re-organization catalog

[plasson]

Lightroom Version Number

Lightroom CC 6.4

Operating System

1. Windows 10

Hi to everyone, just bought a Scott Kelby manual on lightroom and I'm trying to follow suggestions come from the book.....1st difficult I met is the reorganization of my photos.
90% of my photos are related to travel:
Before I had one catalog for each travel
After reading the book I create one catalog where I've imported all the previous's one......catalog is saved on laptop and photos are saved on external HD.
Size of photos on external HD are roughly 250gb .....what is strange is the folder's size on laptop is now 20gb (I guess is too much considering the photos are stored on external HD) ....if i look just the catalog file is just 150MB.
Do you have an idea why catalog folder is too big (20gb), might be the photos preview.s? If this is the case how I can make my catalog's folder more slim?
Thanks for your help
Paolo

 

[clee01l]

Welcome to the forum. Let's start with some clarifications, The catalog is a file with the extension "*.lrcat". It (usually) resides in a a folder named "Lightroom" found in the Pictures folder. Inside the same folder where the catalog file resides is a "package" folder with a name similar to the catalog name that contains your previews. The name of this previews folder will end in "...Previews.lrdata". And your, this Previews folder package can grow as large as 20GB or more. You can't really make the Previews folder smaller. however you can more judiciously be selective on which previews are generated (size, full etc.) And you probably do not need previews for older photos that you might not need to access in the near term. With LR closed, you can delete the previews folder package (""...Previews.lrdata"). and the next time you start Lightroom, it will create a new "...Previews.lrdata". package folder, generating new previews for just those images that you access.

 

[plasson]

Thanks clee01, exactly .....the folder previews.irdata is the one really big ....20gb....i have a couple of questions:

• If I follow your suggestion ....deleteting the folder previews.irdata , as far as i understood nothing will happen to the job done so far....and when i will reopen lightroom i will select which photos need to have the preview
• Is there a way to delete in selective mode the previews generated so far....if yes how i should do that?
• Without deleting any previews folder can I just resizing the previews already generated?

thanks

 

[clee01l]

In the library module under the menu item "Library", there is a submenu called "Previews". There you can discard 1:1 Previews for the selected images or build Standard Previews or 1:1 previews for the selected images. AFAIK there is no way to discard selected standard previews. I did not mention this process as it it tedious and rebuilding previews as needed by deleting the "...Previews.lrdata". package folder is quick and efficient.