How would you go about learning openings and how to remember

Hi, I am trying to work out how best to learn and remember several new openings or defense openings at any one time,

How do you higher chess rated or any other chess rating guy's, absorb all this information, e.g. like if white moves Qc2 black moves to Nc6,

only have I got to work out what the queen on c2 is trying to achieve and if it is threatening something, before I can work out where my black piece go's, or is there an overall picture to take into consideration, 

somebody must have some sort of way of working all this info out ?

Well the way I study openings is by looking over some games and then playing them, I find myself in unfamiliar territory and I review them with the games base I have trying to find improvements of my already made moves, then play them some more and "repeat until needed" :P

If you are already familiar with the opening, try playing themed games where you agree on the start position, dont know if this ite offers that (still new here) but otherwise you can schedule a game with someone you already talked about this

Simple answer: Don't

Learn principles, and learn perhaps up to 8 moves of the main lines of your openings, along with basic plans/ideas.

That^

My personal goal is to know the first 10 moves. I m almost there in main lines. Beyond that have an idea of basic plans.

Incremental learning is key. It's astonishing so many players choose to drink from a fire hydrant rather than sip...and then forget/confuse their move orders. I suffered from this "learn and forget" condition as well until a few months back.

Step 1. Play tons of games the way want to play it.  Blitz works as well ...

Step 2. Take those games one by one and ...  review the opening moves with books/software.

Step 3. If you deviated from book at say move N, learn what "move" (just one move) is considered best play. If given a style/fashionable choice, pick one move that the big boys consider to be sound.  Make sure you understand why this move and not the one you played was better. If in doubt, seek help. You need to convince yourself why this move fits ... this is key.

Step 4. Massage this "one new move I learned" experience into your brain ... I's suggest writing it down and  reviewing it a few days later to confirm that it has transitioned from short-term to long-term memory.

Step 5. Don't worry about what happens "next" in that opening line you looked up. You'll get to it when you deviate from it the next time.    The goal of this exercise is to "grow" your repertoire by JUST ONE MOVE.

Rinse and repeat steps 1-5 over several of your games, each day.

Over time, you will organically grow your repertoire and be able to play it accurately with much less fumbling than if you try to learn an entire tabiya in one sitting. What's more useful is that you'll be focusing on lines your opposition (online opponents, club players, tournament regulars) are playing and not wasting time studying lines that your frequent opposition HARDLY plays.

Edit: I'd like to add that this method requires patience and a lot of work... the good news is that for some opening systems that feel really comfortable for you, you may be playing "in book" for several moves just by good opening principles ... so your repertoire may grow faster than you think.

This method works well:

1. choose your opening
2. gather many games using this opening, by downloading, or searching a larger database.
3. start clicking throught the moves, at only a few seconds per position, game after game.
4. play all games through right until the end
5. soon you will see that you are able to predict moves, try to guess as many correct as you can, still only a few second per move
6. after 20 or 30 games, played right through, you'll realise why the "queen is on c2"
7. I reckon 6 hours of this, and you'll be fairly competent in this opening