many catalogs same pictures. can I delete all but one?

[seangtian]

I went through my catalogs and realised I had several catalogs from the last few year with the same pictures . I guess it happened after joining creative cloud.

My question is: can I safely delete the older catalogs with belonging preview data and just keep my newest catalog and its preview data without loosing informations from editing. Asked in an other way does all file editing done in earlier catalogs follow the new catalog as long as the picture file is in the newest catalog?

I want to make space on the hard drive. Each catalog is around 1 gb

Thanks ulrik

[john beardsworth]

You can do so. But take care, and back everything up first, just in case.

Editing done in a catalogue stays in that catalogue - though there are ways to move edits from one to another.

[seangtian]

Thanks a lot. This means I should not delete old catalogs. Have you got links to who I can let the latest catalog inherit edits from the older ones?

Thanks Ulriik

[JP Hess]

One way is to choose the option to import from another catalog. The instructions on how to do this are in the Lightroom help file. Here is a link to the appropriate section:

How to import photos from Photoshop Elements, other Lightroom catalogs, or apps such as iPhoto in Li...

Importing from another Lightroom catalog is explained in the second section, so you will have to scroll down a ways to find that section.

[seangtian]

Thanks Jim. Very helpfull

[JP Hess]

You are welcome. I suggest that you make sure you have a backup of your main catalog as it is now before you start importing from other catalogs. If things don't combine just the way you want them then you could always revert to what you are accustomed to using now. Importing from another catalog does not do anything to those other catalogs. So you will still have everything intact if you find it necessary to restore a backup.

[seangtian]

Thanks again Jim

[ManiacJoe]

Much of this will depend on how and why the "newer" catalogs were created.

When you upgrade between major versions, say LR 5 to LR6, your old LR5 catalog gets migrated to a new LR6 catalog. Assuming you never use LR5 again, you can easily delete the old LR5 catalog and its preview folders.

If you are manually creating new catalogs on your own, then you do need to figure out what is where and if merging the catalogs is what you need to do.

[seangtian]

Hi Maniac Thanks this make sense and a lot easier for me to know which one to delete without loosing edits