Lightroom 2.4 question

[joe_burns1]

<p>Any opinions as to what should be the maximum size of a LR catalog? Haven't noticed any performance problems but my single catalog is getting pretty large and I am think of breaking it down into smaller chunks and/or starting a new catalog.<br>

Joe burns</p>

[michael_elenko]

<p>Joe,<br>

How large is large? And why would you do this?</p>

<p>ME</p>

[digitaldog]

<p>From those "in the know" inside of Adobe I've asked, unless you're in the 100,000+ image size of a database, you're AOK. Stick with one catalog whenever possible (because if you don't, the image you're looking for is likely in "the other" catalog". </p>

<p>If such a time LR can open multiple catalogs at once (don't hold your breath), this would be a different story. </p>

[garrison_k.]

<p>100K isn't much in the grand scheme of things.</p>

<p>I make a catalog for every genre and don't find it a hassle in the least. I do it for speed. I do it so clients viewing their shots, are only seeing other shots in the same genre. Fashion clients see other fashion shots and not my..."hummingbird on the porch" shots. I do multi-catalogs because data bases corrupt and I'd rather have one small catalog out of my four catalogs go down than the whole house of cards go in one single catalog. I do it because other photographers that shoot a lot, do this as well. I do it because it is quicker to back up a smaller relevant catalog, then to repeatedly keep backing up 80,000 images I haven't seen for two years in the larger catalog.</p>

<p>For me, multi-catalogs makes more sense for my time and security.</p>

<p> </p>

[leighmcmullen]

<p>from a technical perspective, modern databases scale nonlinerally. Meaning, (for example) a database might have to double before you experience a 1% degradation in performance. so the differene between having 50K images in your LR databse or haveing 75% is not 50% of performance, but could be as low as .5% (following the above example ratio)</p>