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where is the smart preview folder exactly?

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guido.coza

guido.coza

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Feb 24, 2013
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Cape Town, South Africa
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6.x
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8.4.1
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  1. macOS 10.14 Mojave
Hello everybody
I back up my desktop on iCloud. The LR catalog is on the desktop. As I got a 1TB ssd now I can have a smart preview of my pics. However I want to EXCLUDE the smart preview from being loaded onto the cloud. What is the exact folder name for the smart previews, and where will I find it?
Thanks for your help in advance
 
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You'll find it in the same folder as the catalog, and it will have the name "your catalog name Smart Previews.lrdata". You might also want to consider excluding the library previews as well, as that cache typically takes up even more disk space....same folder, "your catalog name Previews.lrdata".
 
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First of all, on MacOS it isn’t a folder, but a ‘package’. A package is a folder, but looks like a file. Secondly, people often confuse normal previews and smart previews. You may not have smart previews at all, because you have to tell Lightroom to build them.
 
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That is one of the reasons why I want to do this. I "told" LR to make a smart preview of all the 70K pictures as I got a 1tb ssd. I can put the smart preview onto the laptop but do not want them copied to the cloud
 
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Jim Wilde said:
You'll find it in the same folder as the catalog, and it will have the name "your catalog name Smart Previews.lrdata". You might also want to consider excluding the library previews as well, as that cache typically takes up even more disk space....same folder, "your catalog name Previews.lrdata".
Click to expand...
that is how it looks now with about 80% smart preview done
 

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guido.coza said:
That is one of the reasons why I want to do this. I "told" LR to make a smart preview of all the 70K pictures as I got a 1tb ssd. I can put the smart preview onto the laptop but do not want them copied to the cloud
Click to expand...
They won’t be copied to the cloud. You confuse two things. If you sync images to the cloud from Lightroom Classic, then Lightroom Classic will sync smart previews rather than originals. That doesn’t mean however that if you create smart previews in Lightroom Classic that these will be synced to the cloud.
 
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guido.coza said:
I back up my desktop on iCloud.
Click to expand...
It sounds like some clarification might be in order. Some of the answers seem to be about how Smart Previews work with Lightroom Classic cloud sync, but it sounds like you are actually talking about syncing Lightroom Classic application files (such as Smart Previews.lrdata) to iCloud. That’s definitely a different subject.

guido.coza said:
I want to EXCLUDE the smart preview from being loaded onto the cloud. What is the exact folder name for the smart previews, and where will I find it?
Click to expand...
If the question is about how to exclude Smart Previews.lrdata from an iCloud sync, then it’s a question about iCloud sync options, not really about Lightroom Classic itself. As far as I know, Apple does not provide any file/folder exclude options for iCloud sync. At least not in the visible controls. Google turned up some possible hack-ish tricks, but other results seem to say those don’t work any more. I'm not an expert on this but at first glance it doesn’t look like there is a way to block iCloud upload sync of individual items without some kind of power user sorcery.
 
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guido.coza said:
Hello everybody
I back up my desktop on iCloud. The LR catalog is on the desktop. As I got a 1TB ssd now I can have a smart preview of my pics. However I want to EXCLUDE the smart preview from being loaded onto the cloud. What is the exact folder name for the smart previews, and where will I find it?
Thanks for your help in advance
Click to expand...
I am just addressing what is stated above, Smart Previews are created by Lightroom Classis in two scenarios.
1. This first is to create special preview files for your original imported files when it's not convenient to have access to the original file and allow you to edit the files in the Develop Module. These Smart Previews will be stored in a folder / container in the same folder as your Catalog file and will have the Catalog name and end with a .data. The file is specific to the Catalog and is not utilized otherwise. There are lots of video tutorials to show how you work with them.

2. When you sync image files from Lightroom Classic to the Adobe Creative Cloud the original files are not uploaded to the cloud storage, smart previews are created and uploaded to the cloud storage. This process happens automatically and is independent to 1. above. These files do not affect your storage allocation.
You may need to adjust your thought process.
 
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