View single post by Doug
 Posted: Sat May 5th, 2012 20:29
Doug

 

Joined: Mon Apr 9th, 2012
Location: Adelaide, Australia
Posts: 187
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 TomOC wrote:my total catalog has about 130,000 images and when I tested LR, it seemed that would create a catalog of almost 100gb (not a strain for my desktop, but kills my macbook pro). I have those files in a Media Pro catalog of about 1.6gb and save it to DropBox so it is always up to date on both machines and doesn't kill the MBP by filling the SDD (only 256 gb). That problem might be solved if I snag a new MBP before they quit making the 17" ones (as rumored), but till then, I simply cannot put a file that large on my MBP.

Tom. I think you might like to sit up :letsplay:

I think you have completely misunderstood how LR should work
(you have also highlighted one of the major reasons I prefer it over Aperture and iPhoto - although Aperture and iPhoto can both be made to behave in the way described below)

I have a catalog with well over 100,000 images I am working on for a client

The 'Preview.lrdata' file is 3.9GB (this file stays on your computer as it can easily be rebuilt on any machine in use and doesn't need to be the same or sync)
(my own Preview.lrdata file is 5.9GB for 25,000 images - larger because the inlaws were just here and lightroom has busily built a bunch of previews to speed browsing as we searched through for family photos)

The 'Lightroom Catalog.lrcat' file is 1.1GB (my own is 385MB)
(this file could be the same on all machines, can't be launched from a network drive, can probably be launched from dropbox since there is a local file - but this location should not be used for lrcat backups (described below)
I have usually maintained a single file on an external drive (which also contains my images) that can move from Mac to Mac

Thats it - the main part of the burden LR places on your hard drive
Of course LR does create a backup of the lrcat file on a regular basis in case you ever experience a corruption of your catalog and the older backups should periodically be swept away

I think (when importing to Lightroom) you must've clicked 'copy' at the top centre of the import window when you should have clicked 'add'

'add' does not touch or duplicate the file but merely access them in their current location

As for searching - LR has it's faults (can't sort by size etc), but it is a powerful and robust catalog system that makes search easy (especially when you start to use smart albums)

Last edited on Sun May 6th, 2012 06:18 by Doug



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