Lightroom Settings location

[billg71]

Is there any way to change the location of the LR settings folder (presets, modules, etc.) in Windows?

I keep my catalog on a separate RAID partition for speed and it would make for easier backups if I could have all the Lightroom stuff in one place instead of hunting through C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data\etc., etc......

If not, then I'll make this a Feature Request.

TIA,

 

[Denis Pagé]

Is there any way to change the location of the LR settings folder (presets, modules, etc.) in Windows?

I keep my catalog on a separate RAID partition for speed and it would make for easier backups if I could have all the Lightroom stuff in one place instead of hunting through C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data\etc., etc......

If not, then I'll make this a Feature Request.

TIA,

I did not checked if one can choose to put them anywhere they want but you can choose to keep presets WITH the catalog(s). But before doing so, be aware of the consequences! It then become different if you work Lightroom in English, French or German! :shock: ...and can get confusing if you switch languages often.

 

[billg71]

Thanks, Denis!

I did some exploring and it seems that selecting "Store Presets With Catalog" moves everything BUT the preferences file into a subfolder under the Catalog folder... So I guess I answered my own question. Multiple languages aren't an issue for me so I'll just keep everything with the catalog.

But why not the preferences?

 

[Denis Pagé]

Thanks, Denis!

I did some exploring...

But why not the preferences?

On one side I agree that this would be fine to look at only one place to backup a program with its data and configuration files. But on another, that would probably be as much cumbersome to configure a backup for many different programs rather than just backup the data area plus the users settings.

This is one thing we can explore depending on each ones needs...

 

[Victoria Bampton]

It's standard windows programming protocol. Most programs put their settings & preferences all in the same place - 'Documents and Settings' on Windows. So you could just back up that entire folder, and you'll get a backup of settings for all of your other programs too. There's aren't many programs that I can think of, that allow you to change the location of those files.

 

[Brad Snyder]

Most programs put their settings & preferences all in the same place - 'Documents and Settings' on Windows. So you could just back up that entire folder, and you'll get a backup of settings for all of your other programs too.

Good idea, although, in my experience you're better off to pick and choose the applications that are important to you, and only backup those respective subfolders. A lot of crap gets dumped in there by web browsers, with cookies, and page/image caches, and stuff like that.

 

[someothername]

It's standard windows programming protocol. Most programs put their settings & preferences all in the same place - 'Documents and Settings' on Windows. So you could just back up that entire folder, and you'll get a backup of settings for all of your other programs too. There's aren't many programs that I can think of, that allow you to change the location of those files.

(a bit long winded...)
In the bad old days of "personal computing" I always created the settings file to go in the same folder as the executable. I was not the only one who resisted strongly the "doctrine" from microsoft to put settings in a common place. But today it makes a lot of sense because the vast majority of personal computers usually have at least two user accounts, an administrator and yourself, and many have more than two accounts. This one I'm using tonight has accounts for my daughter, my son, and the dog sitter. None of them have access to the drive where my photo work is stored. Having the settings tied to the user account makes a lot of sense, particularly if two or more people are sharing the same computer. At the same time, having the image data associated with the images and not the user also makes sense.

If you are used to going into Documents and Settings to look for things, be aware that when you upgrade to Vista things will change. You will still see a Documents and Settings folder, but it is virtual. The real files have been moved to Users. I managed to completely screw up my user account fiddling around with what I thought were my original Documents and settings files when they were really virtual copies of stuff Vista had moved to Users/myID/videos for example.

One of the recommendations I've seen several places is to put all your photos under my pictures. In the old Documents and Settings days (XP etc) that has the huge disadvantage of file path names with spaces in them. Under Vista that possible problem is eliminated, but I still think the data should not be on the same drive as the operating system.

In Vista there is an automatic feature that keeps backups of the program files and their settings. So how I use Lightroom and Photoshop and Helicon and the others is being taken care of by the operating system, both for me and for the other users of my machine. But the data that I work on is being taken care of by my own backup activity, which includes DVD, a USB hard drive and an online backup service.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Nice write up, thanks Brandon!