Lightroom help please.

FiestaRed

FiestaRed

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Name
Mike
Edit My Images
Yes
I recently installed Lightroom 2 after using Bridge for most of my RAW work. All my earlier downloaded images are stored in one area and then in smaller folders.

If I import some of these older images into Lightroom, will I be doubling up on the space used on my harddrive or will Lightroom just link back to my main image folder?

Hope this makes sense, I'm typing it and I'm not sure I understand what I'm asking.:lol:
 
I am a relative newbie to Lightroom but I think it uses the image from where it is stored and does not take up further room on the HDD I am sure someone who uses it it daily will be able to explain the concept much more ably....
 
Think by default it will create it's own library and double up space, but you can tell it not to and just reference the original files.
 
Lightroom wont double up the amount of disk space used if, when you import, you select , under file handling, "Add files to catalogue without moving."
 
There seems to be some confusion here. There are three parts to the lightroom filing system:
  1. The Lightroom Catalogue - this is the database file which stores all of the settings you apply to images, the location of your images etc
  2. Your images - these can be wherever you like. Lightroom does not create additional copies of images (unless you ask it to by exporting your images to a new location)
  3. The cache - often overlooked, this is the part of Lightroom which takes up a significant amount of space. Whenever you are viewing previews of images in lightroom a file is generated in lightroom cache folder. This obviously will get bigger over time (mine is at about 9GB at the moment running both LR2 and LR3) - there are settings which you can adjust to set a limit on how long cached previews are kept.

Unless you export images, Lightroom (other than the cache) does not create any new image files. Any organisation into multiple collections etc is just database data and not duplicate images (the same applies to virtual copies of images).
 
Chappers said:
Lightroom wont double up the amount of disk space used if, when you import, you select , under file handling, "Add files to catalogue without moving."
Click to expand...

Even if you don't select add files to catalogue without moving, Lightroom still won't double the amount of disk space used - if you allow it to move the files, it moves them i.e. they are no longer in their original location. There's still just one copy of each image file.
 
Thanks for the help everyone.
 
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