compressed LR Catalog

[LightCode]

hello everybody,

by chance, I discovered that the LR Catalog can be (highly) compressed,
for example, into a RAR archive. My 195 MB Catalog once compressed is
just 16 MB! that is less than 1'% of the original dimension.

It's likely that the LR efficiency could be compromised by compressing
the working Catalog, but I think it could be good if LR would be able
to compress the Catalog for the Backups. It would save a lot of space...

bye, Stefano

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Hi Stefano

If LR's backup could be zipped up automatically as part of the backup, that would be a brilliant idea. Put in a Official Feature Request/Bug Report Form!

 

[LightCode]

Hi Stefano

If LR's backup could be zipped up automatically as part of the backup, that would be a brilliant idea. Put in a Official Feature Request/Bug Report Form!

hi Victoria, thanks for your replay, I will do that...

I just wonder why nobody at Adobe thought about that,
it seems that programmers never care about disk space! :roll:

 

[dbailey]

For that matter, on any CPU capable of running Lightroom at a reasonable speed, basic compression is a trivial task. You could implement compression and decompression on writing and reading the normal catalog and the user wouldn't notice it. It wouldn't give the level of compression of a good archiver, but it would make the catalog a whole lot smaller.

There are some tricky bits (like dealing with the fact that you don't want to have to read and decompress the entire catalog just to get the info on one photo) but that's what make programming fun!

On the other hand, I've never understood users worrying about the amount of disk space their data takes up As a user, I'd much rather have a catalog that's 1' times as big but is faster and more reliable and more feature-rich than a smaller, slower, unreliable catalog. Next to a day's shooting (raw files), the current catalog is fine.

 

[schussman]

In-use compression/decompression isn't so important for me, but this is a great tip for backup purposes: I usually run my backups via my wireless network, and cutting the catalog from well over a hundred MB down to ten or twelve is a great timesaver. I think I'll integrate a simple zip command into my backup script.

Thanks for the suggestion, Stefano!