Location of Previews

Is there any way to tell lightroom WHERE to generate the preview files?



a.
Location of Previews
They're always in a subdirectory under the Library directory, unfortunately. You have to move them together.



Lee Jay
Location of Previews
I've not tried it, but on a Mac you could create a symbolic link in the Lightroom folder to the folder somewhere else.

hmm... im running XP.



is there a technical reason for designing the software this way? why not give the user control over where their previews are generated like bridge? especially since preview generation can take up a rather large amount of space assuming you want fast access to shoots older than one day...also considering that a days worth of shooting can result in 1000+ photographs...HD partitions for OS and software are generally smaller in size, not leaving as much room for lots of image previews, atleast over time as they add up.



I personally would prefer to keep the HD that stores my OS and program files as clean and unfragmented as possible...

There is a way to do it in XP too, but although I've tested LR under XP, I'm out of the loop on how to do that. I spent a lot more time in 98SE.

hmm... anyone else know how to do this with XP?



is this a feature that should be considered for the next update? i don't think that the user should be expected to find ways to work around the design of the software they purchased, especially if it is such a simple feature...

Couple things to try (and please try it on a test LR database first):



- Since LR can prompt you which library file to open, you could move (via OS) the LR folder from the OS partition to another one. Then when you launch LR and it prompts you what library to open, point it to the new location. (I tried this yesterday and works fine for me). However, this relocates your database file, preview file directory and the LR backup directory. Not quite what you wanted, but at least it's off the OS partition.



- You could create a new partition and not map it to a drive. Then mount this partition into the LR previews folder. (I have NOT tried this w/ LR, but have mounted NTFS partitions before and applications don't know any different, as it is supposed to be transparent)



You can combine the 2 suggestions, and you will end up with having the LR database and backup folder in a partition, and the previews folder in yet another mounted partition.



For me, the 1st suggestion was good enough as it moves the files out of the OS partition.



Make sure to try this on a test database first!



Al