They will automatically be stored in the “Backups” folder that is under “Lightroom” in your “Pictures” folder. On a Windows computer, backups are stored by default to the C: drive, under your user files, under the structure of “Pictures,” “Lightroom” and “Backups.”.
By default, Lightroom offers to back up your catalog once a week when you close Lightroom, and it keeps each of those backups. They’re stored in a Backups folder next to the catalog, but you may have changed the location.
A frequent question we ran across in our research was “How do I Find my backup files in Lightroom?”.
To check the current location, open the Catalog Settings dialog, which you’ll find under Edit menu (Windows) / Lightroom menu (Mac), and change the Backup pop-up to When Lightroom Next Exits. Then quit Lightroom and the backup dialog will appear, where you can view and change the current location of the catalog backups.
Where does Lightroom store your photos?
A lot of beginners in Lightroom fail to realize that Lightroom doesn’t actually store your photos. You decide where you want to keep your photos. Lightroom simply stores information about your photographs in a catalog. So even though your images aren’t technically “inside” Lightroom, you still need to backup your Lightroom catalogs.
Remember, the photos aren’t “in” Lightroom, but are stored as normal files on your hard drive. Make sure you back your working files up using their current folder structure, in case you ever have to restore a backup.
Do I need to keep lightroom backups?
Usually you do not need to keep old Lighroom backups, but it depends. As a photographer, backups should be an essential part of your workflow; and Lightroom does help with that by offering to create backups of your catalog(s).
When we were writing we ran into the query “Do I need to keep all of my Lightroom catalog backups?”.
However, you only need a few catalog backups to have peace of mind, and if you haven’t configured Lightroom settings effectively, you might end up with a hundred of them. So, to answer the question, you don’t need to keep all your Lightroom Catalog backups ; only the most recent 2-3 should be good enough.
Of course backing up your photos is essential. Remember, the photos aren’t “in” Lightroom, but are stored as normal files on your hard drive. Make sure you back your working files up using their current folder structure, in case you ever have to restore a backup.
How often does Lightroom backup?
Once A Week, When Exiting Lightroom Backs up the catalog once a week. If you exit Lightroom Classic more frequently, additional changes are not backed up until the next week.