Producing a new Lightroom Catalog from within Lightroom?

[MrDill]

Is there not a way to make a new Lightroom Catalog from within Lightroom itself without cutting/copying and pasting, or dragging and dropping?

As you can see from the image below, my Lightroom Catalog is nested inside of an older Lightroom Catalog that a newer version of Lightroom produced. It looks like a mess to me, with probably most of the folders are not even in use.

All I want to do is to be able to push a button and have Lightroom produce a new Catalog for me, in a drive, and folder of my choosing.

[dj_paige]

Creating a new catalog would not solve your problem, nor is there a single button you can press.

You could Import one catalog into the other, then move it to a new location, and then delete the catalog you no longer need ... if that would solve your problem (I'm not sure it will), but that's several steps, not one step as you are asking for.

[JP Hess]

Since the catalog is the only file that Lightroom opens, it's probably best to keep them all in the same folder. You probably shouldn't need very many different catalogs. I choose to keep my scanned images in a separate catalog, but that's my decision. Having that catalog in the same folder with my "regular" catalog makes it easy to switch between the two when it's necessary. I don't see any reason to have Lightroom catalogs distributed throughout different folders on the hard drive. Do you have a reason for doing that?

[MrDill]

I only use 1 catalog. Lightroom made that mess all by itself.

To move these files to another folder I have no idea which ones to even use. With the attached image below, what would be your guess?

[dj_paige]

Lightroom didn't do this, you did by telling it to put the backups in a certain location (or you accepted the default location, whichever). And then it appears you opened a backup catalog instead of the master.

Nevertheless, since things are working properly, my suggestion is that you simply not do anything, leave everything alone, and continue to use the catalog that is working properly.