Adobe Lightroom query

[Kalimna]

Greetings folks,
A bit random, but does anyone have some experience with Lightroom? I have a collection of around 31000 images managed in a single catalogue, and it;s a bit slow. It is also a PITA to keep on top of backing up 220Gb data every so often across my laptop and 2 backups. I would therefore like to split up my catalogue into several smaller ones, just opening up certain ones when I want to look up certain images.
Is this possible? Is it easy to do? If so, how do I do it?

Cheers,
Adam

 

[tekno.mage]

Hi Adam,

I've not done this myself for ages (not since upgrading a version and wanting a backup before upgrade as it were) but as I recall all you have to do is open lightroom, create a new catalogue (Menu File, option New Catalogue) and then import the images you want into the new catalogue, and choose whichever catalogue (menu File, option Open Catalogue) you want when you open the package. Intriguingly, there is also the "Export as catalogue" option on the File menu - which implies you could select a group of images from your existing catalogue and export them as a new catalogue. This wouldn't be my favoured option, though, as it may be quicker to just create a set of new catalogues and import your images in the relevant catalogues directly.

 

[Kalimna]

Kim - many thanks for the suggestion. It is LR4 that I have, and a brief attempt at doing an export to catalogue didn't seem to have the desired effect. I shall, however, try doing as you suggest.

Cheers,
Adam