Dumb newish MacBook Pro user here with major storage issues from LR

[#1]

Hello!  Please be kind.  I freely admit I have no idea what I'm doing.  I went from a Windows user to a Macbook user right before my busy season and basically did enough learning to get me by.  Well, I'm pretty sure I'm doing something majorly wrong because my hard drive is almost out of storage.  I plan on trying to research it more or maybe in zoom call with a fellow photographer to see their workflow but in the meantime, can you tell me if I can delete the following files?  They are in my Icloud/Downloads folder:  

Lightroom Catalog-v10 Previews.lrdata (currently using up 169.3GB)

Lightroom Catalog-v10.lrcat (currently using up 1.2GB)

Lightroom Catalog.lrcat (currently using up 927.9MB)

Please dumb it down for me.  I already searched for answers in here and you're techie lingo is over my head.  Thank you! 🙂

[#2]

Hello!  Please be kind.  I freely admit I have no idea what I'm doing.  I went from a Windows user to a Macbook user right before my busy season and basically did enough learning to get me by.  Well, I'm pretty sure I'm doing something majorly wrong because my hard drive is almost out of storage.  I plan on trying to research it more or maybe in zoom call with a fellow photographer to see their workflow but in the meantime, can you tell me if I can delete the following files?  They are in my Icloud/Downloads folder:  

Lightroom Catalog-v10 Previews.lrdata (currently using up 169.3GB)

Lightroom Catalog-v10.lrcat (currently using up 1.2GB)

Lightroom Catalog.lrcat (currently using up 927.9MB)

Please dumb it down for me.  I already searched for answers in here and you're techie lingo is over my head.  Thank you! 🙂

[#3]

Forgot to mention I use a Synology external hard drive.  

[#4]

Delete the Previews.lrdata folder, and JUST that folder.

It holds the Preview that LrC used to show you your images. LrC will Automatically recreate it the next time you open LrC.

Delete it with LrC Closed.

[#5]

Lightroom Catalog-v10 Previews.lrdata (currently using up 169.3GB) – Previews for the catalog below. OK to throw this out at any time. However, it will grow again over time, because Lightroom Classic will always be generating current previews of the images that you view or work on in the catalog.

Lightroom Catalog-v10.lrcat (currently using up 1.2GB) — This is probably your current Lightroom Classic version 10 catalog with all of your work in it. If that’s true, this must be kept and backed up.

Lightroom Catalog.lrcat (currently using up 927.9MB) – This might be the old Lightroom Classic version 9 catalog you used to use before upgrading to version 10 (but of course I don’t know for sure, you’d have to confirm this). If you are absolutely sure this is the same catalog that got upgraded to version 10 above, then this is an old one that can be deleted.

Storage space issues are going to be more or less comparable between Mac and Windows. The basic rule is to keep a lot of free space on internal storage (the one the system is installed on), regardless of how much external storage you have. How much is “a lot”? For photography and video editing, try to keep at least 50 gigabytes (GB) of free space on internal storage at all times; I actually aim for over 100GB free.

The reasons for this:

• macOS and Windows constantly need to set up temporary files for various reasons, and those files can sometimes be several GB in size each. For example, if there is only 2GB free on internal storage and macOS wants to create a 3GB temporary file, the system will say it’s out of room. 
• Lightroom Classic and Photoshop, like other photo editors, can need a lot of temporary room to work too. Lightroom Classic will grow that Previews file which is currently almost 170GB. The bigger the document you edit in Photoshop, the more free space should be available for mandatory temporary files that can be quite large.
• If you have a recent laptop with solid state storage (SSD) which is normally very fast, you must not let it get too full, because an SSD slows down dramatically if there isn’t much space available. 

Free space is like the size of your art studio. If that room gets so crowded that you can only work on a tiny desk in one corner, the kinds of projects you can work on become severely limited. There has to be a lot of room to spread out the things that need to be worked on.

[#6]

One of the best posts Conrad, love the studio space analogy 👍🏿👍🏿--
Best regards

Geoff Walker


Sent from Gmail Mobile

[#7]

Great post Conrad extreamly relevant and informative in this situation.

[#8]

If your hard drive is almost out of space, how big is your hard drive? You didn't tell us.

Which drive are the photos on? You didn't tell us.

Usually, the reason for running out of space is not the Catalog or the previews, it is the photos. Those should go on an external drive.

[#9]

dj_paige wrote:

If your hard drive is almost out of space, how big is your hard drive? You didn't tell us.
Which drive are the photos on? You didn't tell us.

My reply assumed that the Synology device mentioned in the second post, probably an NAS, is where the photos are, and that the low free space warnings are coming from the system volume. The capacity of the volume running out of space doesn’t matter, however large it is, files need to be moved off it until there is enough free space for the amount of work being done (number of images previewed in Lightroom Classic, or sizes of Photoshop documents). Granted, it’s a lot more difficult to keep enough space free on a 256GB or 128GB internal volume.

[#10]

Thank you so much to all of you for your help

@dj_paige @Conrad C 

Again, sorry for this dumb response:

I use a Macbook Pro 2019, 16GB memory

Under Storage it says I have 82.3GB available of 500GB...I don't know if that's a lot or not?  I thought it was going to be enough when I purchased this Mac but now with these problems I don't know what's wrong.  The preview file using up 169 seems like a lot so hopefully getting rid of that will help.  I upload my photos to my external hard drive from my SD cards so hopefully that means none of them are going on my internal hard drive.

Maybe some of my storage/memory issues aren't related to LR at all.  Like I said in my original post, I don't know a ton about Mac's.  It seems like Icloud is my problem.  I also don't understand the connection between my Iphone and my Mac and if that's possibly playing a role in my memory issues.  Periodically I have a pop-up warning from a program I recently purchased due to this problem (CleanMyMac) that says, "Heavy memory usage, CleanMyMac has found that you're running out of both physical and virtual memory.  Consider quitting some apps."  I don't feel like I'm running much when it says this so it's super frustrating. 

[#11]

Conrad's response was spot on!  As for memory - 16GB should be OK for running Lightroom Classic.

I run mine on my Macbook Pro qih 16 GB and never have a memory issue. 

I prefer 1 TB of internal disk space, because I often have both Lightroom and Photoshop running at the same time, and Photoshop does gobble memory with multiple layers as you work on an image.

I also recommend - like Conrad mentioned - that you make sure your photo files themselves - the ones you said were on the external drive, are backed up at a second location. Another drive for example. I always have my Lightroom catalog and the files Lightroom uses when it is open, on my internal drive, however I also copy the Lightroom Catalog-v10.lrcat file on a regular basis to another external drive... If my internal drive were to have a problem, I can reload Lightroom application, and then use the back up copy of the catalog to continue where I had left off. All the images themselves are on an external, with a second extenal backing that one up.   I do think the notices you are getting are from iCLoud. I do not store my photos or much else in iCLoud, becuase you only get a small amount for free from Apple, and because I have external drives, RAIDS, NAS devices, I dont find the need to pay for storage on iCloud.