Catalogue (catalog) size

[alex]

Hi - I'm entirely new to Lightroom, having for a number of years used a rock solid system based around CS3, Bridge and IView Media Pro until recently, when lack of space, inability to upgrade etc forced the purchase of a new 27" iMac. I've imported my files (about 40,000) and created a new catalogue which appears to be 28gb overall. This seems high to me - I've set the standard preview size to 1440px and quality to medium. Can anyone comment?

Thanks,
Alex

[john beardsworth]

Remember that LR diffs from iView in that the previews are held in a separate folder (packaged on Mac). That meant iView catalogues were limited to 2Gb, an old OS limit, but Lightroom isn't so restricted. In your case the catalogue itself, an lrcat file, may be 3-4 gb but the previews can grown much bigger. If you're concerned, you can always delete the catalogue's Previews.lrdata folder and let Lightroom start building it again. I do so occasionally, but you don't generally need to worry.

John

[PhotoEcosse]

Why did you feel the need to put the American mis-spelling of "catalogue" in brackets?   

Seriously, 40,000 images is a lot for one catalogue but, if that is the way you want to organise Lightroom, there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn't. The 28Gb will not be the catalogue but, rather, all the gubbins that go with it.

Look on the bright side. After the horrors of Bridge, you are going to find Lightroom an absolute joy to use.

Welcome to the light side!

[sm906]

Alex,

I wouldn't worry about the size of the catalog, since this is simply what LR's needs to have everything by hand for your usage and because disk space (and its costs) is not a big deal anymore. If there is something to worry about, it is whether LR is as responsive as you expect. I merged several catatogs recently in only one catalog again with a similar number of files. The responsiveness for this large catalog decreased remarkably (with mostly large Nikon D800 files and many large format panoramas) compared to the smaller ones before.

There is no overall recipe on how to organize ones images. Just do it the way you feel comfortable with LR. Principally there are some advantages to have all photos in only one place. But again, organize to your personal taste.

Thomas   

[john beardsworth]

40000 might be a big number for us to count, but it's not a lot for a Lightroom catalogue. Hundreds of thousands are perfectly possible.

Thomas's issue with slowness is more likely to result from the size of the D800 files than from the number of pictures in the catalogue.

John

[alex]

Thanks everyone for your comments - no doubt I'll be back for more in due course!