moving parts of a catalogue to a new catalogue

[petermarrek]

My LR catalogue has become too large, can I divide it up into 5 new catalogues? what is the best way to accomplish this? Peter

[Tony Jay]

Peter, could you explain the reasoning behind the "too large" issue.
That way one would be better able to guide you.

Regards

Tony Jay

[michael]

My LR catalogue has become too large, can I divide it up into 5 new catalogues? what is the best way to accomplish this? Peter

Select the files that you want to move to the first new catalogue, and then choose File / Export as Catalog. Name it, and where it will go, as well as how to handle the files.

When it's done hen deselect the first selection and do the same thing again each time.

Don't forget to make back-ups. Drives are cheap, lost files are painful.

Michael

[jjj]

My LR catalogue has become too large, can I divide it up into 5 new catalogues?

The issue with doing this is that the major organisational benefits and strengths of LR's database nature are then lost.
Say you have a smart collection that gathers all photos of your family that you've taken over last 50 years, then unless they are all in a single catalogue, then they'll not appear in the smart collection unless they are in that particular catalogue

[Tony Jay]

My LR catalogue has become too large, can I divide it up into 5 new catalogues? what is the best way to accomplish this?
Peter

I was hoping the OP would chip in with his reasoning - nothing so far.

Tony Jay

[Rendezvous]

My catalogue has just under 80,000 images in it. When scrolling through the library view it stutters every now and then while it thinks about what to replace the grey squares with. I have considered separating out into multiple catalogues, but like said above, you lose all the cool stuff like smart collections, as there are pictures in different places. How do others deal with this slowing down when the catalogue becomes large?

[jjj]

People have catalogues that are way bigger with no issues. And other people have slowing down issues with catalogues that are not big.

Also more relevantly, have you built all previews for images? I just had a scroll through a big collection of images [1089 photos] and as you mentioned I had stuttering as LR filled the grey squares. Looked at another large collection [1009 shots] with no problem at all. I then went back to the previous collection and this time there was no stuttering as LR had now built previews for shots in that collection.

[Rendezvous]

Well I thought I had all the previews built, but maybe I'll go back and force Lightroom to build them.