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Inspiring
June 3, 2022
Answered

deleting unnecessary cameraRaw files

  • June 3, 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 4564 views

Hi, I'm trying to clean up my hard drive by deleting unnecessary files. i've notice there are a lot of camera profiles & camera raw files in the Application support libray and i don't really use a camera. are they associated with photoshop? can these be deleted without harm. are there any other unnecessary adobe camera centric files that can be deleted?

Correct answer martoons

@JohanElzenga wrote:

Disk Utility is a utility to format and/or repair disks. It does not, and never did, deal with individual files. Use the Apple Store app to search for file utilities. As I'm typing this on my iPad, I cannot give you examples, except that I remember a utility called Daisy Disk.

 


I'd recommend the free Onyx utility. 

https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html
https://www.macworld.com/article/352902/onyx-review-macos.html


thanks. i'll see if i can figure out how to use it.

3 replies

Jeff Arola
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 8, 2022

On a mac you can go to Apple>About This Mac>Storage>Manage>Reduce Clutter>Review Files and from there you can see where and what large files are taking up space.

(this doesn't include system files)

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206996

philc30713433
Known Participant
February 13, 2024

That's what I did with a similar type of program on Windows, this is the folder that it brought up. 

Participant
June 23, 2024

I have three hard drives, and have been working to move Adobe off of my C: drive as it has no need to be on a solid state drive over a disk drive. The fact that so many of its ancillary programs cannot have the installation drive selected is unacceptable. 

 

And yes, WinDirStat is how I've been discovering trove after trove of Adobe file caches of 1,500 files at 5 MB each adding up to 500 MB here and there littered all over the C drive. So far I've found more than 1.5 GB of completely unnecessary bloat that is forced only to be on the C drive. There is no utility to clean these, no explanation as to why they remain on the system, no excuse for these not to be better handled. 

You are literally telling me to move operating system files and user profile items off of my system drive to make room for these troves of never used, completely useless camera and lens profiles and cast off uninstaller records which Adobe has made no effort to clean up. 

 

 


Hi Phil, glad someone actually answered OP's question. Here is a fix I found for the SCS Truck Simulator franchise, which has also proven to work on other programs, feel free to give it a try to see if it works for Adobe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hq5epsqdkc&t

 

TheDigitalDog
Inspiring
June 3, 2022

The documents you speak of are not large, plus, every time you reinstall Photoshop/ACR, they will be placed back there. Ignore them.

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"
philc30713433
Known Participant
February 13, 2024

This ignores Adobe's horrendous habits with regards to storage space. There is absolutely no need to require every user to install all of these profiles. These should be downloaded on an as-needed basis and be limited to only those profiles that correspond to images presentn on the current system. 

Same with tutorial or product featurettes, Adobe just drops gigabytes worth of files that will be used at most once and more typically not at all into storage. Why?

 

This is unacceptable behavior from any other software company. And yet, for some reason Adobe acolytes act as if these are necessary offerings to some higher power. The software costs enough as it is, do they really need to bloat it out with thousands of brushes, textures, camera profiles, tutorials, swatches, and other massive libraries that are completely irrelevant to many users. Why isn't all of this on an as-needed basis? I'm sick of having to go digging around to figure out why my AppData, a ProgramData, or temporary folder is refusing to release hundreds of megs if not gigabytes worth of data that is not being used at all.

 

Just turning on my computer Adobe loads no less that 13 processes and checks if my license is valid multiple times per second. Are they going to lose so much revenue by only checking license validity once an hour?  Do they really need 4 notification handlers? A content synchronizer when I don't use their cloud storage features? A crash processor that seems to be awaiting a crash, not simply called on an as-needed basis? Four user interface helpers for the Creative Cloud app? Why does that app even need to run at all other than when updating software? I don't need something to pop up when I turn on my computer to remind me that I have Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom, etc. They're all stored on my taskbar for quick access.... 

D Fosse
Community Expert
Community Expert
February 13, 2024
quote

checks if my license is valid multiple times per second.


By @philc30713433

 

The license only needs to be confirmed once every 30 days, so I don't know where you're seeing that.

 

I just did some book-keeping, and the sum total of all Adobe files on my machine (that's a full CC with 8 or 10 apps) seems to be somewhere in the vicinity of 30 GB. The Photoshop scratch file alone - history states for open documents - will require at least ten times that.

 

In other words, a little perspective goes a long way.

 

As we've pointed out many times: These are professional grade applications optimized for speed and efficiency. This needs to work in high pressure situations. They are not optimized for limited hardware resources, that cannot be a priority.

 

As for the background processes - all advanced software has this. They are just lifted out of each individual application and centralized in the CC app. They do not impact performance in any way. I've taken a closer look at this before, and almost all of these processes consume exactly zero resources, until they are called upon. Then they go back to sleep.

D Fosse
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 3, 2022

I think you're going about this the wrong way. This isn't where you save space. Actual space freed up is negligible, it won't make a dent.

 

Clean out your user account instead. That's where all the junk accumulates. If you really want to clean house, there is an indispensable tool which shows you exactly what's filling up your drives, and where it is. Can't recall what the Mac version is called, but here's how it looks on Windows:

 

Oh, first run a disk cleanup from your operating system. It can be surprisingly effective.

martoonsAuthor
Inspiring
June 7, 2022

Thank you. what is the windows app called? i'll try and find a mac version. not sure how to run a disk cleanup on the mac any more. years ago there were options in the Disk Utility app, but i don't think that's possible any longer.

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 7, 2022

Disk Utility is a utility to format and/or repair disks. It does not, and never did, deal with individual files. Use the Apple Store app to search for file utilities. As I'm typing this on my iPad, I cannot give you examples, except that I remember a utility called Daisy Disk.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga