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Lightroom Classic 10 catalog size

Community Beginner ,
Oct 27, 2020 Oct 27, 2020

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After upgrading to LR Classic 10, my catalogs went from about 8-20 MB each to 918MB!!! Just the LR.cat file, not the previews.

That's a HUUUUGE change and rather detrimental to my workflow. Is there any way to fix this?

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Guide ,
Oct 27, 2020 Oct 27, 2020

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Please post your Operating System and version. What is the number of photos in your catalog? How many catalogs are you using?

While that is a huge change, that is not a huge catalog. I have 180,000 photos referenced in my catalog and the file is 2.16GB. The .lrcat file size did not change with the upgrade to LrC V10. I'm not sure how a catalog could be as small as 8MB. I created a new blank catalog and the .lrcat file is 1.57MB. It will grow quickly as image files are imported.

Ken Seals - Nikon Z 9, Z 8, 14mm-800mm. Computer Win 11 Pro, I7-8700K, 64GB, RTX3070TI. Travel machine: 2021 MacBook Pro M1 MAX 64GB. All Adobe apps.

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 27, 2020 Oct 27, 2020

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I know some will criticize this method, but it works well for me -- I create a seperate catalog for each job. This allows portability, better backups and multiple people to work on different jobs on different computers at the same time. 

So for me, a job might only have 50 images in it, hence a small catalog. Even better, if I make a few changes to cropping, toning, etc, I previously could just move a little 8MB or so file over to my backups to record the changes. 

Now with LR10, that file is 918MB no matter what.

 

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Guide ,
Oct 27, 2020 Oct 27, 2020

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That doesen't sound right. 

I'm just leaving for the day, but when I have the chance, I will add 50 images to the new V10 catalog and post the results. I will also try converting a small V9.4 catalog with 50 images and convert that to V10.

My system is Win 10 Pro.

Ken Seals - Nikon Z 9, Z 8, 14mm-800mm. Computer Win 11 Pro, I7-8700K, 64GB, RTX3070TI. Travel machine: 2021 MacBook Pro M1 MAX 64GB. All Adobe apps.

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 27, 2020 Oct 27, 2020

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I'm using OS X 10.14

 

Here are screenshots -- first is a catalog of about 400 images that was converted to LR10, it went from 8MB to 918.

Second is a brand new catalog created in LR10 that contains 64 images....it is also >900MB.
So as far as I can tell, LR10 is causing my catalog file size to inflate by 100x 

 

Screen Shot 2020-10-27 at 12.26.44 PM.pngScreen Shot 2020-10-27 at 12.27.03 PM.png 

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LEGEND ,
Oct 27, 2020 Oct 27, 2020

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Hard to imagine. If you open the 8.1MB catalog, does it have the same number of images, and the same images, as the 918MB catalog? I ask because it seems as if the assumption is being made that these are the same catalog ... they may be or they may not be and so confirmation is needed.

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 27, 2020 Oct 27, 2020

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yes same number of photos.

In first screenshot you can see LR.lrcat at 8.1MB which is the LR9 catalog

then LR-v10.lrcat which is 918MB

Only difference is I selected 'upgrade to V10' when I opened the old catalog in LR10. No new data was added.

 

Second screenshot shows a catalog made from scratch in LR10 with 64 images and the catalog is >900MB. 

 

I'm guessing thaat maybe Adobe has a new sort of catalog that is just a base 900+MB file. Which is ridiculous and detrimental to my workflow, storage, etc. I'm also guessing that many users might never notice this because they are housing many jobs/shoots in one catalog that is already over 900MB and therefore not seeing an increase.


All this is on a 2018 MacBook Pro OS X 10.4.6, latest version of LR10 downloaded from my CC account. I've been using Lightroom since version 2.0 so I feel quite familiar with it and that I'm not confusing previews with the actual .lrcat file (unless they are baking previews into that file now or something new).

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Enthusiast ,
Oct 27, 2020 Oct 27, 2020

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Mac OS 10.14.6

I have both LR9.4 and 10 running. 10 is not useable because of the slowness but the upgraded catalog is the same as what I am running on 9.4. Your mention of catalog size got me checking my catalog. Both catalogs stayed at 1.3GB but the Previews file shows a huge difference. 9.4 previews is 21.23GB while the 10 previews is 52.5GB. I wonder if this is part of the problem make 10 so slow it is not usable.

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 27, 2020 Oct 27, 2020

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My guess is that because your catalog was already >900MB, you are not being subjected to a 'minimum catalog size'?

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LEGEND ,
Oct 27, 2020 Oct 27, 2020

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Definitely something weird going on.

What happens if you open the old catalog in v10 and it does the data migration again?

 

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 27, 2020 Oct 27, 2020

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Migrating from V9 to V10 is what got me from 8MB to 918MB

 

Thanks for those reporting on Windows it is not doing that -- maybe just a Mac bug or something but I'm happy that seems to indicate it's not some new 'minimum catalog size' that Adobe implemented!

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LEGEND ,
Oct 27, 2020 Oct 27, 2020

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On my Windows 10 20H2, a brand new catalog is lees than 2MB. I imported a dozen photos, its now 3MB. So I would think this is a Mac issue.

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LEGEND ,
Oct 27, 2020 Oct 27, 2020

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After reading most of your posts and looking at the screen shot you included I have to suspect an OS FUBAR Seeing and Report the actual File size of the upgraded LrC V10 catalog.

 

But then you say a New Catalog with 60 images is the same 900+ MBs.

 

My LrC V9 catalog is 275MBs. After conversion to LrC V10 it is 274MB and that is with 17,000+ images in it and my LrC Test V10 Cat is 3.69MBs.

 

2020-10-27 18_40_47-D__LrC Test Cat V10.png

You might have to uninstall and reinstall LrC V10 and Delete the new V10 catalog and when you reinstall LrC V10 let it upgrade you catalogs again.

 

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Community Expert ,
Oct 27, 2020 Oct 27, 2020

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You're probably dealing with the icc profile infection bug. It is a really strange bug that has plagued users for a while where custom icc profiles used in the print dialog get copied into the catalog files 100's of times, even into newly created catalogs. Here is a thread on it: https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic/lightroom-classic-cc-8-0-large-sized-backups-and-lr...

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Community Beginner ,
Oct 27, 2020 Oct 27, 2020

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Thanks, that seems worth checking out.

 

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Guide ,
Oct 27, 2020 Oct 27, 2020

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Win 10, LrC V10 and V9.4

1. In the new blank catalog I created in V10, I imported 50 images. The new catalog file size is 2.9MB

2. In LrC V9.4, I created a new blank catalog and imported the same 50 images. The V9.4 .lrcat file referencing 50 images is 2.9MB. 

3. Upgraded the 2.9MB .lrcat in V10. The V10 .lrcat is 2.8MB.

Good luck figuring that out.

Ken Seals - Nikon Z 9, Z 8, 14mm-800mm. Computer Win 11 Pro, I7-8700K, 64GB, RTX3070TI. Travel machine: 2021 MacBook Pro M1 MAX 64GB. All Adobe apps.

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Community Expert ,
Oct 27, 2020 Oct 27, 2020

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I am using a Mac with the latest Mac OS. I happened to have a "testing catalog" that has 54 photos in it, and not many edits. I simply noted the sizes and then opened with LR V10.

Before v10, the .lrct file size was 7.7 MB. and after the upgrade to V10 the .lrct file size was 7.4 MB.

Before v10, the Helper.lrdata file size was 131 KB. and after the upgrade to V10 the Helper.lrdata file size was 268 KB

Before v10, the Previews.lrdata file size was 133.6 MB. after the upgrade to V10 the Previews.lrdata file size was 133.6 MB.

So, no it would not seem to be a MAC bug.

 

My suggestion would be to move the newly updated lightroom files to another external drive or flash drive is possible (basically these 3 files when the application is closed: 

Lighrroom Catalog-v10 Helper.lrdata

Lighrroom Catalog-v10 Previews.lrdata

Lighrroom Catalog-v10 .lrcat

Then with Lightroom V-10 installed, open the previous version of your catalog , i.e. the file labeled Lightroom Catalog.lrcat, and update it along with its helperlrdata and it s previews.lr data.

THen check to compare the file sizes of. your old catalog files and the newest v-10 files.

If these look more in line with what they used to be, I would think there was some sort of hiccup during the upgrade.

And Unless you have done any work to some photos in the interim, the new v-10 files should be the same as the previously updated v-10 files, so you could delete the ones that look unusally large.

 

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