LR Library help
May 13, 2020 08:09:50 #
I'll confess that I mostly use LR for it's PP functions. I know it is a good organizer/catalogue tool, but I don't use it as such, or understand that part of it. My question concerns the "library". It is taking a huge amount of my hard drive space, and I'm wondering if I can keep the library on my external drive, rather than my internal drive. If so, how does one make this change?
I save my photos, after PP, to my external drive. Is it ok to remove them from the library?
Thank you so much for your help! The UHH forum has been a wonderful source of knowledge and education for me for several years!
Dan
I save my photos, after PP, to my external drive. Is it ok to remove them from the library?
Thank you so much for your help! The UHH forum has been a wonderful source of knowledge and education for me for several years!
Dan
May 13, 2020 08:37:23 #
A few comments:
1) How often are you allowing LR to take a backup? This LR back-up process creates entire copies of the LR catalog and never performs any clean-up of the older back-ups. Consider updating your settings to back-up once a week. Also, go into the Lightroom folder where the LRCAT file is located (typically within your "Pictures" directly). Find the subfolder Backups. Either delete this entire folder, or open and delete every back-up except the most recent date-stamp.
2) All things considered, the LR 'catalog' does not take up that much space. It contains a database of all your edits and 'pointers' to the locations of your images. LR doesn't maintain copies (nor originals) of any of your original image files. So, when you say the 'library' is taking up a lot of space, we're unsure of what you're referencing.
3) Yes, you can maintain your LRCAT catalog on an external drive. To make this move:
3a) Exit the LR software.
3b) Delete the back-ups as memtioned above in item #1.
3c) Connect your external drive and copy the entire "Lightroom" folder from your local computer drive to the external drive.
3d) Rename the existing "Lightroom" folder on the local drive such as "Lightroom-old". This is done to assure you don't confuse yourself that the LRCAT has in fact been moved.
3e) Find the LRCAT file in the Lightroom folder on the external drive. Double-click this file and LR will launch using this file as the new default catalog. Alternatively, start the LR software and when prompted for which Catalog to use, navigate to your external HD. You'll be prompted for a catalog name because you renamed the location in item #3d.
3f) Assure you have a automated or regular back-up process, external to LR, that takes period copies of the entire "Lightroom" folder as now located on your external HD.
3g) Make / take an back-up of the "Lightroom" folder as now located on the external drive, placing that back-up to the cloud or your standard secondary external drive similar to how you backup your pictures from this external drive to still another location.
3h) Delete the "Lightroom-old" folder on your local drive as was the purpose of this exercise to recover diskspace.
4) Regarding the deletion of your edited images, No. The idea of 'library management' or 'digital asset management (DAM)' is to have a library of all your digital images that can be obtained instantaneously. If you add keywords and / or create local groupings of images via Collections, the idea is you can find / identify any image in your library for immediate reuse. This search ability is only as good as your keyword approach, but imagine if you could find every 'flower' picture you've ever taken? Or, find every picture of a specific family member? Or, you purchase a new editing tool and realize you could do a better job on an older image. Wouldn't you want to start from your LR catalog and the existing work rather than starting completely from scratch?
1) How often are you allowing LR to take a backup? This LR back-up process creates entire copies of the LR catalog and never performs any clean-up of the older back-ups. Consider updating your settings to back-up once a week. Also, go into the Lightroom folder where the LRCAT file is located (typically within your "Pictures" directly). Find the subfolder Backups. Either delete this entire folder, or open and delete every back-up except the most recent date-stamp.
2) All things considered, the LR 'catalog' does not take up that much space. It contains a database of all your edits and 'pointers' to the locations of your images. LR doesn't maintain copies (nor originals) of any of your original image files. So, when you say the 'library' is taking up a lot of space, we're unsure of what you're referencing.
3) Yes, you can maintain your LRCAT catalog on an external drive. To make this move:
3a) Exit the LR software.
3b) Delete the back-ups as memtioned above in item #1.
3c) Connect your external drive and copy the entire "Lightroom" folder from your local computer drive to the external drive.
3d) Rename the existing "Lightroom" folder on the local drive such as "Lightroom-old". This is done to assure you don't confuse yourself that the LRCAT has in fact been moved.
3e) Find the LRCAT file in the Lightroom folder on the external drive. Double-click this file and LR will launch using this file as the new default catalog. Alternatively, start the LR software and when prompted for which Catalog to use, navigate to your external HD. You'll be prompted for a catalog name because you renamed the location in item #3d.
3f) Assure you have a automated or regular back-up process, external to LR, that takes period copies of the entire "Lightroom" folder as now located on your external HD.
3g) Make / take an back-up of the "Lightroom" folder as now located on the external drive, placing that back-up to the cloud or your standard secondary external drive similar to how you backup your pictures from this external drive to still another location.
3h) Delete the "Lightroom-old" folder on your local drive as was the purpose of this exercise to recover diskspace.
4) Regarding the deletion of your edited images, No. The idea of 'library management' or 'digital asset management (DAM)' is to have a library of all your digital images that can be obtained instantaneously. If you add keywords and / or create local groupings of images via Collections, the idea is you can find / identify any image in your library for immediate reuse. This search ability is only as good as your keyword approach, but imagine if you could find every 'flower' picture you've ever taken? Or, find every picture of a specific family member? Or, you purchase a new editing tool and realize you could do a better job on an older image. Wouldn't you want to start from your LR catalog and the existing work rather than starting completely from scratch?
May 13, 2020 12:13:58 #
May 13, 2020 12:18:57 #
CHG_CANON wrote:
A few comments: br br 1) How often are you allowi... (show quote)
CHG_CANON, This was the information I was looking for! thanks so much for being willing to share your knowledge! Not gonna lie, this is a lot of data for a non-technical kind of guy! But it gives me a path and clear markers to follow! Deeply appreciate this! Dan
May 13, 2020 12:20:34 #
DWU2 wrote:
While CHG_CANON put me on the right path, DWU2 provided me with a very helpful map to better follow the right path! Thanks smooch for your help! I just might be able to make this happen!! dan
May 13, 2020 12:43:29 #
CHG_CANON wrote:
A few comments: br br 1) How often are you allowi... (show quote)
Is this the setup if I want to use Lightroom on two different computers?
May 13, 2020 12:58:19 #
Jerry G wrote:
Is this the setup if I want to use Lightroom on two different computers?
Yes, it would let you share a single LRCAT between both computers via attaching a single external HD to each. So, the HD has the 'master' LRCAT as presented to either computer's LR software. Your picture files will all need to be on the HD too.
May 13, 2020 13:08:52 #
CHG_CANON wrote:
Yes, it would let you share a single LRCAT between both computers via attaching a single external HD to each. So, the HD has the 'master' LRCAT as presented to either computer's LR software. Your picture files will all need to be the HD too.
Thank you.
May 13, 2020 15:23:08 #
DE Stein wrote:
I'll confess that I mostly use LR for it's PP func... (show quote)
What are you considering "huge" ?
May 14, 2020 06:58:14 #
Gene51 wrote:
What are you considering "huge" ?
When I look at the largest files on my laptop (2015 MacBook Pro, 8 GB Ram, 121GB flash storage), 33 GB is taken up by my Lightroom Library. I have a 2TB external drive I keep pretty much all my documents and photos on. I suppose "huge" is relative to the space I have. So if my Library can be moved off of the internal hard drive, that frees up precious space!
May 14, 2020 07:53:50 #
DE Stein wrote:
When I look at the largest files on my laptop (2015 MacBook Pro, 8 GB Ram, 121GB flash storage), 33 GB is taken up by my Lightroom Library. I have a 2TB external drive I keep pretty much all my documents and photos on. I suppose "huge" is relative to the space I have. So if my Library can be moved off of the internal hard drive, that frees up precious space!
Yup - you are definitely cramped for drive space!
You will suffer decreased performance if you move your catalog to an external drive. The problem is that the spec for your computer is inadequate by today's standards. Typically a system should have 16 gb ram (32 is better), a separate graphics card with the correct amount of memory to drive your display's resolution, (1 gb vram is usually minimum), and a system drive that is no less than 500 gb, with a full Tb being significantly better. Even if you could, I would seriously question if it would make sense to add memory and a bigger system drive.
May 14, 2020 10:00:35 #
May 14, 2020 13:06:10 #
I had a similar space problem with LR. The first time I used it, I tried importing photos from a folder that had a few hundred in it. The import was slow so I let it run over night. When I checked in the morning, it had stopped because it ran out of disk space. The folder had taken 30 GB and used all the space on the hard drive. No idea why. So now I only import single photos.
May 15, 2020 17:36:56 #
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