A Beginner's Guide to Creating a Lightroom Catalog

Catalog problems rarely start with editing. They start the first time you import a card, pick the wrong destination, and build a library that is spread across places you did not intend.

Coming to you from Terry Vander Heiden, this hands-on video shows how to create your first Lightroom Classic catalog in a way that stays tidy when your photo volume grows. Vander Heiden’s setup begins with two matching external hard drives, one for the working catalog and one dedicated to backup. He uses a SanDisk external hard drive as the example, labeled for the Lightroom Classic catalog, and he calls out 2 TB and 4 TB as practical sizes. The point is not brand loyalty, it is making the catalog and the photos live together on fast external storage instead of drifting onto your computer’s internal drive. If you ever had Lightroom feel “fine” until you tried to move machines, this is where the trouble usually begins. 

The walkthrough gets concrete fast: plug in the catalog drive, create a single top-level folder, then create the new catalog inside that folder using the File menu. Vander Heiden shows Lightroom closing and reopening into the new catalog so you can verify you are actually in the right place by looking at the catalog name in the title bar. Then the video pivots to the first import, using a Lexar card reader and a camera card with images. A key moment comes when Vander Heiden slows down on the “what do you want to do” choices: copy as DNG, copy, move, or add. He recommends “Copy” as the default, and he explicitly discourages “Move” because it pulls files off the card, which is not a risk you need on day one.

Where the video starts to feel like damage prevention is the destination check. Vander Heiden points out that Lightroom often defaults to your computer’s internal drive, and people miss it because they are focused on thumbnails and checkboxes. He walks you through changing the destination to the external catalog drive so the photos land in the same place as the catalog structure you are building. He also covers preview building without turning it into a debate, suggesting “Standard” as a solid balance so you are not constantly waiting for images to render when you click around. You also see a simple safeguard that saves space and confusion: “Don’t Import Suspected Duplicates,” which keeps you from quietly doubling your storage use after a repeat import.

Another part you should not ignore is what Vander Heiden says about folders inside Lightroom. Lightroom will automatically create dated folders based on capture dates, and you see that happen right after import when the folder tree populates. Vander Heiden's advice is blunt: avoid moving things around in the Folders panel, because that is where people create missing-file problems without realizing it. He shows an alternative that changes how you work: hide the Folders panel and focus on collections instead, keeping the left-side panels limited to what you actually need while learning. That shift matters if you tend to “organize” by dragging folders, because Lightroom is not a file browser and it does not forgive casual rearranging. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Vander Heiden.