Changing this will only cause you hassle down the road. This will cause your photos to go 'missing' in your catalog.īefore importing your photos into Lightroom, figure out a location and folder structure that you can stick to. Not raws in one folder but all my edit info in another one, and that is simply for archival purposes.Because your Lightroom catalog uses the file name and location of your individual photos to create references to them, if you move or edit file names or locations, you break those references. I think this is because my brain has a more old-school way of dealing with organizing files, i like everything I need to be located in the same folder. (I work off my laptop or tablet via previews and save raws to an external) That way when a job is complete, everything is consolidated into one place for that client for as long as I keep the files, and things don't get confusing with a large catalog containing multitudes of clients and shoots. After I finish the edits, I move the lightroom catalog folder, with its edit info, off my laptop hard drive and into the same folder as the RAWS/exports on my external hard drive for archival purposes (and relink the files). **Edit**I have been making individual catalogs per client shoot. What are your reasons, why does it work best for you? I am attempting to figure out if I need to revamp my system, and would like to hear others' methods.

I have reasons for doing it that way, but then got very curious why many of you prefer to work with one main catalog and create collections, and even more curious to hear from those who do it differently. I have always created separate catalogs per client or theme (and then collections within if needed). I recently discovered that most LR users use one catalog for all their photos (or per external HD) and then create collections to separate them by client or theme, etc.

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