Lightroom Catalog Maximum mumber of photos

There are unconfirmed and anecdotal reports that Lightroom begins to slow down after it reaches a certain number of photos or total file size. I am using XP Home on a PC and using LR 2.2. Any thoughts on what this "magic" number is, or if in fact, this concern is real or not?
Thanks,
Matthew Kraus

I have a question about this issue. MacPro with a lot of memory, approximately 40K of images with an irdata file of approximately 20gig. Image files from latest Canon bodies are getting bigger and with the use of Lightroom features such as neutral gradient filter, adjustment brush, etc this file is slowing down.
What is the appropriate seize of the irdata file to keep performance up?
Earl

Similar Messages

Lightroom catalog full with no photos deleted photos hard drive

I deleted photos from my hard drive but the catalog I created in Lightoom still has over 50mb in it but the photos are gone. can I open this file somehow to see if I can extract any previews I created in lightroom before I deleted the photos by accident and can't get them out the trash?

Photos are not stored in Lightroom, so you can't get them from Lightroom.
Your best solutions are, in order:
Recover photos from trash
Restore photos from backup copies ... you do make backups of your photos, don't you?
Use an "undelete utility" program to undelete the photos
Recover previews from Lightroom ... these will be lower resolution than your original photos, and will be JPGs ... how much lower resolution depends on what options you chose regarding creating previews

Lightroom will not import my photos. It did up to a week ago. I have changed cards and cameras (both worked two weeks ago). I can import the photos to Picasa and iPhoto

Lightroom will not import my photos. It did up to a week ago. I have changed cards and cameras (both worked two weeks ago). I can import the photos to Picasa and iPhoto. I get the following error message:
Some import operations were not performed.
The following files were not imported because they could not be read [followed by a list of the files I wanted to import]
Thumbnails show up. LR just will not import them.
Any idea what is going wrong?

If the Import button is not clickable, that means that Lightroom thinks you have no new photos to import (one possible reason is that they are duplicates)
So, you need to figure out why Lightroom thinks that. The way I would do this is to search your Library module for at least one of the photos, by file name. To do this, you would follow all 4 of these steps in sequence:
Click on All Photographs in the Catalog Panel on the left of the Library Module
Turn off all Filters (Ctrl-L or Cmd-L once or twice)
Expand all stacks: Photo->Stacking->Expand All Stacks
Search for one or more of the photos using the Filter Bar (press backslash), search by File Name

Technical question: Is it possible to work on the same Lightroom catalog across two computers and have the catalog sync? If so, how??

Technical question:
Is it possible to work on the same Lightroom catalog across two computers and have the catalog sync? If so, how??
Here's a little more information on what I am trying to do.
I have a desktop computer with 4tb worth of pictures that has Lightroom and Photoshop on it. I also have a laptop with Photoshop and Lightroom. I would like to be able to edit those same pictures with their current edits that are currently on my desktop on my laptop. If this can be done, I'm sure I need to be on the same wifi network for my laptop to be able to access my desktop's photo library. I am technically savvy enough to map a network drive, but how do I get my two Lightroom catalogs to sync when I make a change on one of my computers? Would i be working only on one catalog? Or two separate catalogs that would need to be manually synced to the other computer? Would it be beneficial to put my lightroom catalog on something like dropbox?
I'd appreciate any information or tutorials if someone knows how to do this.

I do this by having my LR catalog and photos on an external drive that I swap between the two computers. I am on Windows and have the same drive letter assigned to the drive on both computers.
Because the photos are on a portable drive I back up the portable drive to another hard-drive every night or after important work, because portable drives are susceptible to damage or loss.

Can I move the Lightroom Catalog from one location to another?

Lightroom by default, places the Lightroom Catalog in the Pictures folder on my PC. My image library though, is located on an external hard drive. I've read that it is better to have the Catalog at the same location to avoid disconnected images, which sounds reasonable. Is it feasable to move the Catalog over to the same drive as my image library, or will that cause a problem? In other words would I need to start over again and create a new Catalog on the external drive? I know this sounds like a dumb question, but I've learnt to my cost that the obvious solution isn't necessary the correct one.

For better performance it is preferable to have the catalog located on an internal hard drive. By default the catalog and the preview files have to be located in the same folder since there is continual read/write taking place while working in Lightroom. Lightroom does not make any changes to the original files so its fine for them to be located on another hard drive internal or external. Lightroom loves lots of hard disk space to operate so if your catalog is on an internal drive make sure it not starved for disk space.
However its ok for your catalog/previews files to reside on an external HDD with your original photo files.
Your photo files can reside on a HDD conected to a network but your catalog and preview files cannot be located on a network.
e.g I have my catalog / previews on the main HDD with my operating system with over 50% free disk space. My Photo files are on a secondary internal HDD with over 75% free disk space. I back up to external HDD.

I have a macbook pro with only 128gb of hard drive. I have lightroom installed and all my photos on an external hard drive. Can I store my lightroom library on the external hard drive too?

I have a macbook pro with only 128gb of hard drive. I have lightroom installed and all my photos on an external hard drive. Can I store my lightroom library on the external hard drive too?

Yes. Find the LR catalog file by looking in Edit/Catalog Settings/General. Close LR and navigate to that spot. The catalog file is the one that ends in .lrcat - move it to wherever you want. Next to the .lrcat file is a subfolder called Previews.lrdata. You can move that over as well, but if you don't LR will generate new previews. Double-click on the .lrcat file in its new home and LR will open with that catalog. Set Preferences to When Starting Up Use Most Recent Catalog.

I'm losing LIghtroom processing changes when opening photo in Photoshop. Why?

I have been using Lightroom only for a couple of weeks. For several years I used Bridge and Camera Raw for RAW file processing. After noticing that every .DNG file I process in LIghtroom 5.4 and subsequently open in Photoshop-CS4 loses the Lightroom processing in Photoshop, I conducted the following experiment:
A .dng file that had not previously been in LR catalog was placed in folder as Original DNG.dng.
File was copied and named Lightroom Processed.dng
Both files were imported into LR
The Lightroom Processed.dng file was loaded into Develop module and Exposure set to +5.00. (Note that original is underexposed by about 1 stop and at +5 the photo is almost completely washed out.)
Lightroom Processed.dng was opened in Photoshop-CS4. (There was no prompt for "Edit a copy with Lightroom adjustments". I'm assuming it was because it was a .dng file.) The original underexposed version was displayed is PS. When Ctrl-S was used to save the file, a file entitled Lightroom Processed-Edit.tif was automatically saved in the same folder and imported into LR.
I copied the Develop Settings from Lightroom Processed.dng to LIghtroom Processed-Edit.tif and the numeric exposure setting was displayed as +5.00 BUT there are slight differences in appearance and in the histogram for the .dng and .tif versions. The .tif version is very slightly darker than the .dng version.
I opened LIghtroom Processed-Edit.tif in PS. This time I was prompted to "Edit a copy with Lightroom adjustments" along with the other two options for opening a copy without adjustments or opening original. I selected "Edit a copy with Lightroom adjustments".
I can't believe that one cannot process a raw file in Lightroom and then open it in Photoshop without having the processing one does in Lightroom carry over into Photoshop. I've never had this problem using Bridge and Camera Raw. What am I doing wrong?
Thanks in advance to all who can help with this problem.

@willard, moving from a Photoshop Bridge-ACR workflow to an Lightroom workflow there are a couple important differences to be aware off.
a. ACR/Bridge uses .xmp sidecars to read and write changes to raw files(in the case of DNG files the .xmp data is stored within the file header). ACR/ Bridge cannot read the data stored in the Lightroom Catalog. The info is in the file.
b. Lightroom by default uses a Catalog file to read and write all that you do in Lightroom. The info is in the Catalog. There is also the option to have Lightroom also write info to a sidecar .xmp file or within the file header of DNG, TIFF or JPG files. This can also be achieved by using the CTRL/CMD-S. This info in the .xmp or DNG files is used by ACR/Bridge.
c. In your case the xmp data written by LR 5 which uses the equivalent of ACR 8.4 will not be fully understood by PS CS4 which uses ACR 5.x.
d. So if you open a DNG file directly in PS CS4 there will not be full compatibly. (you may have requested Lightroom to write to the DNG file but PS CS4 cannot read it all)
Quote "(There was no prompt for "Edit a copy with Lightroom adjustments". I'm assuming it was because it was a .dng file.) "
In the Lightroom Preferences General tab> Prompts> select Reset all warning dialogs.

Should I use a second library / catalog for clip art photos

Hi!
I've used LR for several years for my personal photos - editing & tagging & sorting etc. I've only ever used the one catalogue - hence putting this in the beginners forum.
I also have on my laptop a range of stock photos and clipart. This is beginning to increase as I do more on blogs/websites etc. and I need to manage it - and be able to find what I need. I have considered getting picasa, as I didn't want to mess up my personal lightroom catalogues and have millions of unrelated tags, but then I thought about starting a second catalogue specifically for stock pictures.
But I would like to ask some more experienced users their opinions. Is lightroom viable for cataloguing stock photos (I may do some editing of them, though the primary purpose would be tagging)? If I start a second catalogue will the tags be completely separate and not impinge on my own photos? Or there any pros/cons I need to consider? Would picasa or some other tagging software be better suited (I had heard that picasa also tagged things like colour automatically)? If I keep all of the stock photos on an external hdd will that impact on my decision making process?
Many thanks for your time!

I use two catalogs but one is only used when on the road. I will add metadata to photos but I never do any development work on the laptop catalog. As soon as I am back home, the first thing I do is export the working catalog on the laptop and import it into my primary catalog on my Mac Pro. The second catalog is only a temporary thing. I had tried maintaining two catalogs at one time using one for my working catalog and a second for my archives but that also became unworkable since I always had to search them both to find what I was looking for. LR only allows one catalog to be open at any point in time so switching back and forth became more than just a little annoying. Now I work out of the one catalog which contains both the working files as well as the archives and the catalog on my laptop is only live when I travel and even that only if I plan to be gone for more than a few days. For your situation I would toss my vote on the side of a single catalog as well. The metadata is a great way to distinguish images coming from other sources making it easy to locate them or distinguish between one of your own images from a stock image. If you want a more visual way, you could use one of the color labels as well. Add the label and then set your preferences to shade the background with the color and you can tell instantly in Grid mode which images are stock by the background color of the cell (I tend to be visual in my thinking). I would still add a keyword such as "stock" or "stock image" though.

Shared Lightroom Catalog???

I use Lightroom exclusively for my photos.   I initially used it with my desktop Mac (PowerPC G5) and then started using it also on my laptop (Macbook Pro). Both computers have all photos on external drives. There is a separate Lightroom catalog on each computer corresponding to each computer with it's individual external drive.   You can imagine my problem now, I'm sure. I have, effectively, TWO Lightroom catalogs, each with unique images, but also I've copied some photos over between them. The problem is growing exponentially.
Here's what I'd LIKE to do.   I'd like to install a shared NAS drive (perhaps an Apple Time Capsule drive) on my central hub in my house (my whole house is wired for Ethernet so that's not a problem), then put all photos on that single hub, thereby using a single Lightroom catalog and with it's images from either computer. If I have to travel somewhere and take some photos with me, I can deal with that because that it is typically the exception, not the rule.
Has anyone tried to do this?   I don't need to nor expect to hit the shared catalog from both computers at the same time. I'll be using one or the other, but not both. But I'd like to bring these two environments together.
I'd love some insight from forum members who've attacked this problem and solved it. I just don't know if Lightroom will allow the catalog to be on a shared drive, thus accessed by either computer.    If it will, then I imagine the work I need to do is:
1)     create a large shared NAS drive.
2)     copy all images to that drive.
3)     pick one of the two Lightroom catalogs and make that the master and somehow point it to the NAS drive.
4)     import the remainder of the photos on the NAS drive to Lightroom.
5)     make sure that both computers reference the Lightroom catalog on the NAS drive.
or maybe not. Maybe there's a better way. I'd like your input.
if this won't work, then has anyone successfully merged two Lightroom catalogs together.   One of my catalogs has about 80,000 images, and the other about 35,000 images.   At least 50% of all images are keyworded and I'd really hate to lose my keywords and collections that I've created.
anyway, insight is welcome. Tell me if I'm nuts too.
Thanks in advance.
Dennis

The closest think to this that will work is to put all the images on a large Firewire 800 drive with the LR catalog on the same drive, possibly in another partition. And alternately plug the drive into one machin or the other.
It is Networked drives where one can't put a Catalog, as John says.
Don

Importing into lightroom catalog on a mac

I just moved my lightroom catalog on an external drive to a mac from a pc. I got the entire catalog moved with no issues or problems except for this. When I try to import new photos i get a message saying that the file cannont be read and that the files were not imported. Has anyone else run into this issue while using a mac? Thanks for any help

How did you format the external drive? It needs to be FAT32 if you want it to be able to be read and written by both PC and Mac. Sometimes when LR says "cannot be read" it also or instead means "cannot be written".
John
John G. Blair Studio
Occidental, California

Lightroom Catalog Questions:

Hey guys, a few quick LR questions...
1. Can a Lightroom catalog see folder structure? (If for example, I asked it to reference files already on my hard drive, could I see the folder structure that existed, and navigate to it from within the program?)
2. Would those files remain accessible via Finder?
3. If I ADDED a photo to the folder via the finder, could I update the catalog so Lightroom knew it was there?
4. If I Moved/Deleted a photo from a folder, could I make Lightroom update the catalog with the new info?
5. If I added an extra FOLDER, could I make Lightroom see it? Would I need to add it via Lightroom, or the Finder?
Thanks!

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes
4. Yes
5. Yes, you have to add it in your operating system first, and then add it to LR
Having said all that, I point out that Lightroom is NOT a file browser. It only knows about photos (and the folders that contain them) that have been imported into LR, and so you have to alert Lightroom properly of any changes that are made outside of Lightroom.

Lightroom catalog maintenance question.

The Lightroom catalog is a convenient feature that allows changes to photographs without making changes to the original picture.
I have had problems when I have to reorganize folders and files in Windows. If I rename a folder in Windows I damage the path to the pictures and I lose the Lightroom catalog.
I have a very dynamic set of image files that have to be created and filed away (deleted) very frequently and the stability of the Lightroom catalog seems to be in the way. Maintenance of the Catalog feels like an extra burden.
What is the best way to repair (modify) the Catalog links to the Windows files when they have been deleted or renamed?
Thanks in advance.
Al

You can change the links via
http://www.computer-darkroom.com/lr2_find_folder/find-folder.htm
I have a very dynamic set of image files that have to be created and filed away (deleted) very frequently and the stability of the Lightroom catalog seems to be in the way.
Most people don't delete photos once imported into LR, and everything works very smoothly. Once the photo is imported, leave it in Lightroom. Saves you some work.
Furthermore, the idea of importing the photos to a certain location, working with the photos and then moving the photos somewhere else might make sense in your operating system, but in Lightroom this is an extra step with no obvious benefits (in my opinion). Better would be to import the photos to their destination, and not perform the two-step Move to Folder A followed by Move to Folder B.
By the way, I hope you understand that if you delete photos from Lightroom (but not from your hard disk), your edits may not stay with the actual photos. By default, the edits and other metadata are not stored with the photo files.
And as John said, an organization scheme that uses keywords and other metadata will be far superior in the long-run than moving photos from folder to folder and location to location.

Where is my Lightroom catalog?

Help! I lost a 1TB external hard drive of my photos(my whole collection). When I went to upload my files from my backup drive, I noticed my catalog was empty(all my edits gone). Im not sure what happened, but I tried to look in the "backup" folder that lightroom backs up the catalog to, and that seems empty as well.....Im using Lightroom 5.6 on a mac book pro with the latest operation system. Admittedly im not very computer savvy, so this is frustrating. I have thousands of edits im missing. Even stranger is the 3TB external I use a "time machine" should contain backup files of my lightroom catalog(I think?) but it has a folder of about 100 random edits in it.....Im fearing the worst here......any help would be appreciated......The lightroom catalog was stored on my mac hard disk, not the 1TB hard drive I lost, so Im confused as to why I lost all edits.........

The LR catalog is a file ending in the extension ".lrcat". Perhaps it wasn't stored where you think it was. You could try using Spotlight to search for it, though my own experience is that Spotlight is not reliable for searching the entire drive. I suggest downloading the free EasyFind app from the Mac app store and searching your Macintosh hard drive for ".lrcat" (with the options Only Files, Phrase, Ignore Case, Package Contents, and Invisible Files & Folders).

Wanted: Lightroom Catalog Viewer

Am I the only person who would love to see an Adobe Lightroom Catalog Viewer, available for all to use to view the contents of LR catalogs?
Why?
Here's one example: I have a portable USB drive on which I keep several catalogs. I work on these catalogs by plugging into my LR-installed computer. But sometimes I have the drive with me, but without my computer, and I find myself wanting to show a few pictures on a friend's computer. It would be great if I could just plug into his computer, and use a LR Viewer to show him my images.
I know, I could just export a copy of the images to this drive. But that's sort of a waste when all I need is a simple view once in awhile. Plus, Export doesn't seem to retain file/folder hierarchy if I export more than one folder at a time, so exports are sort of painful to search through if you're trying to find one photo to show off... especially when you don't have LR handy.... which brings me back to the need for a LR viewer.
Could this be in the works?

Yes, actually I've used SQLite for some of my database needs within Perl applications (web/cgi, etc.). So I've been able to look over the contents of LR database files that way. But as you surmised, I'm looking for a slightly more elaborate solution.
I know Adobe would never want to erode Lightroom sales with a freebie such as Lightroom Catalog Viewer (my own name for the idea), but I think if the functionality were limited only to viewing thumbnails, screen-full displays, and simple slideshows from a LR catalog, it wouldn't erode sales, and may actually serve to entice people into LR who otherwise might not have the motivation.
I would think that there should be no library editing, no flagging, color coding, none of that. No develop module, no printing, no web page generation, and only a single type of basic slide show.
Why would people use it, being so basic? Because it applies all of the database-stored settings to an image without first exporting the image. I would be able to save an entire catalog to my external drive, take it on the road, and invoke the viewer from any computer to browse through the catalog. No editing, no frills; just let me see my corrected images without having to export them all.

Lightroom Catalog is Huge

I have 129,980 in my lightroom catalog. The photos go back to January 2000 and are only about 350GB but this previews file is over 116GB. This seems excessive.
Is the alternative to simply take a moment to build previews when I go to a folder? Most of my folders are pretty small.

PictureTakerGuy wrote:
My concern is both wasted space and disk overhead. 120GB seems like a high percentage of overhead for a 350GB collection. Especially when I consider I might never edit many of the photos there.
If you've got a number in mind that's too much, then there's a problem.
Many people don't worry until there's a performance issue, in which case it doesn't sound like there's a problem.
I'm coming from ACDSee world where there was little overhead and blazing fast photo thumbnails created when you went into a directory.
How would I do same in LR. I like LR and I'm not trying to bash it. I just don't feel comfortable with the amount of wasted space where I need to back it up, etc.
You need to understand that these are two very different programs which operate under very different principles. If you want the fastest performance out of Lightroom, then I think you want to have the largest possible previews, and they are left on your hard disk forever and beyond.
When I run WinDirStat it takes forever to even figure out how many files are in that catalog. It takes less time to get the pictures counted than the catalog or preview files.
Time it takes WinDirStat to finish? Hmmm ... I have never seen anyone complain about that before. Seems like you are inventing a problem. Lightroom is designed to produce a lot of preview files.

Lightroom Catalog Maximum mumber of photos

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for