Lightroom and efficient editing! HELP!

[DFaltPhoto]

Hey guys,

I need help!

I use Lightroom to batch edit photos. Im running a year old 5k Mac Desktop with a 1 tb hard drive and it's pretty much maxed out. I do however store all of my raw images and my Lightroom Catalog on my 4TB Seagate external hard drive because I shoot so much my computer would otherwise fill up. My Lightroom seems to bog down when editing.. When I batch edit a group of photos or do to much stuff at once Lightroom will slow down and make things take much longer. Is this because my catalog and photos are on my external drive? Does anyone use Lightroom and has ever had issues similar to this?

 

[KmH]

How many image files in the batch, what type of edits, and what type files were they?

Batch editing, with any application, can take a while to edit the entire batch.
Edits are done using math.
Some types of edits are done with 16-bit tools, some with just 8-bit tools. It takes way more number crunching to render 16-bit depth edits than it does 8-bit edits.

For some of my astro photo or video processing I start the batch processing when I go to bed, because I know it will take 5 or 6 hours to process all the photos.
For a 2.5 minute video: Foolin' Around

Rendering the video is batch processing a boatload of still images. It took my computer 5 hours to render the 3672 still frames into an edited video.

 

[Derrel]

How many images in the current Lightroom catalog? I think 50,000 is a good number to max out at. I would also clear off some space on the main hard drive, which seems to vastly improve my Mac's LR performance. Catalog on an external drive does not sound optimal to me, but your description of the main, internal drive at pretty much "maxed out" mirrors my experience with LR slowness.

 

[JonA_CT]

I'm not sure if it applies here, but files I'm actively working on stays on the onboard SSD, and I use my external disks for long-term storage. I've found everything runs much faster that way for me.

 

[DFaltPhoto]

How many image files in the batch, what type of edits, and what type files were they?

Batch editing, with any application, can take a while to edit the entire batch.
Edits are done using math.
Some types of edits are done with 16-bit tools, some with just 8-bit tools. It takes way more number crunching to render 16-bit depth edits than it does 8-bit edits.

For some of my astro photo or video processing I start the batch processing when I go to bed, because I know it will take 5 or 6 hours to process all the photos.
For a 2.5 minute video: Foolin' Around

Rendering the video is batch processing a boatload of still images. It took my computer 5 hours to render the 3672 still frames into an edited video.

There were about 300 large raw image files out of 500 that I selected to edit from this shoot. I shoot with a Canon 1DX so the files are around 20MB each. So I'm not dealing with nearly as many images at a time. I just see it slowing down to the point that its indefinitely impacting my workflow efficiency.

 

[DFaltPhoto]

How many images in the current Lightroom catalog? I think 50,000 is a good number to max out at. I would also clear off some space on the main hard drive, which seems to vastly improve my Mac's LR performance. Catalog on an external drive does not sound optimal to me, but your description of the main, internal drive at pretty much "maxed out" mirrors my experience with LR slowness.

Funny you say this because my catalog is almost at 47,000 images. My main hard drive is nearly empty as I like to keep it as free as possible. I have 1tb of flash storage and 923 gb of available space. When I say maxed out I meant to say my computer has every option they offered at the time. Im going to create a new catalog for 2017 as my last catalog was for 2016. Hopefully I will notice a difference!

 

[KmH]

Scroll down to:
How many photos can I have in a catalog?

In the Optimization link the entire article is what you neeed but specificly for catalogs see:
Optimize the catalog

Lightroom Catalogs Explained
See:
3) What Are the Shortcoming of a Catalog-Based System?
But note that other image image database management applications, unlike Lr, can search multiple catalogs.

 

[Dave442]

I would keep the Catalog on the internal hard drive and the image files on the external. I found that worked best for me. LR has become much better at having a very large number of photos in the Catalog so the 50k should not be a problem.

 

[DFaltPhoto]

I would keep the Catalog on the internal hard drive and the image files on the external. I found that worked best for me. LR has become much better at having a very large number of photos in the Catalog so the 50k should not be a problem.

The main issue I have with that is when I want to travel I will no longer have access on my laptop to the images I edit on my desktop. This is why I keep my catalog on my external. Do you by any chance know of a solution to this?

 

[table1349]

 

[astroNikon]

I don't use Cloud Storage nor do I have CC. I use the stand alone products.

I do processing on my laptop,
and also my desktop which has an external 5TB disk which I store the images and main catalog on.

I can access the catalog when I use my laptop connected to the external drive.
but I mostly will export a segment to a USB and then use the desktop to import into the existing catalog.

You'll have to practice it a few times to do it the way you want to but it works pretty good.

I've also broke apart my catalog. I used to have one BIG catalog. But in order to keep them smaller I broke it into main themes: Aircraft, Space/Sky, Sports, Events/portraits etc., and General (plants, buildings, etc).

 

[Dave442]

I would keep the Catalog on the internal hard drive and the image files on the external. I found that worked best for me. LR has become much better at having a very large number of photos in the Catalog so the 50k should not be a problem.

The main issue I have with that is when I want to travel I will no longer have access on my laptop to the images I edit on my desktop. This is why I keep my catalog on my external. Do you by any chance know of a solution to this?

There is not a good solution that I know of. The below steps 1-6 cover my general steps for new images while traveling and step 7 is when I need to edit existing images while traveling.

1) I have a Travel Catalog that is a template of my main catalog (just remove the Smart Collections from the Travel Catalog so they are not duplicated when you import this Travel Catalog back into the main Catalog).
2) In addition to the Travel Catalog I have my Presets installed on my laptop.
3) The Travel Catalog is set up with the same folder structure as the main Catalog: yyyy/yyyy-mm-dd.
4) I use LightRoom to Import my photos from my memory card and at that time they are renamed with the yyyymmdd_{filename} structure. I do this so if LightRoom ever asks me where a file is the first part of the filename tells me where it is. After doing the folder and file naming in this way I have never had a problem with telling LightRoom where to find an image file when it gives that "?" in the Library Module.
5) When I return I copy the files from the Travel hard drive to the main system hard drive (best to also have a backup drive along while traveling and keep in different bags). My Travel hard drive has the same images as the main system hard drive, but just the current year photos.
6) Then I Import the Travel Catalog into the main Catalog. If you have the Travel Catalog in the same folder as the images then LR knows were the images are now located (I now have them on a different drive, but same folder structure).

7) Sometimes I need to work on a set of photos while travelling so I will make a Collection and export that as a Catalog and work on those images and then import that catalog back into the main catalog. For example, I made a Collection called July and put all my images from July in it and edited those while on vacation and when I came back imported those into the main catalog where only the changed images where imported with a virtual copy made of the original and then I deleted the July Collection. I don't Export the Negative Files or Smart Previews as I will have the image files on the Travel hard drive, so you can export a large number of images although I try to keep it reasonable as to what I am going to work on.

 

[DFaltPhoto]

I don't use Cloud Storage nor do I have CC. I use the stand alone products.

I do processing on my laptop,
and also my desktop which has an external 5TB disk which I store the images and main catalog on.

I can access the catalog when I use my laptop connected to the external drive.
but I mostly will export a segment to a USB and then use the desktop to import into the existing catalog.

You'll have to practice it a few times to do it the way you want to but it works pretty good.

I've also broke apart my catalog. I used to have one BIG catalog. But in order to keep them smaller I broke it into main themes: Aircraft, Space/Sky, Sports, Events/portraits etc., and General (plants, buildings, etc).

Sounds good. Is your external hard drive portable? Or does it have to be plugged in to work?

 

[DFaltPhoto]

I would keep the Catalog on the internal hard drive and the image files on the external. I found that worked best for me. LR has become much better at having a very large number of photos in the Catalog so the 50k should not be a problem.

The main issue I have with that is when I want to travel I will no longer have access on my laptop to the images I edit on my desktop. This is why I keep my catalog on my external. Do you by any chance know of a solution to this?

There is not a good solution that I know of. The below steps 1-6 cover my general steps for new images while traveling and step 7 is when I need to edit existing images while traveling.

1) I have a Travel Catalog that is a template of my main catalog (just remove the Smart Collections from the Travel Catalog so they are not duplicated when you import this Travel Catalog back into the main Catalog).
2) In addition to the Travel Catalog I have my Presets installed on my laptop.
3) The Travel Catalog is set up with the same folder structure as the main Catalog: yyyy/yyyy-mm-dd.
4) I use LightRoom to Import my photos from my memory card and at that time they are renamed with the yyyymmdd_{filename} structure. I do this so if LightRoom ever asks me where a file is the first part of the filename tells me where it is. After doing the folder and file naming in this way I have never had a problem with telling LightRoom where to find an image file when it gives that "?" in the Library Module.
5) When I return I copy the files from the Travel hard drive to the main system hard drive (best to also have a backup drive along while traveling and keep in different bags). My Travel hard drive has the same images as the main system hard drive, but just the current year photos.
6) Then I Import the Travel Catalog into the main Catalog. If you have the Travel Catalog in the same folder as the images then LR knows were the images are now located (I now have them on a different drive, but same folder structure).

7) Sometimes I need to work on a set of photos while travelling so I will make a Collection and export that as a Catalog and work on those images and then import that catalog back into the main catalog. For example, I made a Collection called July and put all my images from July in it and edited those while on vacation and when I came back imported those into the main catalog where only the changed images where imported with a virtual copy made of the original and then I deleted the July Collection. I don't Export the Negative Files or Smart Previews as I will have the image files on the Travel hard drive, so you can export a large number of images although I try to keep it reasonable as to what I am going to work on.

This sounds good. Thanks for this response!

 

[astroNikon]

The 5TB has it's own wall power plug.

You can get smaller USB powered devices but I also wanted a fast drive (7200rpm vs 5400) and not be power restricted. It sits behind the monitor out of the way anyways. I have a 2TB 3-1/2" USB powered drive for portability. But If I use my laptop for processing I just do it on the internal HD.

I have another network disk device that is network cabled to the network which I can access but I only use that for general backup and "cloud" stuff. I could use it for Lightroom and I think I did as a test a long time ago, but it was slower.