A constantly growing LR catalog?

i remove folders catalog after few months of primary use, keeping them files on backup external rive. view has been having fewer folders/photos in catalog improves lightroom’s overall performance, keeping clean , fast.

 

recently, i’ve been exploring idea of keyword management , using smart collections automatically group photos. sounds great, seems worth time if 1 keep photos in lightroom, never removing folders catalog.

 

i wondering amassing thousands of photos across hundreds of folders on course of years... proper keywording , management, indeed produce powerful tool finding , referencing photo and/or collection. come @ cost of slower, bogged-down performance?

 

in short, general practice of professional photographers continually “clean out” catalogs (i.e. remove folders) once jobs finished , ready archived; or better let catalog grow incredible size on years in order make best use of keywords , collections? there recommended limit how many photos/folders lr can handle before performance affected?

 

i'm wondering how others thinking of issue.

 

some points note:

-assume each job/folder contains 1,000 edited raw images

-assume 20-30 jobs/folders added catalog each year

-i have new , fast pc.

-disk space not issue.

-i aware of “optimize catalog” option.

thanks.

removing photos pretty unusual. lightroom catalogues can contain hundreds of thousands of pictures, , while backing lrcat file take more time, backup happens during dead time , performance problems largely unrelated number of pictures in catalogue.

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