LightRoom Catalog Problem: I just found out that Lightroom Catalogs take up a large amount of memory on your hard drive. I have a number of catalogs and would like to remove them to...

cfhelz45 Loc: The Villages, Florida

I just found out that Lightroom Catalogs take up a large amount of memory on your hard drive. I have a number of catalogs and would like to remove them to free up disk space. Can someone tell me how this can be done?

Thanks in advance!

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

CAREFULLY. The ONLY one you really need is the current one, but I would strongly suggest keeping a few of the backups as well. You don't need 100's of backups or you older file versions either. I solved this issue recently by switching my Catalogue files to an external SSD. Lightroom has been running faster than when the Catalogue resided on a spinning drive. Just for comparison purposed, my Catalogue, with about 300,000 files and all the previews and whatnot, takes up almost 1 TB, way too much for an internal SSD. Best of luck.

flyguy Loc: Las Cruces, New Mexico

cfhelz45 wrote:

I just found out that Lightroom Catalogs take up a large amount of memory on your hard drive. I have a number of catalogs and would like to remove them to free up disk space. Can someone tell me how this can be done?

Thanks in advance!

I have an iMac and the Lightroom backups are stored in "pictures" folder in a subfolder titled "Lightroom".
You can delete all the backup's except for the currently dated one.I usually keep the last 4 or 5.

cfhelz45 Loc: The Villages, Florida

Thanks

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

Unless you’re a pro and want to keep links to business and personal photos in separate catalogues, I don’t know why more than one catalogue would be necessary.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

cfhelz45 wrote:

I just found out that Lightroom Catalogs take up a large amount of memory on your hard drive. I have a number of catalogs and would like to remove them to free up disk space. Can someone tell me how this can be done?

Thanks in advance!

You'll need to provide more details or maybe a screen capture showing the file names and file sizes you're concerned about.

My LRCAT file in the older LR6 software, with 98,453 images, occupies 9.7GB on my disk. This software version and the new subscription software all compress / ZIP the back-up versions, where my current \Backup is 1.7GB of that larger 9.7GB file. The 'LR catalog', as in literally the LRCAT file, are not very large in their space usage.

When you talk about "take up a large amount of memory", what specifically do you mean?

When you talk about "I have a number of catalogs", what specifically do you mean?

My overall Lightroom catalog folder structure contains 101,684 files using 55.3GB space, again not that much total space of my 1TB HD. To get to 101K files from 98K catalog images, most of those are the 'previews' aka what you see when editing at the pixel-level and / or navigate the thumbnails in the Library module. You might want to look at your retention setting for how long you keep your 1:1 previews. I have mine set to 1-month.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

cfhelz45 wrote:

I just found out that Lightroom Catalogs take up a large amount of memory on your hard drive. I have a number of catalogs and would like to remove them to free up disk space. Can someone tell me how this can be done?

Thanks in advance!

First of all, I'm assuming you are referring to backups of the catalog, not the catalog you are currently using. There's no reason to have more than one catalog for your useful photos. I have two catalogs, one of them only holds transient photos (tests, experiments, things I'm working on with no lasting value. That extra catalog gets deleted occasionally as the quickest way to clean it out).

I usually go through my list of backup catalogs and delete all except maybe the most recent two. The backup catalogs are useful if you have a problem with your catalog, but as long as you don't have a problem that did not exist when the catalog was last backed up, there's no reason to save a lot of them.

If you worry about accidentally deleting an image that you might want later (you might not notice that it's deleted until much later), the best thing to do is to ensure that you are saving the sidecar files. If you need to re-import an image, it will import with past edits if the sidecar file is there. If not, you will have to redo your edits.

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

cfhelz45 wrote:

I just found out that Lightroom Catalogs take up a large amount of memory on your hard drive. I have a number of catalogs and would like to remove them to free up disk space. Can someone tell me how this can be done?

Thanks in advance!

From the Adobe website, you might want to read this:

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/catalog-faq-lightroom.html

It does answer some basic questions about LrC catalogs. In general, catalogs do not take up much disk space. If you have a backup system and multiple backup catalogs then you can delete some of them, leaving a couple of the more recent ones as a "just in case" scenario. If the catalogs are all different then that takes a completely different approach. Creating multiple catalogs can get very tricky and having more than one or two catalogs for most people is not needed. You can simply delete any catalog you want by dragging it to the trash. However, if you have processed any images in that catalog that processing data will be trashed. To save any processing data you would need to export as a catalog and then import as a catalog, which is too involved to post here. Read the Adobe Help Manual and you can learn more about catalogs in general.

davidrb Loc: Half way there on the 45th Parallel

cfhelz45 wrote:

I just found out that Lightroom Catalogs take up a large amount of memory on your hard drive. I have a number of catalogs and would like to remove them to free up disk space. Can someone tell me how this can be done?

Thanks in advance!

Very simple procedure, simply click on the Catalog/s you want to highlight for elimination and then hit delete. GONE! And so are the images that make that catalog so large. Don't stop with LightRoom, delete everything on your HD and it will be nothing BUT free space! Your computer will run as fast as it did when it was new. Problem solved. There is too much additional information needed to fully understand your problem. Your opening two statements indicate the possibility you have no interest in the Catalogs' contents. If Catalogs are not the issue, the content of those catalogs are generating your storage troubles?

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

davidrb wrote:

Very simple procedure, simply click on the Catalog/s you want to highlight for elimination and then hit delete. GONE! And so are the images that make that catalog so large. Don't stop with LightRoom, delete everything on your HD and it will be nothing BUT free space! Your computer will run as fast as it did when it was new. Problem solved.

Bad joke.

Deleting a catalog DOES NOT delete the images.

The images are not in the catalog.

Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

DirtFarmer wrote:

Bad joke.

Deleting a catalog DOES NOT delete the images.

The images are not in the catalog.

I never quite understood that.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Kmgw9v wrote:

I never quite understood that.

Just think about it. If the images were in the catalog, the catalog would balloon to ridiculous size. I have about 2TBytes of image files. If my catalog contained all those images it would be well over 2TBytes (the catalog also stores the editing instructions). Just think how long it would take to load that catalog.

My catalog is less than 500 Mbytes. 1/4000 of the size of the collection of image files. Even file compression couldn't deal with that sort of reduction.

Since the catalog is a database, it stores only the location of the image files. Just takes a few bytes. (By location, I mean it stores the full path of the file: Drive/Folder/Filename).

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

Kmgw9v wrote:

I never quite understood that.

When you import, you make the selection of where the image files are to be stored. The Catalogue only POINTS to that location.

JFCoupe Loc: Kent, Washington

You can get good information on You Tube. Anthony Morganti and Laura Shoe are both good instructors with step by step videos on moving LR catalogs.

SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

davidrb wrote:

Very simple procedure, simply click on the Catalog... (show quote)

Deleting the catalog doesn’t delete the images. They aren’t contained in the catalog, just the location of that image and the edits made to the image.