Lightroom 2 folder size

[cotswoldcs]

I'm upgrading my dad's PC at present with a larger hard drive and more memory. He's a part-time professional photographer and uses Lightroom 2. I've noticed that he now has over 70,000 photos (hence the hard drive upgrade) but what really staggered me is that his "Lightroom" folder is over 12.2GB in size and contains some 17,000 files (not included in my previous count btw).

The Lightroom folder contains subfolders Backups (2.53GB), Lightroom 2. Catalog Previews (9.53GB) and a Temp Folder (11MB) as well as the all important Lightroom 2 Catalog file (196MB). Any idea why the Previews folder is so big?

I don't have nearly so many photos and my Lightroom folder is still 4.52GB and contains 9,598 files!

Is there any way of compacting or rationalising Lightroom's database without affecting speed?

[brammers]

There's loads and loads of ways to customise the way that LR handles files. At one end of the scale you can have it set up to create 1:1 previews upon import and to save them in memory forever, at the other end you can tell it to build only thumbnails and delete everything upon close. Have a dig around in your dad's preferences file. How fast or slow LR goes depends on how you use it... If you're a fashion shooter who shoots a session of 1000 pics and then throws 90% of them straight away, you don't want it creating 1:1 previews of those shots on import - only when you look at them closely. A landscaper, having taken maybe only 10 shots of one scene and wanting to evaluate sharpness between 2 of them, would benefit from creating 100% previews on import. Depends on your camera too - are you making previews of a 6mp 2004 DSLR, or a 60mp Phase1? This is also a good reason to shoot RAW+JPG - LR will build 1:1 previews based on your JPG and will be faster as you don't have to de-mosaic the RAW each time.

Backups are just what they sound like - backups of the catalogues. LR keeps them all. Up to you whether you want them all or just the latest.

If you're worried about what needs moving over to his new PC, the answer is just the catalogue file itself (and the RAWs!). Everything else can be recreated when needed.

[cotswoldcs]

Thanks Brammers. That explains it clearly thank you. I've been able to reduce the LRCAT a little by optimising and I may consider altering preferences for previews in time. For now its working well, despite the space taken up.

BTW my Dad has a 5D mk II & 40D (and an itchy trigger finger!). I only wish he'd use the same finger for the Delete key - he keeps too many files!

What size is your LRCAT? - I would imagine it could get very large.

[brammers]

My LR cat is 281Mb for about 10,000 images. I'm big on the delete key myself - he's aware that pressing X will tag an image for deletion? Stops you from having to go through the 'are you sure' dialogue every time.

There's a setting in the catalogue settings window which asks how long you want to keep previews for. That should help keeping the file size down - that's the bit that takes 10Gb atm. Tbh though... 10gb isn't that much in the context of today's HDDs - it's about a memory card's worth for me. The catalogue doesn't slow down if the previews associated with it are large, so personally I'd just leave it.

[Blastuk]

Yeah, storage is cheap, no need to fuss over 10gb
my current catalog (whole folder) is running at about 8gb atm.
I have 28k photos apparently..