Setting up Lightroom 5 Catalog

[tenohfive]

I've been putting this off since upgrading from Elements to Lightroom as my primary PP tool - setting up and getting to grips with the catalog system. I suspect that before I start I'll need to tinker with my existing system, which is the part I'm most confused about.

Currently I use Windows for cataloguing - family photo's in one folder, landscapes in another and for noteworthy events (holidays etc) I create a separate folder.

I assume for the sake of ease I'm going to have to transfer everything to one folder, then go through and tag somehow each photo in LR with however I want to break it down (as per the above categories I guess.) Anyone know how I do this?

[MartinP]

No need to move them, just import those folders into your catalogue.

You can have one big catalogue with everything in, or you could have several catolgues. For example I have one for personal, one for general work (so portrait shoots, corporate work etc) and then have individual catalogues for each wedding. The reason for separate catalogues for each wedding is that speed is important to my workflow, so I don't want to be slowed down at all by a big fat catalogue.

[tenohfive]

Cheers. Have bitten the bullet and merged most stuff, and I think I've got everything organised in Lightroom. Went through and deleted a huge chunk of JPEG's too - I used to take photo's in RAW+L but with LR cataloguing and loading the RAW's quickly there's no real need now.