Splitting lightroom catalogues - Question

[MissionMan]

Does anyone know if when you export to a catalogue, does it delete the current previews/images in your current catalogue or do you have to manually delete them after an export?

Just splitting up some of my old images to keep my performance at a higher level.

[wmphoto]

I might bump this thread as it is something I am looking at doing too.

[MissionMan]

I did it because I didn't get an answer. Couple of things to consider:

1. You can only export a single folder (with or without subfolders). What this means is you can't highlight 20 folders and export them (i.e. you can't highlight 2000, 2001, 2002 etc) so you will have to group folders together if you want to split off a lot of folders. I.e. I wanted to create a catalogue with 2000 to 2005 and I current store my photos by date and year so I grouped my year folders under a folder called 2000-2005 and then exported the 2000-2005

Current


2000

2000-01-01
2000-01-05
etc


2001
2002
2003
2004
2005


Modified before export


New folder called "2000-2005" (export at this level)

2000

2000-01-01
2000-01-05
etc


2001
2002
2003
2004
2005



2. You can export with or without images (using an option called "export negative files". If you have an external drive, you won't need to export with the images as it will maintain the links to the current location so all you do is export the library and leave the images where they are if that's your preference.
3. You will have to delete the folders after exporting to a catalogue. Making sure you backup before doing it. When you delete a folder, it will warn you that its not deleting the images from their current location

[wmphoto]

Hmmmmm. Thanks for that MissionMan. This may be a problem for me as I store my images by name/title and use collections to filter by date. So I could have recent photos in the same folder as older ones and I was hoping to just export the older ones. There is an option to export the collection but that will still leave behind the folder. I might try the export negative files option. Watch this space..........

[MissionMan]

If you select a whole lot of images and then go and create a new folder it will prompt you to move all the images you selected to that folder.

[wmphoto]

OK. Quite simple in the end. Had a collection that was set up to filter all photos from 2010 and prior and these were the ones I wanted to export. Process was:

1. Select the collection and export as catalog (did not select "export negative files" as I wanted the originals to remain within the existing file structure)
2. After export, selected all photos within the collection and selected "remove from catalog" - NOT delete
3. Sit back and think "that was easy"

For me I just wanted to cull the size of my LR Catalog. So by using the above method, all original files remained in their original location but are now spread over 2 catalogs. May not work for everyone depending on what file structure you use, but worked for me.

Edit: should add that old folders that were now showing as empty, I removed from the catalog (again not deleted as they contained files in the newly created catalog) and all other folders now only show the newest files.