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Referenced vs managed files in cataloguing software: what’s the difference?

February 14, 2023 by Rod Lawton

Adobe Lightroom Classic uses a ‘referenced’ file system where your photos stay in their original location. Image credit: Rod Lawton.

Well, there’s quite a lot, as it happens, and it affects the way you store, access and organize your photos.

Most cataloging programs use a ‘referenced’ system. Your image files stay where you are and the software simply references them in their existing location, storing that location along with image thumbnails, previews and any adjustments you’ve made in its catalog database, or ‘library’. The advantage is that you don’t have to move any files or changing your image filing system, and the image catalog is a separate file or set of files that knows where all these images are stored.

This is how Lightroom Classic works and how Capture One catalogs are usually used. Other programs like Exposure X and ON1 Photo RAW also ‘reference’ your photos in their existing location. It’s quick and convenient and makes a lot of practical sense.

‘Managed’ image catalogs are different. Instead of referencing images in their existing location, they import them into a separate internal library which is accessible only to that software and, on the Mac at least, produces a single monolithic library file that contains both the database, thumbnails, previews and editing adjustments together with the images themselves.

Capture One offers both referenced image handling and ‘managed’ files. You can use whichever system suits you best. Image credit: Rod Lawton

Capture One can also be used to create a ‘managed’ database/catalog, it’s how Apple Photos is designed to work and it’s what you have to accept if you use Lightroom (the web version, not Lightroom Classic).

So what’s the point of that? Surely that’s a terrible idea that’s also inefficient and restrictive? Well, it is and it isn’t. Managed catalogs do have advantages that aren’t always immediately apparent.

  1. Having a single monolithic catalog is at least simple. There’s only one file, not thousands of them scattered across your hard disk.
  2. Locking your photos away in a managed catalog prevents you from unthinkingly moving, renaming, deleting or editing files outside your cataloguing software and ‘breaking’ the database link. There’s a lot less to go wrong!
  3. It’s a kind of backup! We should all back up our photo library regularly, and this applies to both original images, edited versions and even our image catalog files. But at the very least, by using a managed catalog you are at least making duplicates of your photos and leaving the originals safe and separate.

Capture One is the only program to offer you a choice between ‘referenced’ and ‘managed’ file handling, and can even do this within the same catalog.

Lightroom catalogs are ‘managed’. It doesn’t support referenced file and it even insists that all your images are stored in the cloud. Image credit: Rod Lawton

For Lightroom users, the choice is different. It’s Lightroom Classic for referenced files and Lightroom for managed files. But with Lightroom, this choice comes with extra restrictions, notably that Lightroom Classic offers only limited online synchronization, while Lightroom ties you in to expensive cloud storage.

  • Lightroom vs Lightroom Classic
  • Adobe Lightroom: what is it, where do you get it, what does it cost?
  • Cataloguing software explained

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Related

Filed Under: Capture One, Featured, General, Lightroom, WorkflowTagged With: Capture One, Lightroom (Adobe), Lightroom Classic (Adobe), Managed images, Referenced images

Life after Photoshop is owned and run by photographer and journalist Rod Lawton. Rod has been a photography journalist for nearly 40 years, starting out in film (obviously) but then migrating to digital. He has worked as a freelance journalist, technique editor and channel editor, and is now Group Reviews Editor on Digital Camera World. Life after Photoshop is a personal project started in 2013.

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