Why is Lightroom library so big, and can it be reduced in size?

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
January 19, 2024
1 reply
524 views

Lightroom 7.1.2

MacOS 14.1.2

I have this Lightroom library on my system, which as I understand is for Lightroom (Lr) and not Classic (LrC). It is over 50gb! I've attached a screenshot of the library in Finder.

What is in this library to make it so big? Especially considering my images are in the cloud. This library is a bit less than half the total gb I have in the cloud. So, 120gb store in cloud, 50gb in the library.

Is there anything I can do to reduce the size of this library?

macOS

This topic has been closed for replies.

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

When you import images in Lightroom, these images first get copied inside the Library and then uploaded to the cloud. They will eventually be deleted from the Library again, but this may take quite some time. Editing images can also mean that Lightroom will download a copy from the cloud again, to speed up the edit process. In the Lightroom preferences you can set criteria for how much is stored locally.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

Nadeem28230335k4xrAuthor

Known Participant

Than you for the clarification Johan!

Jim Wilde

Community Expert

Whilst you can't move the Lightroom Library to a different drive, you CAN set a different location just for the local copies of the original files. That would ease the space utilisation on your system drive. Use the Lightroom Preferences>Cache tab to set a new "Storage location for originals:". As soon as you make that change, Lightroom should automatically move any stored originals from the Lightroom Library to the new location.

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