Eric,
Sorry if this is stuff you already know, but it's important to understand the
basics when you're going to reorganize your Lightroom setup.
- Using Lightroom, you have catalog (.LRCAT), previews (.LRDATA), and image
files. The catalog and previews files are always co-located within a catalog
folder; that is the "photos database." The catalog folder must be on a locally
connected volume (that is, not a networked drive).
- The image files can be in the same catalog folder, but they can be anywhere
that is reachable through the file system. The catalog file (.LRCAT) stores the
filepath to each file that has been imported.
- What takes up the majority of space on a system running Lightroom is the
image files, not the catalog folder. For example, my Lightroom working catalog
currently has 103,000 image files in it. The image files are stored on a 2T
external drive and consume 1.4 terabytes of space. The catalog folder
(including catalog and previews files) is on my startup drive and consumes 22
gigabytes of space.
This division between the catalog folder and the image files is what you want
to exploit to open up more free space on your MacBook Air startup drive.
You can move the image files from your MBA internal drive to an external drive.
Once set up correctly, you can review, annotate, and organize them into
collections regardless of whether the external drive is mounted or not. You
cannot edit, print, or assemble slide shows at full resolution without having
the external drive mounted, but you can have Lightroom create Smart Previews
(which will also be stored in the catalog folder) which then allows you to
edit, print, and assemble slide shows at less than full resolution when the
external drive is not mounted.
—> As always, be sure you have a complete backup of your MacBook Air hard drive
safely cached away before you start moving large amounts of data around. <—
The best way to move the image files to an external volume is to work entirely
within Lightroom. Here's a procedure:
1- Mount the external drive
2- Start Lightroom
3- Select Library > New Folder
Use the navigation dialog to select the external drive and create a folder
on it named "Photos" and click Choose. This folder will appear in the Lightroom
Folders panel as an entry under the drive's volume name.
4- To move your image files to the new location by dragging the folders in the
Folders panel to the new folder named Photos that you just created. You can
shift-click on your image folders to select all and move them in one motion, or
you can move one folder at a time.*
* If you have all your image files in a single directory tree, you can easily
move the whole directory tree by using Lightroom's Show Parent Folder command
until you see the root folder that contains all the others. Then just drag the
parent folder to the external hard drive.
Lightroom will move the image files from their current location on the MBA
internal drive to the new location on the external drive in their folders. All
the image adjustments and other information will be retained.
5- Once Lightroom finishes moving all the files, if you want to be able to edit
image files in lower resolution without hooking up the external drive, select
all the ones you want to be able to work on then use Library > Previews > Build
Smart Previews.
Godfrey
> On Nov 8, 2014, at 3:54 AM, Eric Weir <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> The solid state drive on My MacBook Air is nearly full. A huge amount of the
> data on it is in my photos database. I understand it is possible to keep the
> photos database “off-site” on an external hard drive, with the disadvantage
> that photos can then be edited only when the drive is connected to the
> computer.
>
> I also understand there are two ways to move the photos database to an
> external drive so that Lightroom is aware of their existence: (1) access the
> external drive from within Lightroom and then copy of the files within
> Lightroom, (2) move the files to the external drive outside Lightroom then
> having Lightroom “find the missing files.”
>
> Have I got the options right? If so my inclination is to use the second
> method. I don’t relish the though of dragging the folders for my entire
> database around in Lightroom. Any opinions or precautions about this?
--
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