous drive dies fully.
Alternatively, you possibly can mechanically tie your Lightroom catalog to a cloud storage location (like Dropbox). Nonetheless, this is able to entail paying an extra month-to-month subscription charge.
Find out how to Change Lightroom Catalog Location
There are a few steps it’s good to observe to alter the Lightroom Catalog location:
1. Find Lightroom Catalog from Catalog Settings
At first, you need to discover the situation of your catalog.
Find out how to find Lightroom Catalog:
- From the highest most important menu, find the “EDIT” tab (“Lightroom Traditional” on Mac) and click on on it
- Choose “Catalog Settings”
- Within the “Normal” panel, click on “SHOW.”
- Explorer/Finder will open the catalog file location – you possibly can acknowledge it by the .lrcat file extension
2. Copy Lightroom Catalog and All Supporting Information
Issues to think about:
You would possibly wish to make sure you’re additionally copying all of the supporting information when copying a whole catalog.
Supporting information embrace Previews File, Good Previews file, or the Helper. lrdata catalog. They include all of the related data out of your Lightroom Catalog – like settings, previews, and presets.
It’s best to change the situation of your catalog by copying, not by transferring.
When copying a catalog, you’ve got the unique one and create a replica within the new location. I believe it’s higher to be protected than sorry: eradicating information from the unique location solely when the method of transferring is profitable ensures you gained’t lose any of your work.
You already know the situation of your Lightroom Catalog (.LRCAT), so that you solely have to repeat it from there to the brand new location.
Find out how to copy and paste Lightroom Catalog:
- Spotlight all of the information contained in the Lightroom catalog folder (search for the lrcat file extension: catalog.lrcat, catalog.lrcat-data, Previews.lrdata, Helper.lrdata, and so forth.)
- Proper-click on them and choose “Copy.”
3. Paste Lightroom Catalog and Supporting Information to New Location
Find out how to Paste Lightroom Catalog and Supporting information to New Location:
- After clicking on “Copy,” go to the situation you wish to transfer your catalog and information in
- Proper-click and choose “Paste.”
- Wait till the switch is over. It’d take a while in case you have giant photograph library.
4. Open Lightroom Catalog from New Location
It’s time to verify in case your catalog was copied efficiently by opening it from the brand new location.
Find out how to open Lightroom Catalog from a brand new location:
- Double-click on the .lrcat file within the new location
5. Discover Lightroom Lacking Folders (Non-compulsory)
When you see a query mark subsequent to information within the Folder panel, Lightroom can’t discover sure folders or images. On this case, you’ll must search for them manually.
Find out how to discover lacking folders:
- Within the Folders panel, right-click on the lacking folder (search for the query mark)
- From the dropdown menu, go to “Discover Lacking Folder.”
- Re-link the lacking folder by going to the brand new location – Lightroom will mechanically map folders to the brand new location
6. Double-Test the New Catalog Location (Non-compulsory)
It may’t damage to verify once more, so observe the steps you probably did at first when discovering your catalog:
MAC: Lightroom Traditional > Catalog Settings > SHOW > Test the catalog location
PC: Edit > Catalog Settings > SHOW > Test the catalog location
Ought to I Transfer Lightroom Catalog to Exterior Arduous Drive?
The reply to this query is: it relies upon!
However I’d not do it.
Let me clarify.
It is not uncommon for touring photographers to maneuver the Lightroom catalog to an exterior arduous drive to allow them to run Lightroom from desktop computer systems at residence and from laptops when touring.
Sadly, this course of slows down Lightroom considerably.
Lightroom isn’t well-known for being a quick utility. And the simplest approach to enhance its efficiency is to run the Lightroom catalog from the quickest drive, ideally from an inside SSD.
Transferring the Lightroom catalog to an exterior arduous drive, which is all the time a lot slower than inside, will jeopardize the efficiency of Lightroom. It’s going to run painfully sluggish. I do know; I attempted it.
However I’ve another answer, which I take advantage of throughout my journeys.
I create a Non permanent Catalog on my laptop computer for each journey and merge it with the grasp catalog after I return residence.
For a devoted tutorial, discuss with this text on find out how to merge Lightroom Catalogs.
Change Lightroom Catalog Location | Remaining Ideas
A Lightroom Catalog is a database file that shops your images, metadata, and all of the processing you’ve got utilized to your images.
No matter your causes for transferring your Lightroom catalog, now you’ve got a step-by-step tutorial that will help you alongside! As luck would have it, a mislaid Lightroom catalog is a straightforward sufficient factor to alter.