Lightroom is to photo processing as Microsoft Word is to word processing. You use MS Word to read or edit a word document. It doesn’t store your document files inside Word—it stores your documents in a folder you select. You can take a document file and open it on a different computer that has the same version of MS Word installed.
Applying this Concept to Lightroom
Here’s how the “concept” of Word and Lightroom are similar. Simply put, Lightroom is a photo processor and image organizer program. It allows the viewing, organizing and retouching of a large number of digital images. It does not store your photos inside the program. I need to repeat that again. It does not store your photos inside the program. Your photos are stored on your hard drive in a folder you selected—either using Lightroom to import them or your operating system’s file management. Just like Word, you can use Lightroom on another computer as long as you have the files you need—a catalog and the images.
What is a Lightroom Catalog?
A Lightroom catalog is a database that stores a record for your photos that contains three key pieces of information about each photo:
- A reference to where the photo is on your system
- Instructions for how you want to process the photo
- Metadata, such as ratings and keywords that you apply to photos to help you find or organize them
Lightroom Catalogs have a .lrcat extension and can be stored anywhere on your hard drive or even an external hard drive.
Where should I store my Lightroom Catalog?
Single computer: create a folder on your fastest local hard drive, name it Lightroom Catalog and save the catalog to this location. This is the fastest way Lightroom can access the catalog.
Multiple computers: create a folder on an external hard drive, name it Lightroom Catalog and save the catalog to this location. This setup trades speed for portability—allowing access to any computer connected to the hard drive.
Once you wrap your head around the concept that Lightroom doesn’t store your actual images inside the program, you won’t make the mistake of deleting or misfiling your images.
Thanks for the post, Robert.
My image library has grown to be significant in size and I need to move files off my laptop. Is this a reasonable approach:
(1) Lightroom Catalog stored on laptop drive.
(2) More recent images that would be the subject of more frequent processing / manipulation stored on laptop drive.
(3) Older images infrequently accessed, manipulated stored on a Windows server on a network and accessed by laptop over wireless connection.
(4) Image files moved between laptop and Windows server using Lightroom.
(5) Both Windows server and laptop are frequently backed-up.
Thanks!
Here’s what I do, see if it works for you.
I have an internal SSD to store just my operating system, program files and Lightroom catalog.
External drives store my photos in a folder that begins with photography.
You can move all photos to your external drive, just keep the same folder structure. Lightroom will inform you it can’t find the photos anymore. Solution, point Lightroom to the new external drive and since the folder structure is the same, it will find them. Let me know if you need more detail on it
Thanks, Robert. Along the lines of what I was thinking. Today’s was helpful, too.