In my case, I have two Volume Browsers: one is my
internal drive and the other is an external drive. Under my
Portable Photos external drive is a folder named Imported
Photos (on Windows you’d see drive letters). To find out
exactly where that folder is on that drive, I can simply
hover my cursor over the folder until a tooltip appears
with the complete path to the folder.Alternatively, you can Right-click any folder and choose
Show in Finder (PC: Show in Explorer) to open your file
browser to that exact folder. You can then compare the
contents of your file browser to the Folders panel, and
it should match.ways to determine this, as it’s not always obvious from
looking at the Folders panel alone.
Expanding the Folders panel, you’ll see what are
referred to as Volume Browsers, which represent the
drive(s) where your photos are stored. If you’ve also
synced your catalog to the Lightroom cloud, you may
see a Volume Browser representing your mobile device
(but this is just a location on your startup drive where
photos downloaded from the cloud get stored).That means if, out of curiosity, you happen to open
a catalog in your backup folder and then close that
catalog (quit LrC), the next time you launch LrC it will
open that catalog in the backup location because it
was the most recent catalog you opened. To avoid that
fate, simply click the drop-down menu and choose the
specific catalog you want LrC to open every time you
launch the program. If you use multiple catalogs, then
choose Prompt Me when Starting Lightroom to see a
list of catalogs from which to choose, and you’re on
your way.YOUR PHOTOS
The most important components in the LrC system are
your actual photos, so let’s take a few steps to ensure
you’re in control here too. First, you need to know where
your photos are stored on your system. LrC gives a few HOW TOPHOTOSHOP USER
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JA N U ARY 20
2 1it into a .zip file to save space. LrC never ever removes
old backup copies of the catalog, so it falls entirely on
you to periodically remove old backup copies to keep
your drive from filling up. How many should you keep?
I usually keep just the most recent three or four, and pop
into that folder every month or so to clear it out. If you
ever needed to recover from a backup catalog, you’d go
to the most recent, not the one from three months ago.
So out with the old and in with the new.
A word to the wise: I can’t tell you how often I encounter
people who follow this exercise only to discover the
catalog they have open is stored among their backup
copies. Don’t feel badly if this happens to you. You’ll
want to follow my previous link for how to move your
catalog to a new location, though, so that you don’t
accidentally delete it when you’re clearing out the old
backup copies.
The reason your working catalog seems to magically
appear in your backup folder is LrC’s default preference
for which catalog file to open when the program is
launched. Here’s how to change that, so you’re making
that decision and not LrC: Head over to Lightroom Classic
(PC: Edit)>Preferences, and click on the General tab. In
the Default Catalog section, if you’ve never changed the
When Starting Up Use this Catalog drop-down menu,
you’ll see that it’s set to Load Most Recent catalog.