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Some LR Questions
May 10, 2018 14:40:43   #
AzPicLady Loc: Behind the camera!
 
I have LR 6.14. Recently two things have occurred that I need help with.

First: I recently did a trip and took my computer with me. When I turned it on and inserted my memory cards, LR started up! Sort of automatically! It took FOREVER for the two cards to upload, and when it was finally finished, I actually had 2 copies - one where I wanted them on an external HD which is where I told Windows to put them. The others were in folders on my C drive, which is WAY too full to be putting pictures on it. I finally got LR to close, but it took forever! Then, when I opened LR to look at and work on my pictures, I had to tell it about five times that I wanted the folder from the external drive, and not the ones it made on the c-drive. I've never had LR automatically start when I inserted cards, but it did it every time while I was on this trip. How do I turn that off? I do NOT want LR to open until I tell it to, and I don't want it to automatically start importing images.

Second: I've told LR to back up the catalog once a week. Last week it said there wasn't enough space on my C drive to do so. So I went to clean off C drive. Actually, there's almost nothing on it except the LR stuff. I tried to change where it puts the backup. Couldn't. I tried to move the backup. It wouldn't. It did copy it - but it took 15 hours to do so and the file size was 40 Gig! I double-clicked on it to see if there was anything I could remove. I don't know what's necessary and what isn't. AND, there are a lot of files, but most of them are small. I truly don't see how they can all add up to 40G, but I need to somehow pare that down. Any ideas?

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May 10, 2018 15:09:26   #
DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA
 
First of all you can turn off auto-import.
Open LR, go to Edit -> Preferences. The first tab, General preferences has a check box titled "Show import dialog when a memory card is detected". Uncheck that.

Second, every time LR backs up it writes a new backup file. They do build up, so you can safely delete the older ones, as long as you have no problems with LR. I generally keep only 2-3 backups. To find where your backup files are, go to Edit -> Catalog settings. The first tab, General settings has the location of the backup files.

To change the backup location check out https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2345180

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May 10, 2018 15:32:25   #
AzPicLady Loc: Behind the camera!
 
DirtFarmer wrote:
First of all you can turn off auto-import.
Open LR, go to Edit -> Preferences. The first tab, General preferences has a check box titled "Show import dialog when a memory card is detected". Uncheck that.

Second, every time LR backs up it writes a new backup file. They do build up, so you can safely delete the older ones, as long as you have no problems with LR. I generally keep only 2-3 backups. To find where your backup files are, go to Edit -> Catalog settings. The first tab, General settings has the location of the backup files.

To change the backup location check out https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2345180
First of all you can turn off auto-import. br Open... (show quote)


Thank you so much. I'll check all that out. Leave it to a farmer to know how to fix things!

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May 10, 2018 15:57:50   #
CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City
 
The Lightroom back-up process simply creates more and more files on your C: drive. Unless you've updated the defaults, your LR catalog is located in a folder \Lightroom in your "Pictures" folder. Inside that folder is \Backups where these weekly back-ups are being written. They're date-stamped. Go there and delete all the older files except the two most recent by date. Confirm how much diskspace you can recovered. There's no need to save more than the most recent two, so maybe once a month or when you think about it, clean-out the older files. This has to be done manually as LR doesn't have any commands inside the software to remove out-dated backups.



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May 10, 2018 16:01:05   #
AzPicLady Loc: Behind the camera!
 
CHG_CANON wrote:
The Lightroom back-up process simply creates more and more files on your C: drive. Unless you've updated the defaults, your LR catalog is located in a folder \Lightroom in your "Pictures" folder. Inside that folder is \Backups where these weekly back-ups are being written. They're date-stamped. Go there and delete all the older files except the two most recent by date. Confirm how much diskspace you can recovered. There's no need to save more than the most recent two, so maybe once a month or when you think about it, clean-out the older files. This has to be done manually as LR doesn't have any commands inside the software to remove out-dated backups.
The Lightroom back-up process simply creates more ... (show quote)


Thanks! I'll do that! I started with LR3 and upgraded to 6. Do I also need to keep the last couple of LR3 catalogs?

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May 10, 2018 16:06:47   #
CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City
 
AzPicLady wrote:
Thanks! I'll do that! I started with LR3 and upgraded to 6. Do I also need to keep the last couple of LR3 catalogs?

Let's assume all images from the LR3 catalog have been migrated to your LR6 catalog and you've confirmed. Myself, I went from LR5 to LR6 in April. The first time I opened LR6, all the images were migrated into the new LR6 catalog and a back-up copy of the LR5 catalog was created. This week after working fine for a month, I deleted that LR5 catalog. I'm not going to fall back now as everything is working as normal. If your situation is similar, you can delete the LR3 stuff. Or, let more time go by until you feel comfortable with the new software and all images are there and "operational".

If you still need to merge LR3 into LR6, then I believe you can use LR6 to import those images from LR3.

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May 10, 2018 17:56:53   #
AzPicLady Loc: Behind the camera!
 
CHG_CANON wrote:
Let's assume all images from the LR3 catalog have been migrated to your LR6 catalog and you've confirmed. Myself, I went from LR5 to LR6 in April. The first time I opened LR6, all the images were migrated into the new LR6 catalog and a back-up copy of the LR5 catalog was created. This week after working fine for a month, I deleted that LR5 catalog. I'm not going to fall back now as everything is working as normal. If your situation is similar, you can delete the LR3 stuff. Or, let more time go by until you feel comfortable with the new software and all images are there and "operational".

If you still need to merge LR3 into LR6, then I believe you can use LR6 to import those images from LR3.
Let's assume all images from the LR3 catalog have ... (show quote)


And again, thanks. That explains a lot. I'm actually not sure how to answer your comments. I still have LR3 on the computer. I don't open it, but I found that when I use some of my saved settings, I'm back in it with its commands. Some of them I like better, so that's OK. I think I'll keep the 3 for awhile.

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May 10, 2018 22:07:53   #
Wellhiem Loc: Sunny England.
 
CHG_CANON wrote:
The Lightroom back-up process simply creates more and more files on your C: drive. Unless you've updated the defaults, your LR catalog is located in a folder \Lightroom in your "Pictures" folder. Inside that folder is \Backups where these weekly back-ups are being written. They're date-stamped. Go there and delete all the older files except the two most recent by date. Confirm how much diskspace you can recovered. There's no need to save more than the most recent two, so maybe once a month or when you think about it, clean-out the older files. This has to be done manually as LR doesn't have any commands inside the software to remove out-dated backups.
The Lightroom back-up process simply creates more ... (show quote)


Very interesting. It does seem a strange way to go about things. I've just gone over to the Photographers Bundle on CC. I've deleted most of my photos from LR because I think I can organise them better if I start again from scratch. Would now be a good time to delete all the old back up files?

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May 10, 2018 22:36:03   #
AzPicLady Loc: Behind the camera!
 
Well, the plot thickens. I deleted some LR files - about 40 G of them. But it didn't show as actually freeing up space on the computer! Oh my, I do not understand these things.

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May 11, 2018 01:00:51   #
CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City
 
AzPicLady wrote:
Well, the plot thickens. I deleted some LR files - about 40 G of them. But it didn't show as actually freeing up space on the computer! Oh my, I do not understand these things.

If not done already, empty your recycle bin as well.

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May 11, 2018 09:42:21   #
AzPicLady Loc: Behind the camera!
 
CHG_CANON wrote:
If not done already, empty your recycle bin as well.


Oh, I hadn't thought of that! But before I do, perhaps I should ask. There were thousands of files of previews. If those go away, will LR not be able to make previews when I reopen it?

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May 11, 2018 09:50:41   #
CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City
 
AzPicLady wrote:
Oh, I hadn't thought of that! But before I do, perhaps I should ask. There were thousands of files of previews. If those go away, will LR not be able to make previews when I reopen it?

If everything being deleted comes from the Back-up folders, these are just copies of copies of copies of files all made when you took the back-up. Removing these files won't impact your operational folder for LR. If you deleted a preview for an image in the active catalog, LR will just regenerate the preview when you next access the image.

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May 11, 2018 11:06:19   #
jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ
 
Sounds like you need a new computer too. I took my old laptop computer on holiday with me while I was in New Mexico for the Festival of the Crane. I had the same problem as you with it taking forever to download and view or edit pictures. I got a new laptop and things work much better now. For sure it would be a good idea to delete unnecessary programs and files from your hard drive. Get rid of LR3 and as others have said, delete some of those old catalog backups. And, as someone has already pointed out, you need to empty the recycle bin too but I like to wait a week or so to make sure things are working ok before I do that because once you empty the recycle bin, there's no going back.

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