How do I create or open a catalog in the program?

[Dmytro42]

Hi All!
I created and imported photos and videos from my folder into the folder D:\XnViewPhotos with the structure I chose. All files ended up in the correct folders.
Question – how do I open this catalog now? Or are the actions I performed not related to my catalog?


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Help me.

I have 200,000 photos in my Lightroom folder with the structure
D:/Lightroom/2001-01-01/.

Lightroom is very slow.
Recently, I downloaded via iCloud 14,000 photos of my child, 5,000 photos of my wife, and 20,000 of my own photos.
Let's say they are all in the folder C:/Users/D/Downloads/iCloud/....
I don’t want to add them to Lightroom because it becomes extremely slow.

I want to organize a catalog using XnView. D:/XnViewPhotos
So, what should I do?

I have already tried importing, but I didn’t understand why the "catalog" was not created.

[xnview]

Catalog is filled with files that you browse, it uses your folders.

[jkm]

Dmytro42,

Pierre is a man of few words. What this means is that the concepts you have in lightroom, like importing into a catalog, or opening a catalog, do not exist in XnViewMP.

When you browse to a folder in XnViewMP, it stores information about those files in the catalog (assuming you have the Catalog enabled; check your settings). In essence, browsing to a folder "auto-adds" it to the catalog, without a separate import step. Once the information is stored, it is available for instant retrieval in various ways. But generally, if you want to see those images, you browse back to the folder they're in.

You can also add them to albums, or search for them using metadata, and find and view them that way.

If you want to add an entire directory tree to the catalog (like F:\Photos which has hundreds of subdirectories) then in the app you simply browse to F:\Photos, and then right-click on it, and select Show Files in Subfolders. XnViewMP will then show in the browser all the files in that entire tree, even if there are many thousands. It will build thumbnails and collect metadata for all of them (again if you have those options enabled). It could take a while. But when it's done, all those images are "imported" into the catalog.

XnViewMP has one catalog, it is always open, and it contains information about all the folders you've browsed to in the app, unless you explicitly delete the record of them from the catalog (done in the Catalog page of Settings).

Looking at the Catalog Filter pane, you can also find and browse images already in your Catalog in various ways.

Hopefully this helps...