Creating Multiple Catalogs in Lightroom 3.

Lightroom 3 can easily handle the photo collections of casual Photographers, it's when your collections start climbing into the tens of thousands of photos you might want to consider separate catalogs instead of having 60 or 70,000 images load every time you open Lightroom.

For instance you might want to keep all your Vacation photos in one catalog and not have them load every time. These vacation photos will be in a separate Catalog and you have to tell Lightroom to open it.

Go under Lightroom's FILE MENU > choose NEW CATALOG which will opens the New Catalog dialog box.

After choosing your new catalogs name tell Lightroom where to store the new catalog. Hopefully you read my lens on how to set Lightroom up from the beginning.

If you haven't please read it now because it will you save you time and aggravation in the future.

http://www.squidoo.com/photoshop-lightroom-photography

WHEN YOU CLICK THE CREATE BUTTON:

* a BACK UP CATALOG DIALOG box will open - if you haven't backed up your catalog in a while I suggest you do it now otherwise skip this step

* Lightroom will close and automatically relaunches with your new EMPTY catalog.

From this point on it should be familiar territory to you, create your collections, add some keywords, rate your photos etc.

When you are ready to return to your main catalog Lightroom makes it an easy process:

* go to FILE MENU > choose OPEN RECENT, pick your original catalog and click RELAUNCH.

Lightroom will quit and re-launch will your chosen catalog.

If you know how to do it Lightroom 3 will open with any catalog you choose.

Just hold OPTION (Pc: ALT) key when you launch Lightroom. This will open a dialog with all your catalogs.

Click on the catalog of choice > click the OPEN button.

You can also choose your default startup catalog (green circle).

If you don't see your catalog within this dialog box that means you didn't read my Lens on how to set up Lightroom the right way, shame, shame,shame. If this is the case click the CHOOSE A DIFFERENT CATALOG button (orange circle) and you will be able to see all your files and you should be able to locate it there.

If you get a brilliant idea for a new catalog you can create it from within this dialog by clicking on CREATE A NEW CATALOG.