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Hello, I am using LrC 10.2 and I created a new catalog file by:
I reviewed folders/files and see this:
Why is the catalog file so large for 1 photo.
Any suggestion on what I'm doing wrong or how to resolve this is appreciated.
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Your not doing anything wrong. The Lightroom Classic database (test.lrcat) requires space for all the tables. Lightroom requires help files and preview files.
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Thank for the info, does it sound correct that a single catalog with 1 picture shoud be that large?
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The catalog does not contain the image file. It is a database file that will contain a reference to where the image is located as well as a record of all the adjustments that you make to that image. It will also enable you to create collections which are groups of images that are not necessarily in the same folders. It will enable you to create keywords for each image, enabling you to quickly locate images as the number of images it increases. And all that information is kept within the single catalog. The catalog size will not increase quickly by simply adding another image. The size of the catalog is not anything that can be correlated with the size of a single image file.
You could try the option to optimize catalog, and see if that reduces the size. That does seem to be a bit large for a single image.
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This all makes sense...I guess my follow up question is how do I create a new catalog that only pertains to the project and not any other historical data or preferences. I use the catalogs to share between the team and its difficult sharing files this large. All things equal, if I start from new catalog what should be the expectd file size?
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The catalog file size will be what ever it turns out to be. You have no control over that. You realize that if you are sharing the catalog you will also need to include the images. Right?
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Something does seem a little odd. With just one image imported, the LrCat file should be about 2 mb in size, not almost 1 gig. What happens if you do a database optimization?