I just imported a LR catalog of a little over 120,000 images mostly 61MP images from A7RIV, with about 7000 240MP pixelshift images also from the A7RIV and another 4000 panoramas stitched in Lightroom. Is there some way I can import my images into C1 catalogs, without having to replicate the image files, in much the same way I have done when importing the 'LightRoom' files into darktable? I would need to add about 8 to 10 2TB drives to my computing resources. That amount of 'inflation' creates a lot of storage space issues, since I keep at least 2 (and usually 3) independent backups of my data and the 'working copies' are always on Raid 1 drives. My reading of how C1 catalogs work is that it would require replication of that amount of data to import and store/backup my raw images. So far I have about 1 TB of image files across my total portfolio. (Image file names were as per the camera assigned name up to end 2019 and from there on with a name created by concatenating a unique and descriptive 'job-code' with the last 4 numeric digits of the camera assigned filename).

So now, for my largest and most important image collections, from one of those Lr catalogs, I have an image folder organisation that, for images up to the end of 2019, is of the form:, and, from 2020 onwards, of the form Lr Catalog Name>. I was able to add/import new images, using either Photomechanic (Windows) or Rapid Photo Downloader (Linux), up to darktable 3.6.1, from which time on those 2 excellent tools were unnecessary. Since those Lr catalogs could be built to reflect the file organisation in Windows, there was no 'migration' involved in replacing Lr with darktable (aside from accepting that their respective sidecar files are mutually incompatible). For other reasons I have spent the last few years learning and applying darktable, in both Windows and Linux versions, while retaining the image folder and file organisation I had developed through my use of LightRoom, from V.1 to V.6 - using multiple Lr catalogs. After a long time of having C1 (Express Fuji version) installed, and updated, I decided to have a look at using it seriously.

Darktable import photos mac