Lightroom Previews are a very important part of how Lightroom works! There’s a bunch of different settings that Adobe provides to suit a plethora of computer configurations. So why the heck would you want to do something crazy like clearing a crucial part of Lightroom? I’ve got two reasons for you disk space and performance.
Reason 1 – Disk Space
Disk Space: a valuable and precious luxury if your wallet wasn’t stuffed at the time you decided to buy a laptop (like when I did). Preview files can really gobble up the GB if you aren’t paying attention.
It just happened to be a base model 2014 13″ MacBook Pro with Retina Display with only 120GB of solid state storage that I chose for my travel computer. As a student, I found myself with the dilemma of lots of speed without sufficient space (mainly I didn’t want to shell out a lot more money for a bigger internal drive, as I had plans in the future).
I wasn’t sure how often I was going to offload pictures onto it or carry pictures with me, but I did encounter a few instances in the past month. I shot a couple places here and there, but not too much.
I transferred settings and apps from my workstation computer and fired up Lightroom on my freshly purchased computer. I did the usual: culling, flagging, light editing. Then, a couple days later, I tried to throw another shoot on there and couldn’t due to low disk space! Turns out that the preview settings also transferred over from my workstation– it caused a whole lot of Smart Previews along with the normals previews to be generated!
Simply adjusting the preview settings won’t update or get rid of the older previews (plus I didn’t bring over all my pictures, so the previews were useless). So, thats when clearing them comes in!
This really is helpful if you’re no longer working with a bunch of pictures that have been sitting around for less than 30 days or so.
Reason 2 – Fixing things
Everyone knows that there are little gremlins working in every machine. A few glitches, in Lightroom, may perhaps be caused by the previews being corrupted. Symptoms may include missing previews, having error messages when importing pictures, creating smart previews, or even that it Lightroom can’t read a catalog (for whatever reason).
Solution: Delete these Files!
Let it be known that the Previews cache and the Smart Preview cache are different.
Typically, Lightroom stores the cache data for the Previews in a file next to your catalog in a filed named [Catalog name] Previews.lrdata and the data for the Smart Previews in [Catalog name] Smart Previews.lrdata.
Deleting the corresponding .lrdata file is all you have to do! The previews are used to speed up things when working on files. But you can always recreate them and may have a bloated database with previews from old shoots.
- Make sure that Lightroom is closed before you delete the file!
- When you delete the Previews.lrdata files, Lightroom will automatically recreate that .lrdata file the next time you start the program. Then it will regenerate previews as you go along.
- The Smart Preview cache file only comes back when you create a new smart preview. For more on Smart Previews and what they do, check out Howard Pinsky’s post on it: here.
Thanks Mykii for this advice. I now use Lightroom on a MacBook and have attached an external HDD. I’m noticing memory problems because I smart preview everything. I’m going to delete Smart Previews.lrdata and Previews.lrdata, I think on a routine like monthly. Hopefully that will help with my disk space problems.
:D That should help out. Don’t forget to look over your normal preview settings– like the size of the previews generated, and when the 1:1 previews are discarded. That should help out in terms of routinely clearing out previews, but you’ll still have to clear out the smart ones.
Cool. Thanks
Reblogged this on CounterPose Photography and commented:
If you use Lightroom this is a must read. Thank You PhotoFocus
Reblogged this on Robert Lacki.
There’s one reason to abstain from clearing out your preview cache though. I had done two ad shoots for two clients on the same day and did something incredibly stupid. Client A purchased the copyright and client B experienced a delay on his project. After the copyright was sold (I don’t normally sell my copyrights, but there’s a long story attached that I won’t go into), I decided “well I might as well delete the RAW files”…..while forgetting that client B’s photos were in the same folder. I used a plugin to rebuild the jpeg previews for client B and… Read more »
Oh Deacon, I hope you’re doing well in your new place! I feel like you have the craziest luck when it comes to some situations with your clients!! I’m glad that you were able to salvage that shoot and save yourself! Thanks for sharing! I’m sure that someone else could probably save themselves knowing that they can recover those jpegs!
Sept 2, 2015 Thanks Mykii helpful article I have saved my Previews/LRdata just in case I do need to restore my catalog/LRcat. I do Not want to rebuild my previews if and/or when I ever restore my catalog. I do Not want to spend time rebuilding the Previews My issue is that I had about 47.0Gb in my Previews file (LRdata)on August 21, then I imported more images on August 24 and the Default Previews file (LRdata) had dropped to about 1. Gb I don’t believe that I did anything different when I imported the images, built the Standard size… Read more »
Heya Steve! Sorry for the long delay for a reply. My understanding is that the previews are being held in place by a setting under your Catalog’s settings. The default is to keep 1:1 Previews, which take up the most space, for 30 days. It could be coincidence that upon import, some older previews were purged from the catalog. You do have the option of never discarding the preview though– it’s all under Catalog Settings –> File Handling :D
I have found that I have a 257GB preview cache! Why isn’t LR deleting the previews when the after 30 days box is checked? Do I delete the whole Previews.lrdata folder or just the sub folders inside? Obviously I’m very worried. This is a few years of work!
Sept 2, 2015 Thanks Mykii helpful article I have saved my Previews/LRdata just in case I do need to restore my catalog/LRcat. I do Not want to rebuild my previews if and/or when I ever restore my catalog. I do Not want to spend time rebuilding the Previews My issue is that I had about 47.0Gb in my Previews file (LRdata)on August 21, then I imported more images on August 24 and the Default Previews file (LRdata) had dropped to about 1. Gb I don’t believe that I did anything different when I imported the images, built the Standard size… Read more »
Heya Steve! Sorry for the long delay for a reply. My understanding is that the previews are being held in place by a setting under your Catalog’s settings. The default is to keep 1:1 Previews, which take up the most space, for 30 days. It could be coincidence that upon import, some older previews were purged from the catalog. You do have the option of never discarding the preview though– it’s all under Catalog Settings –> File Handling :D
Thanks Mykii for this advice. I now use Lightroom on a MacBook and have attached an external HDD. I’m noticing memory problems because I smart preview everything. I’m going to delete Smart Previews.lrdata and Previews.lrdata, I think on a routine like monthly. Hopefully that will help with my disk space problems.
:D That should help out. Don’t forget to look over your normal preview settings– like the size of the previews generated, and when the 1:1 previews are discarded. That should help out in terms of routinely clearing out previews, but you’ll still have to clear out the smart ones.
Cool. Thanks
Reblogged this on Robert Lacki.
Reblogged this on CounterPose Photography and commented:
If you use Lightroom this is a must read. Thank You PhotoFocus
I have found that I have a 257GB preview cache! Why isn’t LR deleting the previews when the after 30 days box is checked? Do I delete the whole Previews.lrdata folder or just the sub folders inside? Obviously I’m very worried. This is a few years of work!
There’s one reason to abstain from clearing out your preview cache though. I had done two ad shoots for two clients on the same day and did something incredibly stupid. Client A purchased the copyright and client B experienced a delay on his project. After the copyright was sold (I don’t normally sell my copyrights, but there’s a long story attached that I won’t go into), I decided “well I might as well delete the RAW files”…..while forgetting that client B’s photos were in the same folder. I used a plugin to rebuild the jpeg previews for client B and… Read more »
Oh Deacon, I hope you’re doing well in your new place! I feel like you have the craziest luck when it comes to some situations with your clients!! I’m glad that you were able to salvage that shoot and save yourself! Thanks for sharing! I’m sure that someone else could probably save themselves knowing that they can recover those jpegs!