number of images in single LR cat

[Chris Shain]

Hello from a new member,

I'm trying to get some idea of the number of files that one single LR cat could hold, without the whole thing grinding to halt. In theory LR could contain an infinite number - but I suspect in practice there'll be limits somewhere. Obviously OS specs will have some bearing but I'd be curious to hear of what ceilings people are finding. I've heard of 75,''' can anyone share larger quantities ?

thanks

Chris

 

[Kiwigeoff]

Hello from a new member,

I'm trying to get some idea of the number of files that one single LR cat could hold, without the whole thing grinding to halt. In theory LR could contain an infinite number - but I suspect in practice there'll be limits somewhere. Obviously OS specs will have some bearing but I'd be curious to hear of what ceilings people are finding. I've heard of 75,''' can anyone share larger quantities ?

thanks

Chris

Chris, welcome to the forum. Experience that this is very dependent on system specifications etc. Answers therefore will vary, personally I try to keep my working catalog at 1'k as that works for me for speedy work.
If you fill in your signature, people will be able to give more specific guidance. - thanks!

 

[Chris Shain]

thanks Geoff - thought I'd saved a signature but it hasn't appeared ? hopefully its up now.

Chris

 

[Kiwigeoff]

thanks Geoff - thought I'd saved a signature but it hasn't appeared ? hopefully its up now.

Chris

That's great mate!!
How's the day going over there??

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Hi Chris, welcome!

Adobe's official line is "There is no known maximum number of photos you can store in a Photoshop Lightroom library. Your computer might run out of address space for your photos between 1'',''' and 1,''',''' photos."

In reality, performance does definitely degrade once you get that big, although it's improving with every release, so I have no doubt that it will continue to improve.

It does depend on system specs, but I tend to keep my 'working' catalogs under about 2'k, and then import those into a large 'archive' catalog for easy searching. My archive catalog's now running at around 17'k and it's definitely a bit slower, but perfectly usable for searching.

 

[PatrickC]

My archive catalog's now running at around 17'k and it's definitely a bit slower, but perfectly usable for searching.

If it's usable for searching, when do you notice the slowness? Surely when you are tweaking an individual image it makes no difference, because Lightroom isn't doing anything where the number of images makes a difference - except in terms of disk access, which is not related to Lightroom. I woudl have thought that it would be when you are searching that you might notice a slow-down.

I have a single catalog with images on two USB drives.

Patrick Cunningham

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Yes it is slower for searching, but it's a darn site faster than having to open and close multiple catalogs!

I've also noticed it when browsing through files and folders.

That said, it's a while since I've updated or used it, so I'll have a play and report back!

 

[jimtron]

I've been wondering about this myself. I'm new to LR--I've been using Iview/EM and Bridge up until now. I have two external 1TB hard drives filled with raw files, and am starting a third. I started by importing one of the drives and I'm getting very slow performance, with 9'k images. I like the idea of only having one catalog, but maybe that's not a good idea? Anyone have links or other sources for getting the best performance from LR? By the way, I have 5GB ram on a dual core 2.6 Mac Pro. I have 24'GB free on my startup disc. I'm getting the spinning beach ball quite a bit.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Hi Jim, welcome to the forum!

Where are you seeing the slowness? That'll give us a few clues on where to start looking for performance increases. External hard drives are notorious for slowing LR's performance down, simply because of the many disc read/writes.

 

[jimtron]

Hi Victoria, thanks!

When I launch Ligthroom for the first time I get the beach ball, and just generally it seems very sluggish. I've been using Bridge frequently for a long time, and though that can sometimes be a little pokey, it's much quicker than LR. What about hard drives slows it down--the rated rpm, or not enough disk space, or something else? My external drives with raw files are connected via FW 8''.

 

[jimtron]

Does anyone know what Adobe's official position is on number of images? Do they recommend a certain max. number of images to avoid performance problems?

 

[Brad Snyder]

If there's an official recommendation, I haven't run across it. I know several folks in the 1''-2''k image range. Although they tend to 'work' in smaller catalogs, and archive to the big master for subsequent search/retrieval.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Only official line I know of is:

How many files can I have in my library?

There is no known maximum number of photos you can store in a Photoshop Lightroom library. Your computer might run out of address space for your photos between 1'',''' and 1,''',''' photos.