Previews Folder - Lightroom 4

Hi,

Does anyone know if you are able to select a different location (other than with catelog) for Previews in Lighroom 4? I think that will make a big difference in performance for me.

Thanks.

Are you asking about a different way of viewing things from Lightroom 3?

You could try this:

http://www.pixiq.com …he-preview-folder-mac-osx

When you open Lightroom, what it opens to depends on what you were previously viewing -- if you were viewing a folder or a collection when you last closed it it should open to that view and the module that you were in. But I found that if I was viewing all the photos with a given keyword and closed LR that when I opened it again I'd be looking at "All Photographs" with the photo that had been my "active" photo with the keyword showing up as my "active" photo!

At any rate, I'm not clear as to what you are asking. In Lightroom you are either previewing photos that are in a folder in your catalog, or, you can preview photos in your Import dialog that you may Import into your catalog, but in the "normal" modules, you can't browse folders outside of your catalog -- in other words, Lightroom is not made to be a "system browser" if that is what you are looking for. Other apps do that, Bridge, DPP, ZoomBrowser, but Lightroom is more about managing your library through the Catalog process.

tonylong wrote in post #13742138
Are you asking about a different way of viewing things from Lightroom 3?

Hi Tony,

I am talking about being able to store Preview files/folder onto a drive other than the one with the LR catalog. This is purely to increase performance of the whole process. I believe, if I can store these on individual drives, I can not only have double the disk access performance but also have better access because catalog disk will have less fragmentation.

Thanks.

René Damkot wrote in post #13742376
You could try this:

http://www.pixiq.com …he-preview-folder-mac-osx

Thanks Rene.

I am using Windows so unfortunately, that will not work for me. In the past, I have done some workarounds in Windows to have a drive show up as a folder in a different drive, but I think it would be excellent if there was a proper way to deal with this.

To my understanding, you can lose all your previews folders and not lose any data bacause all of that can be regenrated from your catalog. If this is the case, I would put the previews folders onto a less protected but a very fast set of drives but store my catalog onto a well protected drive.

I'm pretty sure that the previews folder has to be in the same folder as the catalog file. And I must admit, I really cannot fathom why you want them separate. How is one drive 'less protected' than another?

Why not stick the previews folder and the catalog on a fast but 'less protected' drive and backup the catalog frequently to a 'well protected' drive.

Baadil wrote in post #13746782
Hi Tony,

I am talking about being able to store Preview files/folder onto a drive other than the one with the LR catalog. This is purely to increase performance of the whole process. I believe, if I can store these on individual drives, I can not only have double the disk access performance but also have better access because catalog disk will have less fragmentation.

Thanks.

The Lightroom catalog can be placed on any connected hard drive but its contents (the Preview lrdata folder, and the .lrcat file) must be kept together.

Like was said, the Previews are part of the catalog folder.

The Camera Raw Cache, though, which holds the 100% previews used by the Develop module, can be located in the Edit/Preferences File Handling tab.

hollis_f wrote in post #13747145
I'm pretty sure that the previews folder has to be in the same folder as the catalog file. And I must admit, I really cannot fathom why you want them separate. How is one drive 'less protected' than another?

Why not stick the previews folder and the catalog on a fast but 'less protected' drive and backup the catalog frequently to a 'well protected' drive.

I think we have two distinct types of data that we are dealing with here and Adobe is insisting on keeping them together. Catalog is a database and it is extremely important to protect this; so on a high spec system, you would probably put it on RAID 5 drive set or a RAID 10. This will give you good protection and OK speed.

Preview files are important but not critical as they can easily be regenerated. Also, they are multiple-file based data rather than a database file. They can get better performance from a high speed striped RAID (0). This will not give you any protection but give you very good speed. Unfortunately, without jumping through hoops, adobe won't let you seperate these two.

PixelMagic wrote in post #13747215
The Lightroom catalog can be placed on any connected hard drive but its contents (the Preview lrdata folder, and the .lrcat file) must be kept together.

Yes, true but I was hoping in LR 4 they will allow you to put these in seperate drives but I guess not.


Thanks.

Why would you need speed in the Library mode? It is in Develop that you need speed since the preview is constantly being redrawn as you edit. Develop previews are in the ACR Cache and this can be put anywhere.

tzalman wrote in post #13748720
Why would you need speed in the Library mode? It is in Develop that you need speed since the preview is constantly being redrawn as you edit. Develop previews are in the ACR Cache and this can be put anywhere.

I spend a lot of my time in library mode when searching for images etc. Also, currently, I keep my 1:1 previews for only 1 month and they get deleted afterwards. This is why performance is this mode is important to me. Also, I use LR via RDP a lot when searching so even slightest improvement makes a bigg difference.

I could be wrong here asking Adobe for this as what I am asking for may not be the need of many.

Thanks.

tonylong wrote in post #13751913
Heh! How did I do that?

I'm gonna delete that post before I get into more trouble!

Deleted mine too to stop people being really confused! Luckily I was reading the other thread too