You can delete a Lightroom catalog. A Lightroom catalog stores meta-data about the images, previews, and edits you’ve made. But, it does not include your original images. So, if you want to start fresh in Lightroom, you can freely delete your Lightroom catalog and start over. It won’t affect your original images on your computer storage device.
Deleting Lightroom catalog backups is a different story. Apart from saving your catalog, Lightroom also offers to save a backup copy of your catalog to a (preferably) different location than your computer for redundancy. Over time, you might end up with multiple copies of your catalog, and many of them might be outdated too.
This begs the query “Is it safe to delete a Lightroom catalog?”
Deleting a Lightroom catalog won’t affect your original files, but it will delete the specific edits, ratings, previews, keywords, and other meta-data that Lightroom saves in the catalog. If that’s your goal, then you can safely delete your Lightroom Catalog. Deleting Lightroom catalog backups is a different story.
That means that you can safely delete your catalog previews at no risk to the photos you are editing. But deleting previews comes with a slight downside. Without previews, you cannot view your edits in the Lightroom library module.
Can I delete Lightroom previews without losing my photos?
Lrdata” folder (looks like a file on Mac) can be deleted without losing any of your photos or any of the editing work you have done in Lightroom Classic. Though there are some side effects to be aware of (see below).
Which Lightroom files can I delete?
Thankfully, this article will tell you everything you need to know to clean up you Lightroom and answer the burning question once and for all which is: “Which Lightroom files can I delete?” As a general rule, Lightroom files which may be deleted include catalogs, catalog backups, temporary import data, previews and smart previews.
Safe in that by deleting the folder you will not lose any of your photos or the adjustments you have made to your photos and Lightroom Classic will simply rebuild the folder. However, you have now deleted all of the Standard and 1:1 Previews that were built as you used the software to edit your photos.
What is a Lightroom catalog?
A Lightroom catalog is the location responsible for housing your Lightroom photos. It also stores image previews and other essential information. Your Lightroom catalog is usually on your hard drive. But you can choose to move this folder anywhere you like. Occasionally, you will want to delete your Lightroom catalogue.
The catalog also contains previews, which, in the simplest terms is Lightroom’s copy of your images. Since Lightroom works non-destructively, it makes a copy of your images (previews) and then stores them in the catalog. Is it safe to delete Lightroom catalogs?
What to do if Lightroom Classic doesn’t open?
However, if Lightroom crashed or the computer crashed, those files can be left behind, which can get in the way of opening the catalog again. If that ever happens to you, you can simply delete the . lock file and Lightroom Classic should open normally.