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J
JJ Tiziou
Participating Frequently
July 9, 2015
Question

Large Lightroom catalogs / size limits?

  • July 9, 2015
  • 4 replies
  • 20584 views

To the good folks at Adobe (& beautiful forum users)

Does anyone know what the practical limitations are for synchronizing large Lightroom catalogs with Creative Cloud in v6CC?

I'm currently using Lightroom 5, and pondering the upgrade to v6 (standalone or CC).

For regular software use, I'd generally rather the regular license then being tethered to yet another monthly payment.

However, the Creative Cloud option seems appealing if it will let me seamlessly synchronize my main archive library (housed on a desktop Mac Pro) to my laptop, mobile devices, etc.

So my question is whether Lightroom CC would be able to do this as advertised with my rather large catalog (~1Million images).

With v5, I'm currently dealing with:

.lrcat file = 18.34GB,

previews.lrdata = 35.91GB

SmartPreviews.lrdata = 1.18GB

From what I gather, the CC Photo plan has a 2GB cap - would that prevent my catalog from syncing? Or is there separate storage for these files, and would I be ok with just the catalog and previews syncing if I keep my main raw files on my desktop machine?

If I can really keep a searchable and synchronized copy of my Lightroom Catalog on my laptop, then that's great. And I understand that a preliminary sync would definitely take a while, but if it was able to quickly sync in new files afterwards as added, then that would be great, and totally make the CC membership worthwhile.

But if the whole thing's just not going to work with this many images (I know that storage and bandwidth are still somewhat limiting factors), then maybe it makes more sense to get the standalone upgrade.

Thoughts? Anyone have any experience with catalogs this big with Lightroom CC?

Thank you,

-jj

This topic has been closed for replies.

4 replies

saral63628703
saral63628703
Inspiring
March 6, 2017

ManiacJoe​

My Lightroom Catalog.lrcat is less than 1 GB, but my Lightroom Catalog Previews.lrcat and Light Catalog Smart Previews.lrcat are both over 4 GB. Does the message pertain to the main Catalog or the Catalog plus all the previews?

ManiacJoe
ManiacJoe
Inspiring
March 6, 2017

For backup purposes, only the LrCat file is counted. The folder trees that contain your previews (*.LrData) do not get backed up because they can be recreated at any time and their contents tend to be temporary.

While we are talking about backups, make sure you have backups of your original image files. Lightroom does not create backups for those.

    saral63628703
    saral63628703
    Inspiring
    March 6, 2017

    Thank you. This clarifies everything on this issue for me.

    I do generally backup my original images, but it's always good to have a reminder. I use Time Machine and it seems to work well.

    Y
    Yolanda_Yak
    Participant
    January 15, 2017

    Looks like the below info is wrong.  With the latest Creative Crowd update from 2017, it looks like all my catalogs since 2003 are now suddenly way over Adobe's new size limit.  Every catalog I open now give tells me I have to use a 3rd party app for catalogs over 4GB.

    I'm not a programmer, but this seems pretty pathetic on Adobe's part to roll back catalog limits to such a tiny amount retroactively after 13 years.  A 4GB catalog limit makes LR a toy.

    Anyone else having this problem?

    Any suggestions?  Given how poor Adobe's technical support has been, I can't believe they are recommending a 3rd party app to make their software work.  And I can't imagine they will provide technical support for the 3rd party bandaid they are recommending to use.

    dj_paige
    dj_paige
    Legend
    January 15, 2017

    The error message is wrong, this is a known bug. Ignore the message.

    dj_paige
    dj_paige
    Legend
    July 9, 2015

    There is no practical limitation to catalog size.

    People in this and other forums reports catalogs of 500,000 images working well (with the single exception that it takes a long time to backup).

    I haven't seen anyone report a catalog of 1 million images, but there's no technical reason why it should not work.

    Anyway, on a logical basis, plus understanding that today's databases are designed to scale up without significant performance hits, I don't think you should worry about the size of your catalog.

    Having said all that, I have no idea what synchronization does to the equation, but I'm sure you are right, that bandwidth limits how much synchronization you can do.

    J
    JJ TiziouAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    July 9, 2015

    @dj_paige - thanks for the reply.

    To clarify, I'm not asking about the capacity of Lightroom Catalog itself (I know that it works fine) – but rather about Creative Cloud's ability to handle synchronizing such a large catalog between different installations of Lightroom.

    The website says this:

    With the Creative Cloud Photography plan, you can organize, edit and share your photographs from anywhere — on your computer, on the web, on your iPad and on your iPhone or Android device. And when you make an edit or flag a favorite in one place, it's automatically updated everywhere else through Adobe CreativeSync technology.

    Which sounds great in theory. I'm just wondering if anyone's seen it in practice with larger catalogs.

    I'm downloading the free trial, and will see how it goes...

    thx!

    -jj

    JP Hess
    JP Hess
    Inspiring
    July 9, 2015

    With Lightroom Mobile, you don't synchronize entire catalogs. You synchronize different collections.

    kglad
    Community Expert
    kgladCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 9, 2015

    <moved from Adobe Creative Cloud to Photoshop Lightroom>

    J
    JJ TiziouAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    July 9, 2015

    @Kglad - Thanks for moving my post... but to clarify, I'm not asking about the Lightroom Catalog's size itself (I know that it works fine) – but rather about Creative Cloud's ability to handle synchronizing such a large catalog between different installations of Lightroom.

    The promotional language for Lightroom CC says:

    With the Creative Cloud Photography plan, you can organize, edit and share your photographs from anywhere — on your computer, on the web, on your iPad and on your iPhone or Android device. And when you make an edit or flag a favorite in one place, it's automatically updated everywhere else through Adobe CreativeSync technology.

    But if the $9.99/month CC Photography plan has a 2gb limit, will this work with a catalog my size?

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