Skip to main content

⚠️ Please note that this topic or post has been archived. The information contained here may no longer be accurate or up-to-date. ⚠️

Anyone convert a large Cap 20 Catalog to Cap 21

Comments

5 comments

  • Thomas Schneider

    Hi Brian,

    i have converted very large catalogs (up to 30k files and about 1 TB space) with the release of co21. I had no problem so far (both on Mac or Windows Version).
    Since I always keep the old version of the catalogs I can also always go back if I don't change anything.
    This I have also done in the meantime. There were so many reports about all the problems with the new C21 version that I switched back to the old C20 version. For me the new version has hardly any advantages and it is currently much more pleasant to work with the old one. (my problem is that CO21 is noticeably slower than C021).

    Greetings

    Thomas

    0
  • Phrank

    Hi, so far I have splitted all my libraries per year, but for bigger projects I have to jump in and out and I plan to merge all my old libraries of aperture and lightroom, more than 800.000 images, in one big catalog/library. If 300k images create s 500GB catalog, depending on the size of previews, I’m faceing a more than 1TB catalog:-( Does anybody have experience with this?

    0
  • AndyE

    @Brian

    I converted my CO20 catalog to CO21 without problems (catalog size around 330GB and 70k mostly RAW images all referenced on disk. 

    Before I do a new conversion I always verify my 'old' catalog and make sure there are no mismatches inside the catalog I potentially would not be aware of else. (use the 'verify catalog' function of CO for that)

    I noticed a very steep catalog opening speed improvement and image display afterwards in CO21.

    Anyway to have at least one 1:1 copy of my catalog tucked away safely is a must. As disk space isn't expensive anymore this should alway be wise to do before any migration/upgrade. Actually I do backup to external drives on every night on all my catalogs and sessions and keep 2-3 versions just in case something goes awol on my next CO project. Btw. the backup function within CO could come in handy here as well as it keeps a copy of the catalog database and adjustments just without the previews that bloat out the catalog in size. 

     

    @Phrank

    I currently would wait a bit longer to undertake such a catalog merger into CO21 at least until the next release update is out. 

    I, by myself, have big troubles on importing a catalog into another at the moment. This used to be flawlessly under CO20 but, as others reported too, there are currently problems in doing so. E.g. I tried to import an existing verified and neatly organised catalog (of only 2k images) into an empty one and it resulted in 2/3 of the images getting imported as managed and their edits, keywords and ratings lost completely. CO support is aware of this but didn't come back with a solution to that yet.

    Another recommendation of mine would be to keep the images as 'referenced' outside of CO and not to import them 'into' such a catalog. I wouldn't see any advantage of having a 'managed' catalog other than to bloat it up to a huge size and make it difficult to handle in case of a problem. I always keep my images 'referenced' and that way they are always accessible for other purposes and backup as well. 

    Cheers, 

    Andy

    0
  • AndyE

    additional comment to @Phrank

    I remember than when I migrated my Aperture catalogs to CO I made sure that, before I did those migrations, all my images were referenced and not inside Aperture. Aperture allows to do an export of images from inside to referenced on disk easily, as I remember. Aperture also allows to do a catalog check/verify off its database which would be wise to do too. And it was a good point in time to clean my Aperture library thoroughly before the migration to CO. I'd guess this goes for Lightroom as well but can't tell for sure as I never really used Lightroom much. 

    0
  • Phrank

    @AdndyE 

    thanks for reply. i forgot to say – i hate managed catalogs, so for sure almost all my catalogs, libraries, or whatever they are called are referenced. Only in Apple’s Photos photos are managed… Depending on the preview size some programs create massive databases with quite big previews. That's why i loved Media Pro… Anyway, (now) it's possible in C1 to create previews even in 640px. I’m just looking for a way to organise all my pictures in one big master catalog (with some backups). Beside I will keep a catalog per year.

    0

Post is closed for comments.