Yup! totally agree! I do the the same thing! Placed my catalog long ago on my external hard drive! Great post! This channel is so underrated!!!! By the way, I am the guy from NYC that you sent the DM a couple of weeks ago! ;) cheers!
Great video! Do you have a video or tutorial for moving Lightroom catalogs that were already on your computers hard drive over to an external hard drive?
Great Question... I haven't had to do this before... I would say you could just save the folders from the computers Harddrive to your external, but they may not line up when you open in lightroom ... I would have to test this before making a video, but its good point, cheers for your input
This is tier 1 advice; THANK YOU. Stumbled onto this video while researching how to migrate a LR Catalog to MAC. Please consider making a video like if possible.
I'm curious how this would affect performance. I've noticed it is usually not the catalogue itself but the preview files that are generated and stored in the same folder that grow really big, especially if you have generated a lot of 1:1 and smart previews. Even with fast connections like USB 3.1 or Thunderbolt, external drives often aren’t as fast the internal SSD in modern laptops. Perhaps it doesn't matter because it's not a lot of data getting transferred (especially if you've ticked that box in settings to use smart previews in the develop mode instead of the originals). What is your experience, if you store both the catalogue and the previews/cache on the external drive, have you noticed slower performance?
@@JurriaanTeulings it’s more that your computer will eventually slow down once it gets over half full, the computers HDs are probably faster, but if you shoot a lot of photos then the computers HD will just get overloaded which slows down performance
Yew! cheers for the comment, yeah you really need to be saving these Lightroom Catalogs somewhere different to the default, worked so much better for me when I switched
Your presets will remain, they are tied to the lightroom software and NOT the catalogue ... great question thou, and something I should have mentioned in the video, so thanks for bringing it up in the comments
Hey mate, thanks for your message... No I have never done that....I just feel each edit is unique to that particular session, so I can't see how presets can help that much, but if they can truely help someone progress as a photographer then I would be open to making them for people... have you found other photographers presets helpful in the past? it would good to know?
This was great! So easy to follow, thank you. I do have a question, I'm new at this so I just want to double check... I shouldn't unplug the external hard drive until I'm done working on all my photos on LR so everything saves there, correct? Like even if it takes me days? Or can I unplug it and just plug it back in when I'm ready to save? I'm working on my laptop. Can anyone tell me?
Thanks for your feedback on the video. Yes so obviously when you are working on your photos you need to have your external HD plugged in. But you can unplug it and plugged it back in later and then continue to edit them or save as jpgs... does this answer your question?
The limitation of creating a new catalog for each photos drive is that you cannot perform a global search, by keyword for example, in all your external disks, but you can only search on current disk.
Yup! totally agree! I do the the same thing! Placed my catalog long ago on my external hard drive! Great post! This channel is so underrated!!!! By the way, I am the guy from NYC that you sent the DM a couple of weeks ago! ;) cheers!
Yew!! thanks ledge stoked to have you on here... really appreciate your kind words and encouragement
Brilliant... First time I have ever seen such a great explanation. Thank you Tom
epic Jason, glad it helped and thanks so much for the feedback
Great video! Do you have a video or tutorial for moving Lightroom catalogs that were already on your computers hard drive over to an external hard drive?
Great Question... I haven't had to do this before... I would say you could just save the folders from the computers Harddrive to your external, but they may not line up when you open in lightroom ... I would have to test this before making a video, but its good point, cheers for your input
Legend indeed! This is exactly what i was looking for, no fluff just concise information. Good stuff! Thank you.
Awesome to hear! appreciate you letting me know
This is tier 1 advice; THANK YOU. Stumbled onto this video while researching how to migrate a LR Catalog to MAC. Please consider making a video like if possible.
Awesome !! Glad to hear, I will get on to a video on the migrating, thanks for the idea🙏🏽
I'm curious how this would affect performance. I've noticed it is usually not the catalogue itself but the preview files that are generated and stored in the same folder that grow really big, especially if you have generated a lot of 1:1 and smart previews. Even with fast connections like USB 3.1 or Thunderbolt, external drives often aren’t as fast the internal SSD in modern laptops. Perhaps it doesn't matter because it's not a lot of data getting transferred (especially if you've ticked that box in settings to use smart previews in the develop mode instead of the originals). What is your experience, if you store both the catalogue and the previews/cache on the external drive, have you noticed slower performance?
@@JurriaanTeulings it’s more that your computer will eventually slow down once it gets over half full, the computers HDs are probably faster, but if you shoot a lot of photos then the computers HD will just get overloaded which slows down performance
Great video! This is going to be super helpful for those large folders with tons of edited photos
Yew! cheers for the comment, yeah you really need to be saving these Lightroom Catalogs somewhere different to the default, worked so much better for me when I switched
will you need to import your presets in each new Cat or will they be in lightroom still with the new Cat?
Your presets will remain, they are tied to the lightroom software and NOT the catalogue ... great question thou, and something I should have mentioned in the video, so thanks for bringing it up in the comments
Thanks for sharing this. Really well explained. and very usefull.
Thanks for your comment, great to know it helped, its so important to get this catalog system right as soon as you can
Hi Tom! Legend Do you sell any surf presets?
Hey mate, thanks for your message... No I have never done that....I just feel each edit is unique to that particular session, so I can't see how presets can help that much, but if they can truely help someone progress as a photographer then I would be open to making them for people... have you found other photographers presets helpful in the past? it would good to know?
Brilliant. This is going to save me so much grief. Thanks Tom
Awesome Brett, yeah its just a little shift that can make a huge difference... especially if you DON'T do it hey? cheers mate
This was great! So easy to follow, thank you. I do have a question, I'm new at this so I just want to double check... I shouldn't unplug the external hard drive until I'm done working on all my photos on LR so everything saves there, correct? Like even if it takes me days? Or can I unplug it and just plug it back in when I'm ready to save? I'm working on my laptop. Can anyone tell me?
Thanks for your feedback on the video. Yes so obviously when you are working on your photos you need to have your external HD plugged in. But you can unplug it and plugged it back in later and then continue to edit them or save as jpgs... does this answer your question?
Super handy video this right here
Thanks so much Luke... appreciate this feedback mate
Whenever external hard drive fills up, I should make new catalog for new external drive?
Yes!! that is correct. Every new hard drive you will need to create a new catalog... and if you forget how to do it, just reference this video
The limitation of creating a new catalog for each photos drive is that you cannot perform a global search, by keyword for example, in all your external disks, but you can only search on current disk.