Hi, it's Sabine from the Pangolin team in Botswana.
A question we get asked frequently is how do we manage our
Lightroom catalog when traveling?
And since I've just returned from two amazing back to back photo safaris in
the beautiful Masai Mara in Kenya, I thought I will show you my workflow of
setting up a new catalog each time I travel, and then show you how I integrate
this travel catalog complete with all keywords and edits into my main catalog
once I return home.
Most people have one Lightroom catalog that contains all images, and
typically that catalog is stored on the computer's hard drive at home.
When traveling, however, we use a laptop and external hard drives to
store, back-up and view our images.
For some, it might be sufficient to copy and back-up pictures from
the memory card, but if you are someone like me that likes to
import all images straight away into Lightroom...to go through and cull,
rate, keyword, or even edit a few already, you would want to create a new
catalog just for that specific trip.
And the way to do it is to open Lightroom and go to file new catalog.
Give it a name that refers to your trip, and choose the location where
the catalog file should be stored.
I personally like to keep my travel catalog together with all images from the
trip on my external and fast SSD drive.
So that is the location I choose.
Which also makes integrating everything later into my main
catalog back home easier.
Once you've imported your images, it obviously makes sense to back
up all images, plus the catalog file to a second external drive.
But this step of course, is optional.
During my travels, I can now import images, delete the obvious bad ones,
keyword, and edit my favorites already.
I would honestly rather do this stuff while being stuck in a plane, or train for
hours, than to lose valuable time at home.
And the best thing is that this way I will only have the best images of my
trip organized and ready to be integrated into my primary catalog at home.
Let me show you how to do this.
Connect the external hard drive that contains both images and the Lightroom
catalog file to your computer.
In my case, this is my laptop, but for some of you that might
be the desktop back home.
Now open Lightroom on your main computer and go to file
import from another catalog.
Navigate to the drive you used while traveling and choose your
trips catalog file.In my case, this is Masai Mara 2022 L R Cat.
Just a note, this file is the catalog file that contains the preview files,
keywords, star ratings, and edits made.
So basically all the metadata associated with each image.
The actual original photographs are located in this
separate folder, right here.
So once you choose the catalog file to import a dialogue opens in which
you can now choose if you like to copy or add the original files.
In my case, I will choose to copy to a new location and import,
as my main catalog, plus images, lie on a different hard drive.
I'll make sure that the location I use for my main catalog is
selected and then click import.
Lightroom will now copy all my photos taken in Masai Mara from my external
drive to the new location specified.
In my case, this is just another external hard drive, which contains my main
Lightroom catalog plus all image archives.
Lightroom will also import the catalog information like keywords, edits, etc from
my travel catalog into my primary catalog.
This may take quite a while depending on how many photos you've taken during
the trip, so I would always recommend to leave it running overnight.
Once the import is done, all my images from Masai Mara, including keywords
and edits, are now included in my main catalog and stored on my primary
photo hard drive in the same folder structure I have chosen for my archive.
This helps me to keep a consistent and organized Lightroom catalog,
whether I am at home, or traveling.
The hard drive containing your travel images and travel catalog
can now either be erased, or you can keep it as a spare back-up.
I hope you enjoyed today's short tutorial, and if it helped you out, like this
video, share it with a friend or family member, and subscribe to our channel
to know when we release new videos.
If you would like to join us in the Masai Mara in the future, check
the link in the description below.
Thank you very much for watching.
Until next time.