QQ about Camera Raw Cache and why mine is empty

Quick question about Camera Raw Cache:
Mine is empty. Always.
I've read that the Develop module stores information on photos it opens in the Camera Raw Cache, while the Library module stores its previews in the LRDATA directory adjacent to the Lightroom Catalog. I've also read that the former can be stored anywhere and is limited to a size specified in Preferences, while the latter must accompany the Catalog file and has no cap on its size.
So why is my Camera Raw Cache always empty? I go in and out of the Develop module, edit, switch among photos within Develop, view images at 1:1 and larger within Develop, etc. Shouldn't that cause cache entries to be generated in the Camera Raw Cache? I've tried moving my Camera Raw Cache from within Preferences, and I have the size of the cache set to 30 GB with plenty of room on the drive, but it's still always empty.

Ah, yes. I shoot only JPGs. Funny how none of the documentation or tutorials mention that. The ones I've seen all imply that Lightroom uses Raw format internally when editing photos and that's why it needs a Camera Raw Cache for holding those internal files in the Develop module. I thought whenever I opened a photo in Develop, Lightroom was converting my JPGs interally to a proprietary Camera Raw format for editing them. Guess not, then.
So where does Lightroom hold all of its internal files for JPGs that I'm editing in the Develop module? Does it use the same files it generates in the Library module for 1:1 previews? (That's so different from what the tutorials say -- for example, around 11:00 on Julieanne Kost's tutorial on optimizing Lightroom, she never says she's only talking about working with Raw format.)

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Converting to DNG - which Camera Raw compatiabilty and why?

When converting camera Raw files in Lightroom 2.5, a dialog box asks which Camera Raw/Photoshop version I want to make DNG file compatible with. (See my screengrab below) I understand why Adobe made different vesions of Camera Raw and stopped supporting older versions (so users would buy the upgrades of Photoshop and Lightroom). The question I ask.. Does a DNG file created to be compatible with Camera Raw 5.4 have superior qualities/algorithms/technical mumbo jumbo/ finese /or what not over a DNG file created to be compatible with Camera Raw 2.4 and later?
Seems sort of silly to not use the 2.4 setting if 5.4 has no advantage (other than keeping older versions of Photoshop and Lightroom from opening it ).
What is the scoop?

Camera Raw does evolve over time. There are changes to the rendering algorithms. Additionally, new camera support is added with each new iteration of Camera Raw. The older versions are offered so that if you are still using older versions of Camera Raw and Photoshop you can generate compatible DNG files.
If you are using current versions then I suggest you choose the most current version in the dialog box. If you are still working under ACR 4.6 then choose that. It's there so you aren't "forced" to buy upgrades to PS and LR.

LR 5.5 - Camera RAW Cache settings reset non-stop

Lightroom doesn’t remember the folder path in Camera RAW Cache Settings section in File Handling tab in Preferences window. I want to set my own folder Camera Raw Cache and its maximum size but every time Lightroom sets default path (C:/Users/Name/AppData/Local/Adobe/CameraRaw/Cache/) and also maximum size as 1GB. When I set all the parameters Camera RAW Cache and click OK or switch between the tabs in Lightroom preferences window or restart Lightroom and I return to the File Handling tab all the data is reset to default. The same happens when I want to change the parameters Camera RAW Cache from Adobe Bridge and Photoshop.
Second question:
When I use DNG file format with Embed Fast Load Data option in the folder Camera RAW Cache the “DAT” files doesn’t appear. Is it connected with the use of Embed Fast Load Data option? When I use the original NEF files from my Nikon “DAT” files appear.
[Win 7 64-bit, LR 5.5, Web&Design CS6]

I have no trouble placing my Camera Raw cache where I want to put it. Perhaps deleting your Preferences file would help with that problem.
Yes, if you embed fast-load data in your DNGs, LR will use that instead of the CR Cache.
Hal

PS CS6 / Bridge / ACR 8.5 - Camera RAW Cache settings reset non-stop

Adobe Bridge/Photoshop doesn’t remember the folder path in Camera RAW Cache Settings in Camera RAW Preferences window. Every time when I want to set my own folder Camera Raw Cache and its maximum size, I click OK and return to Camera RAW Preferences, I see default path (C:/Users/Name/AppData/Local/Adobe/CameraRaw/Cache/) and maximum size as 1GB.
[Win 7 64-bit, LR 5.5, Web&Design CS6]

Problem is solved!
I delete folder "C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\". Then I start Lightroom and I pick my own folder in Camera Raw Cache Settings, set 20GB size and click OK. Now everything works fine. Bridge and PS also fine.

Curious question about Lightroom previews and Camera Raw Cache

Posted in the Flickr Lightroom Group as well:
I have noticed something about the Lightroom (3.6) previews and Camera Raw cache that have me puzzled.
I create a brand new empty catalog and purge the Camera Raw Cache.
Then I import ONE Nikon RAW (NEF) file with dimensions 2592 x 3872 (10 megapixels - 10,036,224 pixels).
Next I export that NEF file to an uncompressed 8-bit TIFF file. You would expect the size of that TIFF file to be roughly 30 megabytes (10 megapixels x 3 bytes per RGB value) and in fact the TIFF file is 30,135,830 bytes in size. If you export the same TIFF file but specify ZIP compression the resulting file size is 10,834,038 bytes. Obviously the compression obtained here is going to be highly specific to the image but so far no surprises.
During import I specify render 1:1 previews and I go into Loupe mode and view the entire image at 1:1 size. I also visit the develop module and do a bunch of manipulations on the image but no cropping.
At the conclusion of all of that I exit from Lightroom and examine the size of the Camera Raw Cache folder as well as the Lightroom previews folder. It would be my expectation that the previews folder should have a rendered full image and that the Camera Raw Cache should also have a rendered form of the raw data. What would you expect the size of those respective folders to be?
In fact - in my trials the previews folder totals a mere 1,675,264 bytes and the Camera Raw Cache which contains one DAT file corresponding to the one cached image is merely 267,374 bytes. This does not seem like nearly enough bits to preserve the rendered image nor is there a full size image tucked away in the actual catalog either - that file is not large enough to contain that. And yet I can use Loupe mode at 1:1 size and move from image to image with no loading delays (even when importing multiple files).
I'm wondering if I've missed something obvious in my analysis and if not, whether someone might care to speculate as to what magic Adobe is practicing here. Even if we grant them some special algorithm to compress their previews I don't see how they can achieve a compression so much greater than the ZIP-compressed TIFF file achieves.
And for those that might think to ask - I've repeated these experiments with multiple raw images and on both the PC and MAC platforms.
I look forward to some answers or interesting theories or perhaps someone might replicate the experiment and report findings.

MadMan and Hal - thanks so much.
So that was my D'Oh moment of what I was missing - the use of re-rendered JPGS as previews. That certainly does fit with the file sizes I am seeing. I had naively assumed that the previews might have tried to preserve the full fidelity of the image - But as you suggest that full fidelity is likely only there in the develop module.
This perhaps explains another observation from the Develop module - moving from one image to another might display "Loading" either briefly or across a longer duration. My guess is that the length of the loading process might have to do more with what is cached in RAM than cached on disk in the camera raw cache. More of a shame then that 64-bit Lightroom on 64-Bit Windows cannot grab more RAM than it seems to do at present.

Camera Raw cache size and location

I've been using ACR for about 3 years now, and today it occurred to me that I'm not that sure I know what the cache is actually used for. I mean, I know what a cache is, but what is ACR caching, and why?
I use Bridge for most of my photo work, displaying high quality thumbnails and previews, often full-screen ("monitor-sized previews" by default). Bridge has its own cache, which I understand contains jpegs of thumbnails, previews, and 100% views. Does ACR's cache have any bearing on Bridge's behaviour and performance, especially with thousands of raw images?
What sort of size and location of ACR cache should I be using - what factors do I need to consider?

Hi,
I'm still not sure what size of cache I should use, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of bigger or smaller ACR caches.
Maybe Eric can tell something indeep about the impact of a large cache. I'm not sure about that myself, but don't believe a larger cache is a real disadvantage, as long the disk on which it reside is maintained: defrag often). Since Bridge and ACR work hand in hand here, it might depend to your workflow and to your hardware. Sorry, I can't give a clear answer here.
As said I would put it just large enough for a certain number of RAW or some weeks work. Means, when there is a chance I'ld touch a certain RAW in six weeks again, than six weeks * x images per day I shoot.
Not sure if you are a Pro. I'm not and usually have not much new images every month. I always was fine with the default settings.
I don't work with Bridge and open one RAW after another in ACR, or maybe 20+ in a row when doing panorama ;-)
But Bridge has to do a lot of work on the fly when it generates the previews for all new RAW in a folder, like: "read the image from HDD", "process it by ACR, "write Bridge previews and metadata to HDD", "write to ACR cache " - not necessarily in this order.
And it seems it does this and some additional steps always (not only when first time reading RAW), because it f.e. needs to check if there are already processing information in ACR database or XMP file for a RAW or if they have been created in "meantime". Means ACR settings could have be changed after Bridge did a first time generation of the cache data, maybe because the RAW was openene directly via PS or by another app.
this process is fairly processor-dependent, especially now that ACR uses more sophisticated processing in version 6, and, depending on ACR defaults, this can be significantly slower than in previous versions.
And Bridges eats huge amount of memory as well - seems it holds a lot of information in memory before flushing it to disk.
After reading this post of yours I made a test with my 12k RAW the other day. I tried to let Bridge create previews for all of them in one step, but it ended up complaining that there is not enough memory after ~ half an hour.
Bridge appears to generate previews unnecessarily sometimes, because every image is already cached.
See above. Bridge/ACR checks for updated processing information in XMP or ACR database and metadata updates. If it find some it might need to rebuild its cached image.
Why would I need to reset the cache with a new monitor profile? Surely this is not applied to cache JPEGs?
You are right, sorry I mixed things up here :-( I meant ACR camera profiles. Aside that I changed monitor profile a lot over the last weeks doing some tests, and after that Bridge often refused to start until the cache was purged…
Your suggestion of a larger cluster size is very interesting, and I may try this when I have some spare time.
All my disks meant for storing large files (images, music, scratch, temp-file) are formated with a larger cluster size. It speeds things up a bit.
Supposedly Lightroom's catalogue system is superior, but I am yet to be convinced that putting all my XMP data in one basket is a good idea.
Of course LR shares ACR's cache. I don't know much about LR, but I believe XMP are not only kept in one basket here, right? They are written to the images and in case of RAW to XMP files. Otherwise there wouldn't be an interoperability between LR and Bridge. Similar to Bridge LR stores previews in it own "cache" which is as well a folder and file based "database". Check "preferences".
But as said I use another DAM, in which’s database all data needed for searching is kept, but I also write all metadata (IPTC,XMP) to the images, even for RAW files. By this I don't need a large ACR cache and also don't have XMP files around, which I hate. When saying database, I mean a real database, not a collection of files which are kept on disk. ;-)
Aside other advantages, I can take my database with me on vacations and can work on my images like I do at home. I have all my keywords and categories with me in one file and when back, I just copy the database to my desktop.

LR4 and Camera RAW Cache folder

Hi all,
I know many are complaining about LR4 responsiveness and how LR3 was faster in response.
Like many others, I have a new and very fast PC, however it seems that LR4 is crawling when it comes to navigtaing through images.
I've done my share bit of tweaking LR4 to get the best optimized results such as, Optimize catalogs, Render 1:1 previews, Increase Camera Raw cache size to 30GB, move the Camera Raw Cache folder next to the catalog folder as Adobe recommends and what not.
LR4 didn't become more responsive, however I did notice something strange, which is the topic of this post.
While filddeling around with LR4 performance issues on my PC, I've noticed that even though I have over 20,000 images in my PC and some folders are rendered with 1:1 previews, the Camera Raw Cache folder is empty.
This might explain why rendering 1:1 previews didn't affect LR4 while browsing images.
For example, right after I've created the 1:1 previews (whether it's straight from import or after the fact) I'm browsing back and forth during this browsing action, LR4 renders the 2 images each and every single time I view them - that beats the purpose of using the cache folder.
So one comes to think how could it be that with such a catalog size and 1:1 previews, the camera raw cache folder remains empty? And could this be the cause that makes LR4 render each and every single image time and time again regardless if I viewed the image a second ago?
Thanks.
Gil.

Firstly, to clarify, Previews and Camera RAW files are not the same thing. Previews are simple, just jpeg representations of the raw file, at various resolutions used principally in the Library module and filmstrip.
Camera RAW cache files are used by the Develop module and contain the output from some initial RAW processing. I don’t remember exactly what processing but about half that LR needs to do to render an image. This processing is done regardless of what you actually do in the Develop module so it is done once, then cached. This is why the “Loading” appears to take longer when you initially browse to an image in the Develop module. The rest of the RAW processing (about half) is done every single time you browse away from the image and back again. This is why you always get CPU spikes when browsing through images in the Develop module. So you can create as many 1:1 previews as you like, this will have no impact whatsoever on image rendering performance in the Develop module.
So to answer your question specifically,
Can you be more specific about when exactly does this folder being populated?
A camera raw cache file is generated when you browse to an image whilst in the Develop module. Files continue to be generated until the cache size limit is reached, then as new files are generated, the oldest are deleted.

Adobe Bridge in Photoshop - How to install Bridge and camera raw? And what is it all about?

Hi everyone! I am actually in love with this adobe photoshop. I used PSCS2 before, but later on upgraded to CS4. But I feel tired in upgrading to CS5.
One time, I found a tutorial in youtube about camera raw, and would really want to use it. But I was wondering how to install the camera raw. I believe camera raw is a plugin? so I downloaded the plugin here, installed it in my PS. I downloaded a file Camera Raw.8bi and paste it on my C drive - C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop CS4\Plug-ins\File Formats.
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If yes, how does it work? How am I suppose to open camera raw?
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I badly need help!

WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is a set of extensions to HTTP/1.1.
The main difference from FTP as far as I can see is that it allows you to edit documents on a remote web server.
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If you are into file sharing rather than publishing, Dropbox or its new rival SugarSync are more appropriate.

I just found an error in the file name for my Camera Raw Cache file. How do I correct it?

I just found an error in the file name for my camera raw cache file. The error is in my username. I don't know how to correct the error or if I should just leave it. I'm not sure where my cache file is stored on my computer. Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you

Since you are on a Mac if when you first set up your account you left out the i in Wilson nothing you do will change that. The REAL account name will always be alicewlson. Once an account is created you can't actually change the name of it. You can change the name that is displayed but not the REAL account name.
Simplest thing to do is stop worrying about it. Everything is as it should be, that is except Wilson being spelled without the i.
Lilac50 wrote:
When I searched finder for "alicewlson" I found a long list of files like this:
2014-07-22 12.50/File005.nef[15:16:35.212] (debug) src/ImageLoader.cpp:363: File: /Users/alicewlson/Recovered/2014-07-22 12.50/File002.nef[15:18:02.173] (debug) src/StoreXMLFile.cpp:21: /Users/alicewlson//.rpro/rpro.cfg
I believe I made the error in my user name when I first got my computer a year ago. I then corrected it under my user name but not in my Lightroom files. I also looked for files with a .lrdata extension and didn't find any.

Lightroom using Adobe Camera Raw Cache

Just noticed I have a lot of large files accumlating in C:\Documents and Settings\myusername\Local Settings\Application Data\Adobe\CameraRaw\Cache.
Is this normal? Should it clean out automatically (does not seem to be) or can the size be limited?
Appreciate any insight.
~Bob

Hi Bob,
SIze limit on the camera Raw cache file is controlled in the FIle Handling tab of the Lightroom Preferences (Lightroom|preferences). The default setting for LR 2.0 is 1 GB. BE aware that this setting is also controlled by any other Adobe application that supports Camera Raw (Photoshop CS3, Bridge, etc.). So, if it is changed to 4 GB in Bridge, it is 4 GB in LR. It is a cache used by the Camera Raw and it speeds up Camera Raw applications. When you have finished, you can purge the cache at any time by pressing the Purge Button in the same section that contains the maximum cache size.
Dave Huss

LARGE Camera Raw Cache Causing SLOOOOW LR Startup?

In an attempt to try and speed things up while using LR2, which has been operating very slow on my Mac G5, I increased the Camera Raw cache size to 20gb. I have a massive abundance of HD space and didn't think the increase would hurt. Lately when starting LR2, the program takes upwards of 8 minutes to start up (no joke, I timed it using my stop watch). Is it because of the large cache? Outside of the slow startups, is there any benefit in having a cache that large? I honestly don't notice any useful performance gains since making the cache bigger.
Computer specs:
-Mac G5 dual 2.3ghz
-6.5gb ram
-200gb free space on System disk
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-All disks are SATA II 7200rpm, in a Firmtek 5PM SATA II external enclosure

Do what Miss Frizzle always says: Experiment!

Pls help. My Camera Raw, CS6 and Lightroom won't read the NEF files from D610.

I recently upgraded to Nikon D610 and the NEF files were not readable from my old version of Camera Raw, CS6 and Lightroom. So downloaded the recommended upgrades and I now have Camera Raw 8.4.0.199; Lightroom 5.3; CS6 13.01. But still did not read my D610 NEF's. Please help. Thanks.

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Output sharpening in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and Photoshop CS5

Output sharpening in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and Photoshop CS5
I want to do two-pass sharpening - capture and output - with output capture done just before I print. I do the initial (capture) sharpening in the ACR Detail/Sharpening panel, with Amount slider set to, for example, 100. Then, I open the image to PS CS5 as a Smart Object, and use layers and masks for further editting.
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This is pretty much the way I do it, and I also always found ACR sharpening superior to anything in Photoshop. There is the "sharpen for output" in ACR, but you have little control over it.
The tricky part is feeding the file through ACR a second time. I don't think re-opening the Smart Object will do anything more than you could have done the first time. I do it with a rendered TIFF, and have an intricate set of actions that I run in the Image Processor Pro. It's a mess, and you don't want to know.
The frustrating part is how to action ACR. I just can't figure it out. It'll work, and then I have to change some setting and the action stops working. I suspect you need a script, but so far I haven't found any.
So I've come to a compromise: I first process to TIFF in a temp folder, then I bulk open them in ACR to sharpen, then a second process to finish up.
For less critical files I have a sharpening action that comes close, involving edge masks and blend ifs, using smart sharpen which tends to preserve edges better than unsharp mask, and with less accumulation of noise.
Bottom line: I'm also very interested in further comments to this. BTW, I recently bought Lightroom 4, so maybe there is a posibility using that in a mixed workflow.

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I opened my library on my mac and was looking for my settings file under camera raw and I didn't see it. As I was looking, I accidentally highlighted the camera raw folder and it's contents, and when I let go, they were gone.
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QQ about Camera Raw Cache and why mine is empty

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