Windos 7 Pictures library folder has 188,500+ files?

[johnkiv]

I am a long time Lightroom user, using default settings, (system info below).

When I open my "\Pictures" library is its filled with LRPREV, DNG.  Some of these go back to 2008.  Can I delete these, should they be going away automatically?  This is filling up C drive.

I attached a screen snip of my "File Handling" settings.

Application folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Lightroom
Library Path: C:\Users\John\Pictures\Lightroom\20140712_Lr5_Catalog\20140712_Lr5_Catalog-2.lrcat
Settings Folder: C:\Users\John\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom

Any advice, directions, or links will be appreciated.

Thanks, John

[Paul2660]

I don't keep my LR catalog on C, as I found when moving off the C (same drive as OS), LR performance improved dramatically.  But even where I am storing my catalog, I do not see any .dng files.  Those would seem like a raw file to me.  The previews I believe are .lrprev  and you will have a lot of them depending on the size of the catalog.

The other thing you have to watch for is the number of backups, as they do eventually add up in size.

Paul C

[eliedinur]

Why do you have so many Smart Previews? SPs are used as surrogates for editing photos when the original files are off-line. If your photos are on an internal drive or an external that is always available, the SPs have no use. They are probably the DNGs that you see since SPs are lossily compressed, lower resolution DNGs in order to retain the Raw editing functions. However, even if you do use them for editing, after the editing is done they have no further utility. Regular previews carry the file extension .lrprev, but they are, in fact, disguised Adobe RGB jpgs.

[eliedinur]

You can rid yourself of those SPs by selecting All Photographs in the Library module (top of the left side panel) and then Library/Previews/Discard Smart Previews.

[Jim Metzger]

Smart Previews can be very handy especially if you are on an older machine and work with large raw files. You can do full development process on smart previews when the original images are offline. The SP are much smaller files and respond to the sliders much more quickly. When you power up the external drive with the original files, all the edits are applied automatically. When working on hundreds of files from an event, this can save considerable time. I would recommend deleting the SP when you are done working on the files to reduce storage overhead.

 

[johnkiv]

I was hoping to see things go faster with smart previews, but I don't think it helped when I had to look at critical focus. I would click on 1:1 and have to wait.  I have not been deleting them when the project is finished. 

Just selected all photos, delete smart previews and now I am seeing (Not Responding) in Lightroom.

Thanks everyone for you suggestions. I have been working along for a few years and not paying attention to all this.  Now I hit a tipping point.

John