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 important parts:
- Lightroom set up (program information)
- Lightroom catalog
- Lightroom picture library
If you wish to transfer Lightroom to a brand new laptop, you might want to transfer all three parts.
Nevertheless, should you’re going to maneuver solely pictures to a much 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 give attention to the right way 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 pictures you import and their respective settings to your Lightroom workflow. The catalog comprises a preview of every photograph, metadata corresponding to key phrases, rankings, develop settings, and galleries group construction.
The catalog helps Lightroom to maintain observe of all of your pictures and their respective settings. You possibly can have a number of catalogs for various initiatives, or you should use only one catalog for all the pieces.
A Lightroom Catalog additionally shops:
- picture previews: they vary from low-resolution JPGs to full-size pictures
- creating data
- metadata (captions, key phrases, and so on.)
- galleries construction
Probably the most vital benefit of a Lightroom Catalog is that every one the edits you do in your pictures are nondestructive. Any change you make to your picture shall be saved as further metadata XMP format, and the unique picture will keep untouched.
Causes for Altering Lightroom Catalog Location
You Run out of Area on Your Onerous Drive
In case your import course of will get caught, the most typical purpose is that the pc has run out of area.
Even should you retailer all of your pictures on a big exterior arduous drive, Lightroom wants loads of area 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 area.
Another choice is to cut back the dimensions 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”
- Scale back preview measurement
You Need to Pace Up Lightroom
Lightroom can get extremely gradual, 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 similar time, SSDs are typically much less cost-effective than spinning HD, and storing giant picture libraries on them is price prohibitive. However operating Lightroom catalog off SSD is a really efficient answer.
You Need to Again up Lightroom Catalog
When you might have just one copy of your catalog, dropping that catalog means dropping your pictures! So it’s all the time a good suggestion to again up your photos.
Lightroom recurrently backs-up catalogs, but it surely does that utilizing the identical location. Shifting your catalog to an exterior drive ensures that your pictures are secure in case your arduous drive dies utterly.
Alternatively, you possibly can routinely tie your Lightroom catalog to a cloud storage location (like Dropbox). Nevertheless, this might entail paying a further month-to-month subscription charge.
Easy methods to Change Lightroom Catalog Location
There are a few steps you might want to comply with to alter the Lightroom Catalog location:
1. Find Lightroom Catalog from Catalog Settings
At first, you need to discover the situation of your catalog.
Easy methods to find Lightroom Catalog:
- From the highest important menu, find the “EDIT” tab (“Lightroom Basic” on Mac) and click on on it
- Choose “Catalog Settings”
- Within the “Basic” 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 Recordsdata
Issues to contemplate:
You may need to make sure you’re additionally copying all of the supporting information when copying a complete catalog.
Supporting information embody Previews File, Sensible Previews file, or the Helper. lrdata catalog. They comprise all of the related data out of your Lightroom Catalog – like settings, previews, and presets.
You need to change the situation of your catalog by copying, not by shifting.
When copying a catalog, you might have the unique one and create a replica within the new location. I believe it’s higher to be secure than sorry: eradicating information from the unique location solely when the method of shifting is profitable ensures you gained’t lose any of your work.
the situation of your Lightroom Catalog (.LRCAT), so that you solely have to repeat it from there to the brand new location.
Easy methods 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 on.)
- Proper-click on them and choose “Copy.”
3. Paste Lightroom Catalog and Supporting Recordsdata to New Location
Easy methods to Paste Lightroom Catalog and Supporting information to New Location:
- After clicking on “Copy,” go to the situation you need to transfer your catalog and information in
- Proper-click and choose “Paste.”
- Wait till the switch is over. It would take a while when you’ve got 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.
Easy methods to open Lightroom Catalog from a brand new location:
- Double-click on the .lrcat file within the new location
5. Discover Lightroom Lacking Folders (Elective)
If you happen to see a query mark subsequent to information within the Folder panel, Lightroom can’t discover sure folders or pictures. On this case, you’ll should search for them manually.
Easy methods 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 routinely map folders to the brand new location
6. Double-Verify the New Catalog Location (Elective)
It could’t harm to verify once more, so comply with the steps you probably did initially when discovering your catalog:
MAC: Lightroom Basic > Catalog Settings > SHOW > Verify the catalog location
PC: Edit > Catalog Settings > SHOW > Verify the catalog location
Ought to I Transfer Lightroom Catalog to Exterior Onerous Drive?
The reply to this query is: it relies upon!
However I might not do it.
Let me clarify.
It’s common 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 just 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 inner SSD.
Shifting the Lightroom catalog to an exterior arduous drive, which is all the time a lot slower than inner, will jeopardize the efficiency of Lightroom. It should run painfully gradual. I do know; I attempted it.
However I’ve another answer, which I take advantage of throughout my journeys.
I create a Short-term Catalog on my laptop computer for each journey and merge it with the grasp catalog once I return residence.
For a devoted tutorial, consult with this text on the right way to merge Lightroom Catalogs.
Change Lightroom Catalog Location | Last Ideas
A Lightroom Catalog is a database file that shops your pictures, metadata, and all of the processing you might have utilized to your pictures.
No matter your causes for shifting your Lightroom catalog, now you might have a step-by-step tutorial that can assist you alongside! As luck would have it, a mislaid Lightroom catalog is a straightforward sufficient factor to alter.
