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Preview and Smart Preview - taking up too much space

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WasOz

New Member
Joined
Mar 21, 2016
Messages
12
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Lightroom Version Number
Lr Classic 12.0.1
Operating System
  1. Windows 11
It may be an existing issue but after upgrading catalog to V12

Previews .lrdata is 2.7GB
Smart Previews.lrdata is 34.7Gb

How should reduce the size of either previews so that my laptop works without a clogging

Thanks
 
That's odd. My Previews folder is about 2.5 times bigger than the Smart Previews folder. You could try deleting (or renaming if you're cautious) the Smart Previews folder and rebuilding the Smart Previews.
 
First question is of course if you need smart previews at all. Do you sometimes work with Lightroom while the original images are unavailable, for example because they are on an external drive that isn’t connected? If not, then you don’t need smart previews.
 
It may be an existing issue but after upgrading catalog to V12

Previews .lrdata is 2.7GB
Smart Previews.lrdata is 34.7Gb

How should reduce the size of either previews so that my laptop works without a clogging

Thanks
You can safely delete previews. Whenever you work on images again, LRC will rebuild previews.

You can set LRC to delete 1:1 previews daily, weekly, after 30 days, or never.

It is true it isn't necessary to have smart previews but Victoria made a good suggestion last week that LRC v. 12 works faster when working in SPs than not.

If you don't need your smart previews, do this:

In the Library module, click LIbrary > Previews > Discard Smart Previews ) Iast item in the list in a PC environment).
 
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