LR Classic 1:1 Previews management

[paolo.bernardotti]

Hello everybody from Italy, I am an old Lr user and I am trying to solve once for all one of my worst doubt, which is about 1:1 previews, since I could not be able to understand how their management works by myself.

I have a huge catalogue with about 25k images. Now, till today in the "Catalogue Settings" I have always used the "Automatically discard 1:1 previews" on "never", but my question is: if I delete one or more images, will the 1:1 previews be deleted together with the original files or not?

The second question is about the command "Discard 1:1 previews", because using it seems there is no space saving, even though I have selected all the images in the catalogue.

Thank you for your answer in advance!

Paolo

[JohanElzenga · Accepted solution]

Yes, deleting the image also deletes all the previews for that image. Discarding 1:1 previews will make the ‘catalogname previews.lrdata‘ smaller, not the database file itself. It may not always be visible right away. MacOS and Windows often don’t show this immediately.

[paolo.bernardotti]

Thanks Johan, that's exactly what I meant! So now I am sure about that.

do you know why if I use the command "Discard 1:1 previews" the dimensions of the preview file don't decrease?

Thank you, Paolo

[JohanElzenga]

paolo.bernardotti  wrote

Thanks Johan, that's exactly what I meant! So now I am sure about that.

do you know why if I use the command "Discard 1:1 previews" the dimensions of the preview file don't decrease?

Thank you, Paolo

It does decrease, but the Macintosh Finder / Windows Explorer might not show it right away. Previews.lrdata is not really a file. It’s a folder on Windows and a ‘package’ on MacOS (a folder that looks like a file). Because it contains a vast amount of small files, it may take a while before size changes are shown.