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Author Topic: LR4 Catalog size  (Read 4882 times)

Persio

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LR4 Catalog size
« on: March 10, 2013, 08:20:42 pm »

Gentlemen,

Is it possible to establish an approximate correlation between the number of images in a LR4 Catalog, the size of the lrcat file and the size of the previews folder (lrdata folder)?
I am starting a general reorganization of my images (approx 90k files) and would like to try to extrapolate the disk space it will take.
So far I have added 3,800 images, my lrcat file is 160MB and my previews folder (lrdata folder) 933MB.
Will they grow linearly?
Thanks for your comments.
Persio.


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Schewe

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Re: LR4 Catalog size
« Reply #1 on: March 10, 2013, 08:42:01 pm »

So far I have added 3,800 images, my lrcat file is 160MB and my previews folder (lrdata folder) 933MB.
Will they grow linearly?

While the catalog file will prolly be based on the number of images in the catalog (and how much "stuff" you've done to the images such as settings and adjustments) the size of the previews folder depends on what size previews you have and how many 1:1 previews you've made and the MP size of the original raws.

Since that can vary, I don't think you'll really be able to predict the size of the catalog to previews folder sizes...the previews folder can grow very large (not as large as your originals, obviously). Sorry, but I don't thinks any easy answers...
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Phil Indeblanc

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Re: LR4 Catalog size
« Reply #2 on: March 11, 2013, 12:52:33 am »

The linear equation for that is to get the largest and fastest disk your card can swipe for. period.
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Simon Garrett

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Re: LR4 Catalog size
« Reply #3 on: March 11, 2013, 07:21:53 am »

For me: 63k images, around half raw (mostly 12Mpixel D300 images):
  • Images take 427Gbyte
  • Catalog takes 1.25Gbyte
  • Previews take 11Gbyte
The size of the previews will depend on whether you've looked at everything.  I mean, when I moved everything to a new drive last year, I didn't copy the previews.  That means there will be previews only for things I've looked at since then.

You don't need to back up the previews in the previews folder called something like "Lightroom 4 Catalog Previews.lrdata" - you can even delete them if you like, but LR recreates them next time you look at the relevent image.  Obviously, looking at an image in Library module is slower if the preview isn't there. 

Whatever, the space taken by the catalog and previews is pretty small compared to the space taken by the image files. 
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Persio

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Re: LR4 Catalog size
« Reply #4 on: March 11, 2013, 09:26:22 am »

Simon,
Thank you for your numbers and comments.
This is exactly the kind of information I was hoping to obtain.
Regards,
Persio.
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Rhossydd

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Re: LR4 Catalog size
« Reply #5 on: March 11, 2013, 09:57:10 am »

25k Images 1.05tb
Previews 75gb
Catalog 540mb

A mixture of 21mp(30%),17mp(40%),8mp(10%),6mp(20%) all should have 1:1 previews.

Edit: Corrected typo
« Last Edit: March 11, 2013, 10:29:53 am by Rhossydd »
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francois

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Re: LR4 Catalog size
« Reply #6 on: March 11, 2013, 09:59:01 am »

Simon,
Thank you for your numbers and comments.
This is exactly the kind of information I was hoping to obtain.
Regards,
Persio.


Persio,
A few months ago, we had a discussion about Lightroom's performance and it might interest you. Anne van Houwelingen (Vistographer) pointed out that the size of her LR catalog went up with heavy usage of brush tools (IIRC).
You can read her message here: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=73102.msg581124#msg581124
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Francois

eliedinur

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Re: LR4 Catalog size
« Reply #7 on: March 11, 2013, 10:10:55 am »

Quote
Catalog 540kb
0.527 MB? Is that a typo?
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Rhossydd

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Re: LR4 Catalog size
« Reply #8 on: March 11, 2013, 10:30:10 am »

0.527 MB? Is that a typo?
Yes, corrected now.
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Ellis Vener

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Re: LR4 Catalog size
« Reply #9 on: March 11, 2013, 12:42:29 pm »

With about 170,000 images in my current lightroom library, the .lrcat file is 3.43GB and the previews.lrdata file is a hair over 52GB. 

The image library itself is around 5TB but is on a Drobo (10TB capacity) and an OWC Mercury Elite Qx2 RAID 5 array (12TB).
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JRSmit

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Re: LR4 Catalog size
« Reply #10 on: March 11, 2013, 12:44:48 pm »

Persio,
A few months ago, we had a discussion about Lightroom's performance and it might interest you. Anne van Houwelingen (Vistographer) pointed out that the size of her LR catalog went up with heavy usage of brush tools (IIRC).
You can read her message here: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=73102.msg581124#msg581124
Yes this is true, because a copy of the xmp dataset is kept as a blob in the lrcat. Local corrections such as brush do take up some space. Still it is not really significant in context of the total space of your images. If i export a image as tiff for some development in Photoshop i get immedeately some 250MB of tiff extra.
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JeanMichel

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Re: LR4 Catalog size
« Reply #11 on: March 11, 2013, 02:37:11 pm »

Hi,
And after a while the accumulation of backup lrcat adds up to quite a bit of space. I did not look at that until reading this thread and now notice that I have a bunch of backups that can be deleted,
Jean-Michel
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KarlGohl

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Re: LR4 Catalog size
« Reply #12 on: March 12, 2013, 03:30:56 pm »

On my Mac, I use the Compress item on a file's right-click menu (which I believe invokes zip compression) on my LR catalog backup files and they compress to 1/6th  to 1/5th their original size.  Since discovering how much the .lrcat files compress I am backing up my catalog more often.
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