It’s been about two years since we covered this topic, and it’s still one of those “most asked” Lightroom Classic questions, so I wanted to cover it here again today.
Getting all your catalogs combined into just one catalog can make your Lightroom life soooooooo much easier and faster. Imagine, having all your images (all of them!) in just one single catalog. It’s something I’ve been preaching for years and people who make the jump to just using one catalog swear by the results.
Anyway, combining your catalogs is easy, but I often have people ask this question:
“Which catalog do I use as my main catalog — the one I’ll import all the other ones into?”
My follow-up question is usually, “I’d pick whichever catalog is in the best shape, or the one you find yourself using the most.”
The most frequent response? “Well, that would be ‘none of them. They’re all messed up!”
If that sounds like you, might want to simply start with a fresh catalog
Then, add all your existing catalogs into this nice fresh catalog. Here’s how to do both:
STEP ONE: To start with a fresh new empty catalog; go under the File menu and choose New Catalog (as shown here).
STEP TWO: Go under the File menu again, but this time choose “Import from Another Catalog.” Now go find your other Lightroom catalogs and one by one, add them to this catalog using that “Import from Another Catalog” command.
STEP THREE: Each time you choose a catalog, it brings up a window asking if you want all that stuff from that catalog imported (all your collections and such), and if for some reason you don’t, uncheck any checkboxes next to collections you don’t want to be imported (this list is worth looking at for a sec – this is an excellent time to do some housekeeping and not import Collections you just don’t care about having in Lightroom any longer). If you turn on the “Show Preview” checkbox (as I have here) and you click on any collection, it will show you thumbnails of what’s inside that collection (as seen here).
That’s all there is to it. In just a few minutes (less time than you’d think), all your catalogs are combined into one single catalog, and your Lightroom world just got a whole lot easier, faster, and more organized. It’s a big step and one totally worth taking. 🙂
Hope you find that helpful.
-Scott
P.S. We’re just about two weeks from ‘The Landscape Conference.” It’s going to be awesome, and you don’t want to miss it. Details and tickets at this link. It’s going to be (wait for it…wait for it…) epic! 🙂
Hi Scott,
I did one of your online LR editing classes many years ago so i can edit, but organize? not so much. I believe your directions and will follow them for combining 8 or 9 catalogs into one. These catalogs are on various disc drives and they will be combined to one disc drive. Question?? How do I keep the catalog knowing where the images are?
Hope I’m not too late to this thread.
Very interesting! I have a doubt. If two or more of my catalogs have collections with the exact same name, will the collections be merged into one? Thank you!
Hi Jenny,
I don’t think so.
I don’t start new catalogs so once I put them all in one how can I keep LR from starting another one?
Hi Debbie, LrC will not create a new catalog without your initiating the process.
But how will importing several messy catalogs into one fresh, new, clean catalog help? Won’t it just make for 1 even bigger, messier catalog than before?
Unfortunately I have over 500 catalogues to combine. Doing that one by one, will take me several days. Is there any way to merge all those catalogues in one step, or to automize this process?
Sorry, but no, there is not. 🙁
“all your collections are combined into one single collection”
I think you meant all your catalogs are combined into one single catalog.
I combined my catalogs into one following your instructions a couple of years ago, and it was easy to do, thank you.
Thank you for catching that, Lisa. I just went and fixed it. That’s what happens when I do posts late at night. LOL!! Thanks again – much appreciated. 🙂