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Tag: Metadata

Posted on January 18, 2025January 18, 2025

A Lightroom “new year” and thoughts turn to disk space, backup, and more

Recently, someone in the Cardiff u3a Lightroom Pantry group asked me this question … 

Sorry to bother you, but I’m running out of hard drive space on my Mac, can I delete any of these files? I’m wondering about the previews file????

The first thing to say is that the user is storing images on an external hard disk, just the catalog and previews files etc. are on the internal hard disk. So this text from a post from a Lightroom Queen Forum is helpful …

Unless you have a laptop and or your images on an External drive, you don’t really need Smart Previews, standard Previews will grow unless you limit the number of 1:1 preview to 30 days. Deleting images does not immediately delete the previews though I think it will eventually.

If you upgrade to LrC v14.01, you also now have the option to limit the size of standard previews not exceed 100 or 150 GB or what number that you set. LrC will the delete previews beginning with the oldest and starting with the 1:1.

I have about 82,000 images in my master catalog and a standard preview size of 41GB. On import I generate minimal previews, no 1:1 and have 1:1 previews set to delete after 30 days. I have not (yet) set a limit on the size of my standard Previews.

So the user should use Smart Previews as they have an external hard disk holding their images.

They should also look at the Import parameters for Previews (in the top-hand corner of the screen) in the Import dialogue and choose Smart Previews. They should also NOT use 1:1 Previews as they take-up more room on their hard disk, and should choose Standard Previews. This is my setting box …

Finally, the user (and you maybe) should look at the Catalog Settings > Preview pane which might be a way of restricting the growth of the Preview file (as mentioned in the Lightroom Queen Forum) …

An important fact I forgot to mention (which again was mentioned in the LrQ Forum post) – you can delete the Preview file; it will just be recreated as needed (it takes a very short time to recreate a preview of an image). Limiting the size of it will certainly ensure that the disk space used will be less, and if they create 1:1 previews in the future, deleting them after 30 days (as I have it set) will ensure that disk space will be controlled too.

This link from Adobe explains Preview files.

Another member challenged me on why (see Import settings above), I chose to Make a Second Copy of images when I import. My response …

It’s a timing issue. I don’t keep SD cards with images on them – I know some of you do. I Format the cards in Camera (not on the computer) almost immediately after I’ve imported. [That stops the rather annoying feature of images you’ve previously deleted in LrC being suggested for Import when Import All is selected in the dialogue.] So … I need a belts and braces facility in place, just-in-case, my internal hard disk crashes before Time Machine has backed-up my current year images. So I do a Second Copy to my iCloud drive, which I delete periodically, usually at the same time as I delete old backups of catalogs which are also held on the iCloud drive.

Next we turn to the range of tasks that I do every year at this time – as the year ends and a new year begins.

The first thing to state (and a very obvious one at that) is Backup your Catalog, and then continue to Backup your Catalog as you try some of these ideas out. That will mean exiting Lightroom Classic and NOT skipping Backup. It’s better to be safe than sorry!!!

So what might you wish to do when Importing images into your catalog?

Two things really, first creating a “preset” for the Metadata that you’d like to import with every image which will then be baked into the EXIF data of the image. The second is the Preset itself which records the action that you wish to take on each Import eg where the images will be stored, in what form, renaming them, making a second-copy, profile changes, etc etc.

Let’s look at each in turn.

You want to add to the Metadata added to the image at the time of import, to add keywords, or to add a Copyright notice. This can be done from the Metadata pull-down menu in the right-hand Import panel …

Screenshot

… and here you have a whole range of options that you can choose from with perhaps the most relevant being the Copyright info. and any info about you you want added …

Screenshot

… so my Copyright info, and the only ones I use in the Metadata, and which I update each year before January 1st looks like this …

Screenshot

… and that’s about it. I enter MLT Copyright 2025 in the Metadata field in the right-hand pane and move to the next step – creating an Import Preset.

Click on the Import tab in the Library module; apart from deciding whether you want to …

NB I almost always choose Copy

… you will see at the bottom of the screen the word None …

You click on “None” to see the range of Presets you can deploy

… unfortunately, this will always be the case; it’s up to you to now create, and then choose the Import Preset you want to use. This has its advantages because you can change the one you want to use by year, by camera, by anything.

So, you set up the parameters from the right-hand pane the way you want them and then click on None and …

Screenshot

… Save Current Settings as a New Preset, and you’ll be asked to give it a name, and that’s it. Every time you want to apply these parameters to an Import, that’s what will happen. The files may be renamed (if that’s your wish), they will be copied to a specific folder on your hard disk, etc etc.

Other tasks to do at year end.

  • Search for missing files (these will be photos in the catalog, but not in folders -they’ve probably moved!)
  • Searching for duplicates – The Lightroom Queen has an excellent post on this topic which I can’t improve upon and recommends a plugin (which I have used) which in the case of simple duplicates works well.
  • For more complicated duplicate problems – perhaps involving whole folders of potential duplicates, its probably far better to use an operating system program such as dupeGuru (MacOS and Windows) or Photosweeper (MacOS) – there are others for Windows that I haven’t tried. I’ve tried both but prefer dupeGuru as it allows you to do a quick sweep by EXIF data, and Content of Pictures specifically.
  • One suggestion I have is to separate folders into catalogs and Export as Catalog before doing any scans for duplicates. When you have a folder that you think is clear of duplicates chose Import as Catalog from the Library > File menu, and when this has been achieved, delete the original folder.
  • This links to another feature that I rally hadn’t appreciated until I read this article. Rather than doing move of files/folders INSIDE Lightroom (which is the accepted wisdom to maintain the integrity of the catalog) – which can take a really long time and which is also potentially dangerous in terms of file corruption, use Find missing folder. You chose the old folder in the Library and then point (by right-clicking) to the new folder you’ve just imported.

Backup

All of the above was a preface to doing the real annual task which is creating an offsite backup which up until this year was copying all the images and the catalogs onto a hard disk that I stored in my son’s house nearby. This was the safe/secure disaster recovery option which meant that all my historic images would be safe.

In doing this work, this year, I realised that I’d probably not been as clever as I could have been, and in copying images and catalog(s) separately, I’d been missing a trick. It became obvious to me (light-bulb moment) that I should Export as Catalog (Catalog + Images) to the Hard Disk. This then led to the realisation (second light-bulb moment) that I was keeping a large number of old catalogs, for previous versions of Lightroom that I would never go back to, because if I stopped my Photographic Plan subscription I would still have access to the Library module. Why would I want to go back to an earlier version!

I was on a roll now and looked at other people’s backup strategy. Yes, I was doing the right thing in having a 3-2-1 approach – three backups, two locations, one offsite, but was I really doing the most efficient and most effective form of backing-up. Perhaps (third light-bulb moment) it might be better to clone my Lightroom folder(s) overnight – so that I could quickly recover in the case of primary internal hard disk loss – instead of relying on rebuilding from Time Machine and iCloud Drive; and perhaps it might be better to look at Cloud storage for the offsite storage.

I’m moving closer to making a decision on this and if I do move in this direction I will probably use Carbon Copy Cloner (MacOS only) for cloning to a local hard disk, and Backblaze for offsite storage to the cloud, run overnight.

I’ll report on how I get on with this at a later date.

Posted on October 3, 2021October 3, 2021

What lenses should I carry in my bag?

I’m not as young as I once was! That bag on my back is beginning to feel just a bit heavy on occasion. Do I really need to carry all that gear around with me.

That’s the question this post seeks to address, and it comes to some interesting conclusions, and a new camera bag to justify those conclusions too! [Well it would have to, wouldn’t it – “all the gear, no idea”]

Hint: You can click on the images below to make them readable!

The starting point is to take a look at the Metadata stored in Adobe Lightroom for all the photos in my Library …

All photos, all cameras, all lenses (not all shown however)

Some of the statistics this generates are quite amazing, but we need to funnel down to look at the lenses, I have on the cameras I’ve been using most recently. So I can make a selection on the three Sony digital cameras I’ve been using …

Just the Sony DSLR cameras

Now to refine further and see what lenses these have been using …

The lenses used on the Sony cameras

I hasten to add that I don’t own all these lenses now. I’ll own up to the FE 16-35, the FE 24-105, the FE 70-200 zoom lenses, and the FE 24, FE 55 and FE 90 Macro prime lenses. Still a lot of glass to carry around, just-in-case!

So … focussing principally on the ones I’ve used on the newer Sony Full frame models, the A7R and A7RIII, that I’ve owned, and then refine the filter further I get a dataset of c.11000 photos taken with these cameras and lenses.

The dataset of Sony Full frame cameras and its six lenses

Time to look at what focal lengths I’ve principally used. Picking out those with >100 shots, I find that 15 Focal lengths account for nearly 8,000 of the photos (c.70%).

Quite a reasonable spread of focal lengths chosen here (NB I used to have a 35mm prime lens) …
… but not so many here, and note I have a 55mm prime lens!
70mm would just happen to be the lowest focal length of the FE 70-200mm lens
Apart from 90mm and 105mm, not much action in this range
Not a lot of shots taken in this range either for the 70-200mm lens!
… nor this range either1
… and negligible in this range for the 70-200mm lens until you get to 200mm

Wow! That’s quite a focus (sic) on a limited range of focal lengths. What if I just select the Zoom lenses and see what focal lengths I use for them …

Focal lengths used with FE 16-35 F4 ZA OS

Can you see the clustering at the two ends of the zoom range? Now lets look at my favourite lens, the FE 24-105mm F4 G OSS – my walkabout lens …

Focal lengths used with FE 24-105 F4 G OSS

The peaking at the ends of the zoom ranges is even more pronounced with this lens, can you see where this is leading?

I’m not going to even bother to show you the screenshots for the FE 70-200 F4 G OSS, I think you get the picture. Of the 1752 shots taken with this lens, 1164 were taken at either 70mm, or 200mm!!!! Now I’m either not using these lenses correctly, or I’m missing something far more fundamental in my use of lenses that I now am beginning to think, a high pixel count sensor can accommodate.

You’ve got it “zoom with cropping“.

Prime lenses are better optically, and are faster (lower F value or aperture). If I choose the right prime lens I should be able to accommodate my need to zoom by cropping and making the most of the 42 Megapixels that the sensor has.

The trick is to choose a low focal length prime and zoom by cropping; thus to cover my current range, and use the current “favourite” focal lengths, I need a 16mm, a 55mm, a 90mm and a 200mm lens. I have two of those, but perhaps I can do without the 16mm and use my current 24mm lens, or perhaps given the wide range of focal lengths used in the 16-35mm range, this zoom justifies its place in my bag. That just leaves the 200mm telephoto, as a gap in my bag. I’ll always keep the 24-105mm as my walk-about lens. It’s so versatile, it sits permanently on the camera. The problem – there just isn’t one in the Sony range between 135mm (just about affordable) and 400mm (way out of my price range). So the 70-200mm would appear to still have a place in my bag – just for the 200mm focal length.

So to answer the original question, what’s now in my bag – the 24mm F1.4, the 55mm F1.8, and the 90mm F2.8 macro. I’m leaving the zoom lenses at home for the time being, unless I have a specific reason to use them as the single lens on my camera with no camera bag – 16-35mm for landscapes, 24-105mm for walking about (travel) and general use, the 70-200mm for wildlife.

And the bag …

It would have to be a Peak Design 6l Everyday Sling Bag

… it holds the three prime lenses comfortably allowing me to have either the 24-105mm, or the 70-200mm on the camera; or the 70-200mm, with the camera plus 55mm (or 16-35mm) in the bag; or the 70-200mm in the bag and the 24-105mm on the camera.

It’ll be interesting to see how my focus on prime lenses strategies maps out. I’ll keep you posted.

Search this site …

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  • A Lightroom “new year” and thoughts turn to disk space, backup, and more January 18, 2025

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Annoying, but a fact of weblife!

I’m afraid quite a few links to Google+, Picasaweb and Everytrail in older posts may not be live anymore. I will over time update and refresh the links with Content from material hosted on this site.

A lesson learnt – don’t use external sites to host content. It might seem a good idea at the time, but if they cease to offer a service, so does the link to the content hosted on them!

RSS Moments like these …

  • Macro Focus Stacking December 18, 2024
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  • That red kite again!!! September 19, 2023
    A number of things have happened since I took the image of a Red Kite looking down at me at The Red Kite Centre at Llanddeusant back in 2011. It was the first outing of a new 70-300mm lens on my old Sony DSLR-A700 which only had a 12Mp Crop Sensor. Those images are shown […]

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Some of the blogposts from the Cardiff u3a Thought grazing site are duplicated here. The content from the former thoughtgrazing.com site and the website for the Social Media Cafe which met at Cardiff University from 2009-2013 are also archived here.

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