Global Collections from All Catalogs

[phrank]

Hi, I’m testing Photo Mechanic Plus again (three years later).
Unfortunately, I still miss a few features that are standard in other Digital Asset Management applications, but are still not available in Photo Mechanic Plus 6.

I usually manage my archives on external hard drives, organized by year (Lightroom, Capture One), and I also scan them into Photo Mechanic Plus as yearly catalogs. This way it only takes a few hours to import and sync everything… (I'm speaking of 50.000 - 200.000 photos a year)

Now I’ve run into a problem while working on a multi-year book project. These catalogs also appear split by year in the Collections panel. I like the option to toggle Active Catalogs on and off for Search and Add/Modify, which helps narrow things down when needed. However, I need to create Collections from the entire set of catalogs. In fact, it would even make sense to split catalogs by client, event or genre.

My question is:
Is there a way to create general Collections where I can add photos from different catalogs into a single User Collection?
For example, I need to gather all photos of a DJ taken over 20 years (stored across 20 separate yearly catalogs).

[Kirk Baker]

My question is:
Is there a way to create general Collections where I can add photos from different catalogs into a single User Collection?

No.  Collections are made up of images contained within that catalog.  Collections cannot contain images from other catalogs.

-Kirk

[phrank]

@Kirk,
thanks for reply. So in other words I have re-scan all again to one master catalog. Is there a way to merge all single catalogs into one? I wish I have tested this a bit before. It takes around day to scan 120.000 photos…

greetings.

p.s. i like the support i pretty quick here;-)

[Kirk Baker]

So in other words I have re-scan all again to one master catalog. Is there a way to merge all single catalogs into one?

No, there is no catalog merge facility.  You would have to create a catalog containing all of the images that you want to organize into collections.

-Kirk

[phrank]

thanks for the info and super fast reply.

i just have started with the work on my archive in Photo Mechanic Plus.
just hope this master catalog won't collapse. i run it from an external ssd drive connected via thunderbolt 5. so i can load all the previews/proxies fast.

is there any experience how big this catalog can be? i hope more than 1.000.000

i have realised to set gps metadata in a batch on a photos, the max is 100.000.
is this the case for any metadata?

regards.

[phrank]

It’s unfortunate that merging catalogs isn’t possible yet. Please consider this a feature request. Should I post it in the forum?

Most other Digital Asset Management tools—such as Lightroom, Capture One, and even Aperture—support this functionality.

Before I begin my large master archive project, I really need to think carefully about how to structure it: by country, by subject, or something else entirely. I don't want to do this work again, spent more than a week just to import these 1.000.0000 photos.

[ahoward]

It’s unfortunate that merging catalogs isn’t possible yet. Please consider this a feature request. Should I post it in the forum?

Most other Digital Asset Management tools—such as Lightroom, Capture One, and even Aperture—support this functionality.

Before I begin my large master archive project, I really need to think carefully about how to structure it: by country, by subject, or something else entirely. I don't want to do this work again, spent more than a week just to import these 1.000.0000 photos.

For what its worth, while there's not a singular "merge catalogs" function, you can do the following:

1) Check the "Search" box in the catalogs you'd like to move *from*.
2) Check the "add/Modify" box on the catalogs you'd like to move *to*
3) Use the Search function in Photo Mechanic and enter two double-quote characters in the Quick Search field to reveal all images in all Catalogs with their "Search" box checked
4) Once the search shows its results, go to Edit -> Select all
5) Then go to Catalog -> Include selected items
6) Once that is done, check the Add/Modify box for the catalog you'd like to move the images from (and uncheck it for the catalog you just added the images to), repeat steps 3 and 4, and then choose Catalog -> Remove Selected Items.

Of course, if you have Collections from the Catalogs you are moving from, this doesn't retain those, so maybe this doesn't work for you, but if you haven't created collections in them yet, maybe this is helpful.

I believe a customer has told me they have a catalog of over 7 million items. There's no hard limit on the size of a catalog.