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Author Topic: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??  (Read 7377 times)

Phil Indeblanc

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How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« on: February 07, 2013, 10:14:15 pm »

Hi LR users,

I wanted to know the number of images you have in one catalog.  Please post your numbers and your experience in performance at these numbers.

Thank you!!!
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Robert Katz

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #1 on: February 07, 2013, 10:58:59 pm »

I have 20,000 images in my catalog.
I have had no problems running LR 4.3. It is quick with no lags, hangups, etc.
I use a DELL XPS with 16 Gb RAM, a SSD,  3rd Generation Processor.
All my images are an external drive connected with a USB 3.0
Robert
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ErikKaffehr

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #2 on: February 08, 2013, 12:04:26 am »

Hi,

64457 "images". That probably includes virtual copies.

I am on old MacPro with 16GByte RAM and SSD as system/swap drive.

No problems at all. I don't think database is a bottleneck in LR.

Best regards
Erik

Hi LR users,

I wanted to know the number of images you have in one catalog.  Please post your numbers and your experience in performance at these numbers.

Thank you!!!
« Last Edit: February 08, 2013, 01:01:52 am by ErikKaffehr »
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ario

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #3 on: February 08, 2013, 12:46:37 am »

I have about 30,000 photographs on my current LR4 catalog; catalog and raw files are all stored on external HD's (main and bak-up's) which I can connect either to an i-Mac or to a Mac Book Pro Retina.
Never had any issue with the catalog.
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Schewe

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #4 on: February 08, 2013, 02:49:35 am »

175K images, primarily raw (about 5K rendered TIFF/PSD files). Works fine on a Mac Pro tower with a lot of ram and really fast drives.
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john beardsworth

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #5 on: February 08, 2013, 03:16:45 am »

70k in my own, though I work closely with someone who has just hit 450k. Not ridiculous hardware in either case, but no significant problems.

It's a mistake to infer that the number of images affects Lightroom performance. Hundreds of thousands aren't big numbers for a database, and you're probably accessing only a few hundred/thousand of these images at a time. Most of the time LR is accessing its previews, and when it does need to grab the originals it's your disc I/O that makes the difference, as Jeff says. What's more, most reported slowdowns have other origins - eg large numbers of keywords in pre Lr4 on Windows, large numbers of dust spots on an image etc - and during the LR3 cycle these were targeted. The volume of images does affect how long backup takes, but that happens when you're asleep or doing something else.

John

« Last Edit: February 08, 2013, 12:20:36 pm by johnbeardy »
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Josh-H

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #6 on: February 08, 2013, 05:12:43 am »

175K images, primarily raw (about 5K rendered TIFF/PSD files). Works fine on a Mac Pro tower with a lot of ram and really fast drives.


Dam.. You win Jeff (by a lot!).  ;D

About 80k RAW and about 3k rendered TIFF's - Mac Pro Tower fully loaded w/ 32 gig of ram, Fast drives, Hardware RAID, etc.
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mac_paolo

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #7 on: February 08, 2013, 06:28:15 am »

29k Raw files
~100 Tiff/PSD

No problems whatsoever with a mid-2010 2.4 GHz MBP.

(Yeah, I hate everything which doesn't happen directly under Lightroom  ;))
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Les Sparks

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #8 on: February 08, 2013, 11:21:09 am »

About 35,000 mix of RAW, TIFF, and JPG from scans and various cameras. All images on external HD (now USB 3 prior was USB 2). On Dell XPS Intel i7 processor and 16 GB ram. No performance issues that I see.
Before this has older GATEWAY with less RAM and older processor. At times there were minor performance issues but nothing to really interfere with using LR 4.
Doubt that number of images is really an issue for using LR.
Les
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Ken Bennett

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #9 on: February 08, 2013, 12:15:38 pm »

About 35,000, mostly personal with some freelance, running on a 27 inch iMac first gen with the Core Duo processor and 8GB of RAM. No real performance issues.

The work photos are not catalogued in LR.
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Phil Indeblanc

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #10 on: February 08, 2013, 01:53:39 pm »

I posted this as I was making one catalog as opposed to a catalog per client. I was strongly encouraged by most users to do this.  I approached it in a two step process.

First I made a new catalog file. Then imported half of the images into it. At this point I was at 176K+ images.  It was still running rather smoothly.  Then I wanted to import a couple more and at this point I thought I better import the split multiple catalogs in order for me to have all the processing instructions for the images. At this point I had 187K+ images and on one of the imports the process of importing that catalog didn't complete. It just stayed in the same state for hours, and hours. 

So I ended up terminating that process and reboot and try again. After a couple attempts of it hanging in the same area I stopped it again. I needed to jump back in and work, on some of the latest images, and noticed a rather long delay for the main image to fill up the Dev screen(or Library screen).  The thumbs populated, but a bit randomly as I scrolled over them, they appeared. At first nothing appeared to show up when selecting different images. Then I guess after some lengthy background processing they started to appear. This was at the end of day and I didn't really work the file much, but things looked OK.  I will be working on this catalog today. But wanted to ask and share to see if others had such behavior and particularly some thoughts on the one catalog that didn't complete the import. Should have I let it try and import overnight? I even set the process priority to a High level in the Task Manager. 

FYI: I'm running...
Intel Corei7 860, ~3.2Mhz QuadCore on Asus P7P55DPro
x64Bit Windows7
16GB ram
256GB SSD Crucial M
64GB System memory (Patriot Torqx)
64gb Swap for Photoshop (Patriot Torqx)
Gigabit LAN on 50-60MBS network on a number of servers.
nVidia GeForce GTX 460 graphics card/ Total available 4096MB, Dedicated vid mem 1024MB, System vid is zero memory, Shared Sys memory is 3072MB
2 screens @ 2560x1600
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indusphoto

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #11 on: February 08, 2013, 03:13:36 pm »

Your hardware is not an issue. The problem may be in the catalog you are importing. Try creating a new catalog and importing this in the empty catalog.

You may want to open the catalog that is causing problem when importing, and optimize it or export to a new one and import.

Phil Indeblanc

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #12 on: February 08, 2013, 03:15:28 pm »

good advice Sunshine err.... ;)
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Ellis Vener

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #13 on: February 08, 2013, 03:45:55 pm »

About 170K here. Lr4/3 on a 2.66Ghz iMac. Images are stored on a 9TB Drobo connected via FW800.
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Phil Indeblanc

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #14 on: February 08, 2013, 05:29:07 pm »

FW800 is a good idea.

My servers have a eSATA connection besides the 1gigabit network connection.

I wonder if I can have the network connection stay as is for the different computers to access the content, while having the eSATA to the main editing computer for LR/C1 ?

I would have to have multiple eSATA connection inputs to my editing computer via some card slot on my Mobo. But if it would work smoothly, this maybe worth doing.
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john beardsworth

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #15 on: February 08, 2013, 08:54:45 pm »

Phil, my suspicion is that the problem is more likely to be in the older catalogue you are trying to import into the new one. To get round this, select all the pictures and do a File > Export as Catalog. This should create a clean catalogue which you can import.

Long delays are not unusual when doing the Import from another Catalog into a big catalogue. Checking for duplicates is often the reason. If you are certain there are no duplicates, you can disable this routine.

John
« Last Edit: February 08, 2013, 09:04:22 pm by johnbeardy »
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CoyoteButtes

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #16 on: February 09, 2013, 04:39:08 am »

If I do a File>Export as Catalog with all images selected and then re import that new catalog file, do I have to regenerate the preview file?

Thanks,

Stan
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john beardsworth

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #17 on: February 09, 2013, 06:09:39 am »

Yes - if you don't include the previews in the export. It's an option.
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Phil Indeblanc

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #18 on: February 09, 2013, 02:06:22 pm »

John, good points. Although it states that it does the file check which it had finished that portion. It was after checking for dupes.  I will do a couple more things before Monday and see.. Thanks.  Just to clarify, when you mention to select all pictures, I wish LR would use more specific vocabulary, as often when we say pictures, it should or could mean the reference file, or preview file..... as I always think of picture as the main file/ the raw or main derivatives that reside on a server. Maybe this is open to interpretation, and that makes things unclear.

Anyway, I will try it out. thanks to all posts I'm sure it will clear up.
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StuartOnline

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #19 on: February 09, 2013, 08:13:04 pm »

Currently as of today I have 41,558 images (mostly Raw) stored in my Lightroom 4.3 catalog. Main computer being used is an Apple 15" MBP Retina with 16GB Ram. The images are stored on an external Seagate 3TB Thunderbolt Hard Drive (write/read average 190MB/s) along with a number of USB 3 external drives (backups).
« Last Edit: February 09, 2013, 08:19:44 pm by StuartOnline »
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