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John_Ufford
Participating Frequently
April 14, 2017
Question

Smart previews and optimizing cat.

  • April 14, 2017
  • 3 replies
  • 521 views

I'm looking to understand what happens to smart previews when you optimize your LR catalog. I was doing some reading and it seems that if I delete an image that has a smart preview associated with it the smart preview isn't deleted until I optimize my catalog. Is this correct? I have the same question about 1:1 regular previews.

I currently have one massive catalog I've been using for years. I think it's time to start a new one, but I'd like to still have access to the old images with out having to have the original files local.  I'm hoping to just build 1:1 and smart previews for all of them, remove the originals to long term storage (with a copy of the catalog of course heh) Move the catalog and previews to another drive and then start my new catalog. I'm just concerned that if I run "optimize catalog" on my old catalog LR might try to clean up my previews when it doesn't see the originals connected.

Any advice about my question or input on what I'm trying to do would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

John 

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    3 replies

    J
    John_UffordAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    April 15, 2017

    I think I should rephrase my initial question a bit. I'm needing to know about any issues with using a catalog with only smart previews. Does optimizing the catalog create any problems? (not that I would be doing that much, but it could happen if I made a backup or something). Or is there any other known things that might remove a smart preview besides me manually discarding them.

    Thanks again

    John

    JP Hess
    JP Hess
    Inspiring
    April 14, 2017

    How big of a catalog are we talking about? I seriously doubt you will see any benefit in starting a new one. If you optimize the catalog whenever a backup is created you should be fine. Splitting up your catalog isn't really a very good idea, in my opinion.

      J
      John_UffordAuthor
      Participating Frequently
      April 14, 2017

      Jim see above comment.

      97442 files

      1.25TB

      1.78 ircat file

      Yah I really do see the benefit of just have one large catalog, but besides what I said in the other post about HDD space and performance I would just feel better if I could break it up so if there was some kind of catastrophic failure  in my backup plan there would be less of a chance of loosing EVERYTHING.

      Thanks

      J
      John_UffordAuthor
      Participating Frequently
      April 14, 2017

      I suppose I'm also thinking of the smart previews and the 1:1 as a.. mini backup? I can copy them and the cat. to another external drive and have that as another backup.

      dj_paige
      dj_paige
      Legend
      April 14, 2017

      What is it you hope to achieve by performing this work?

      Why the concern about optimizing your catalog? Usually it goes with "Lightroom is slow", but moving photos to some non-local storage won't fix slowness.

        J
        John_UffordAuthor
        Participating Frequently
        April 14, 2017

        Over all what i'm hoping to achieve is some performance boost and moving files from $$$ drives to less expensive drives for storage. I currently have 97442 files in my catalog and it's taking about 1.25 TB of harddrive space. Since I already use the edit smart previews option I realize I shouldn't receive much of a boost there, but I would think just a smaller Catalog would just run smoother. My current lrcat is 1.78 gigs. Thanks

        dj_paige
        dj_paige
        Legend
        April 15, 2017

        John.Ufford  wrote

        Over all what i'm hoping to achieve is some performance boost and moving files from $$$ drives to less expensive drives for storage. I currently have 97442 files in my catalog and it's taking about 1.25 TB of harddrive space. Since I already use the edit smart previews option I realize I shouldn't receive much of a boost there, but I would think just a smaller Catalog would just run smoother. My current lrcat is 1.78 gigs. Thanks

        Size of catalog will not improve the performance of Lightroom. You are heading down the wrong path.

        If you would state what specific actions in Lightroom are slow, we can possibly advise on how to improve the performance.

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