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Author Topic: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??  (Read 7379 times)

John Caldwell

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #20 on: February 09, 2013, 10:41:27 pm »

130,000: RAW and PSD files mostly. All image files, catalog and preview files are on a FW800 drive. A maxed out iMac, but without a SSD drive, is the host. The performance is pretty bad when working from the bulky master catalog, so I tend to work from much smaller assignment-based catalogs, and then import final work, once it's complete, into the big master catalog. I gather from reading here that the biggest improvement I might find would be in placing the catalog file on the boot drive, and making the boot drive a SSD - but I've not tried this.

John Caldwell
« Last Edit: February 10, 2013, 10:29:42 am by John Caldwell »
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kaelaria

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #21 on: February 09, 2013, 11:04:24 pm »

125k mostly DNG with about 20k TIF.  Catalog on an SSD, other files on fast RAID0, everything is instant.
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John Caldwell

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #22 on: February 10, 2013, 10:28:57 am »

...Catalog on an SSD, other files on fast RAID0, everything is instant.

Regarding the practice of keeping the catalog on an SSD, am I right that the same SSD is also best used for operating system and program files, in order to achieve the sppeding up of LR?

Thank you,

John Caldwell
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CatOne

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #23 on: February 10, 2013, 10:38:56 am »

Regarding the practice of keeping the catalog on an SSD, am I right that the same SSD is also best used for operating system and program files, in order to achieve the sppeding up of LR?

Keeping everything on an SSD is the fastest, given SSDs are substantially faster than spinning drives these days.  It's just a question of how much you can fit.

But yes, SSD for OS, programs, most data files, and Lightroom catalog is good.  You can keep the RAW files on a mechanical drive as they're infrequently read.  You may wish to keep the previews and camera cache on the SSD.
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John Caldwell

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #24 on: February 10, 2013, 11:42:18 am »

CatOne, Thank you. I better get up to speed with the technique you suggest. As it now is, with catalog, preview and image files an a FW800 rotating drive: I dread doing any work from my large catalog. Small catalogs, say 5000 or fewer files, are fine with that technique though.

Many thanks,

John Caldwell
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Jim Pascoe

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #25 on: February 12, 2013, 03:22:13 am »

There are 177k images in my main 'work' catalogue.  The pictures are a mix of raw and jpeg.  For weddings I usually dump the raw files after a year or so and just keep jpegs.  The system is a 2011 MacPro quad core with 16gb of ram. Pictures are stored on an internal raid for recent stuff, and an external DROBO for older work. All seems to run smoothly.  I have a separate catalogue for personal work.

Jim
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John Caldwell

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #26 on: February 12, 2013, 07:22:11 am »

There are 177k images in my main 'work' catalogue.

Jim, Where is your catalog file? Are any SSD involved?

Thank you,

John Caldwell
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Hans Kruse

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #27 on: February 12, 2013, 08:09:40 am »

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!!!

Currently 91,046 images of which most are RAW, movies, TIFF and PSD files, virtual copies. Total about 1.7TB. It's all on my 2012 MacBook Pro 2.6Ghz, 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD. I have seen no slowdown due to catalog size and all single image operations happen immediately. I have all my images in one catalog, otherwise I would not use the power of Lightroom.

John Caldwell

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #28 on: February 12, 2013, 08:52:53 am »

...Total about 1.7TB. It's all on my 2012 MacBook Pro 2.6Ghz, 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD.

Hans, your image files live on what type of drive please?

John-
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Hans Kruse

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #29 on: February 12, 2013, 11:53:32 am »

Hans, your image files live on what type of drive please?

John-

I should have added that my images live partly on the MBP SSD's and on an external 3TB USB 3 drive. The most recent images are on the MBP and are moved over to the external drive after some time and when I'm mostly finished editing them.

bobtowery

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #30 on: February 17, 2013, 02:34:57 pm »

136,411 in my main catalog. About 20k in two other catalogs. I have all my image files (12 years worth), plus the LR catalogs, previews (etc), on a single WD Black Caviar 3TB drive. It's plugged into a USB 3.0 drive dock.

This makes it easy to back up the entire lot to other drives, which I do both nightly, and rotate other drives in and out of a fireproof safe and a remote storage location.

I could get a tiny perf boost by separating the catalog and the images, but it isn't worth the ease of use (peace of mind).

When I began with LR, all my images fit on a 1TB drive. As my images volume grows, the drives keep pace. I'm now using a 4TB drive for some other files I manage and it works beautifully.
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kaelaria

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #31 on: February 17, 2013, 09:47:22 pm »

Regarding the practice of keeping the catalog on an SSD, am I right that the same SSD is also best used for operating system and program files, in order to achieve the sppeding up of LR?

Thank you,

John Caldwell

Yes.  I would keep everything on SSDs if they were cheaper.  What i do is import to the SSD, work on the project on the SSD and when it's complete 'archive it' to the RAID0 array of HDDs.  Still very fast when I need it but this way I enjoy the maximum SSD benefit.  I also do not use RAW, I convert to DNG on import, no cache files to worry about anymore either.
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Jim Pascoe

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #32 on: February 18, 2013, 04:30:02 am »

Jim, Where is your catalog file? Are any SSD involved?

Thank you,

John Caldwell

Hi John

I have two discs in my Mac set up as a mirrored RAID which hold the most recent files, and the Catalogue also resides here.  It is backed up onto another disc too.  The drives are 3TB ones.

Jim
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Phil Indeblanc

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #33 on: February 21, 2013, 07:50:41 pm »

Well, I did manage to get them into the "main" catalog. 184,127 for now. I likely have another 80K to add.  This is my personal, stock and "events" work. My client work is another catalog.

I think I will have to be much stricter on the "keepers". More than I have been, as I delete blurred or test shots,  but my instinct to document tells me to keep others :-)
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neil snape

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #34 on: February 23, 2013, 10:50:06 am »

One catalogue, 125,600 images mostly CR2, some psd ( well all the edits) and some tiffs from advertising.
A separate scratch drive, for PS and LR. An old Mac Pro 2x dual core 2.66mhz, 9 GB ram. Images on a 7200 rpm internal.

IF I went to a SSD can I just move the dat files on the scratch disk to the new one or will they be lost as the directory is different?
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Phil Indeblanc

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Re: How many images in your LR4 Catalog??
« Reply #35 on: February 24, 2013, 12:56:32 am »


125K would take a bit of time to populate and re-cache, as you work through them.

It maybe a good time to do a clean install of OS and apps. At that point you can create the cache folder on the scratch. Once you move over the dat files, then put the catalog on the OS drive, when you open it, you would hope all points to the same location.
Cross your fingers.

If you were upgrading 1 SSD drive wouldn't you want that to be the OS drive?
I have both the OS and Scratch on separate drives and they are both SSD. But left the cache on the OS drive. I wonder if it would make a difference being on the cache? Not sure of the read access timings.

I have read that the SSD drive can "wear" faster since the scratch gets a lot of repeat use with R/WR. I still use one as the one I bought has a 10 year warranty! (64GB).  I have had earlier SSD simply wipe all info off the drive. I don't know if this has been corrected over time with the different controllers on the drives, but I have a Raptor HDD with a backup in case. (the cache being on the OS drive is also backed up)

à bientôt
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