Today’s Question: You have periodically referred to settings for Lightroom Classic in the Preferences and Catalog Settings dialogs. Why couldn’t all the options be consolidated into a single dialog? It doesn’t seem like it should be necessary to have two places for settings when one would do.
Tim’s Quick Answer: The key distinction between Catalog Settings and Preferences in Lightroom Classic is that Catalog Settings applies only to the catalog that is currently in use, while Preferences applies to the full installation of Lightroom Classic on the computer, affecting all catalogs you might open on that computer.
More Detail: Most applications include a Preferences dialog where you can configure various settings and options based on your personal preferences. With Lightroom Classic, in addition to the Preferences dialog there is a Catalog Settings dialog with additional settings.
While it would be reasonable to merge all the settings in Preferences and Catalog Settings in Lightroom Classic, I do think it is good that they are separate since they affect Lightroom Classic differently. The settings in the Catalog Settings dialog will only apply to the catalog that is currently in use, which enables you to have different settings for different catalogs. The settings in the Preferences dialog apply to the Lightroom Classic installation on your computer, so the same settings will apply regardless of which catalog you have open.
In general, I recommend using a single catalog to manage all photos, which would make the distinction of the Catalog Settings dialog irrelevant. However, if you use more than one catalog, you can configure different settings for each within Catalog Settings. The fact that there are two dialogs rather than one serve as a bit of a reminder of that distinction.
