Participant

Question

Remove Denoise data from LrC catalog

Forum|Forum|1 day ago
May 21, 2026
3 replies
67 views

I accidentally denoised a large number of photos in Lightroom Classic 15.3. Unfortunately Lightroom Classic stores the denoise data in the catalog blobs, so my catalog size on the disk skyrocketed.

I unchecked denoise on the raw files and optimized the catalog, but it didn’t remove the denoise data from the catalog.

How can I get rid of the denoise data to reduce the catalog size?

Thanks-

Lajos

_lajos_Author

Participant

While this is still mostly manual, I found a way to save the final development settings for the images, although this method requires re-importing them.

Select the images in Library mode
Hit Cmd-S (or Ctrl-S on windows) - this will save the edits made to each file in an .XMP sidecar next to the images, or into the .DNG file
Remove the images from Lightroom (don’t delete them from disk)
Optimize the catalog to remove the denoise bloat
Re-import the photos

In the end however, while my catalog is now smaller, the catalog is still massive because there are other binary information saved into the lrcat-data blobs, not just denoise (for example AI masks).

I assume most people don’t have catalogs with thousands of images, so Adobe deciding to save binary data into the catalog to speed up the interface makes some sense, however IMO all the data that can be recomputed should be saved into cache, to keep backups fast and disk space manageable.

johnrellis

Legend

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@_lajos_ I found a way to save the final development settings for the images, although this method requires re-importing them.

It’s simpler to select all the photos, go to Develop, and do Develop > Clear History. That clears the steps from the History panel but doesn’t remove the actual develop settings. With respect to develop settings and history, the result is the same as removing from the catalog and reimporting.

However, reimporting has big downsides compared to Clear History. The membership in collections, stacking, virtual copies, and probably other things I’m forgetting aren’t stored in metadata on disk, so that will all be lost.

The LR UI uses confusing terminology (not the LR team’s strong suit). Develop > Clear History removes the steps recorded in the History panel without affectiving the photo’s develop settings. Whereas right-clicking a History step and doing Clear History Above this Step undoes the develop settings for those history steps as well as removing them from the History panel.

_lajos_Author

Participant

I did try Clear History for all photos in the catalogm but it didn’t reduce the size of lrcat-data. The only way I could reduce the catalog is by removing the photo, optimizing the catalog, and re-importing. And I agree, this is not ideal because of all the reasons you mentioned.

Up until recently, I was able to have a catalog with small disk usage, and store the originals on a portable drive. This allowed me to easily back up and transfer my catalog between computer quickly, even over a hotspot on the road. With smart previews that were in local cache only, I could even do some work without the originals.

Now with all the bloat in lrcat-data, it takes a considerable amount of time to do backups and transfers, and pretty much impossible over a hotspot. I wish there was a preference to save this data in the cache or with the originals.

johnrellis

Legend

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@_lajos_ in an effort to clean the catalog, I selected the denoised files and synced a preset to them without denoise… so there is not even a way left to identify which images they are bloating my catalog

You could go to Library Grid view and do View > Sort > Edit Time. Then by examining photos’ History in Develop, you could find the first and last photos in the edit-time ordering that had that preset applied as the most recent history step. Then save those photos in a collection.

Note that any change to a photo’s Develop settings or any metadata field will change its edit time, so merely changing the pick flag, star rating, or color label will set the edit time to “now”.

_lajos_Author

Participant

Thanks for your great suggestion of using the edit time. I’ll try to isolate the photos that way.

johnrellis

Legend

In addition to unchecking Denoise, you have to clear the Denoise step shown in the History panel of each photo.As long as those steps exist, they reference the Denoise data in the .lrcat-data file and it won’t get removed by Optimize.

To clear the Denoise steps, right-click the history step below the Denoise step and do Clear History Above This Step. Unfortunately, there’s no way to do that for a batch of photos at once. Instead, you’ll have to select all the photos, go to Develop, and do Develop > Clear History, which clears the entire history for each of the selected photos.

Once you’ve removed references to Denoise from the History panels, do File > Optimize Catalog. The .lrcat-data file will shrink back close to its original size.

_lajos_Author

Participant

Thanks you.

I was afraid to have it confirmed that there is no easy way of doing it. I have thousands of photos with this issue in a a catalog with multiple hundred thousand of photos.

It was a horrible decision from Adobe to move so much data into the proprietary catalog without an easy solution to remove it.

Before posting here, in an effort to clean the catalog, I selected the denoised files and synced a preset to them without denoise… so there is not even a way left to identify which images they are bloating my catalog, without going through hundreds of thousands of photos.

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