# Lightroom Cloudy On Two Machines



## JohnD19 (Dec 3, 2019)

Hi. I have just purchased a new 13" MacBook Pro. My main computer is a 27" iMac. I will be using the MacBook to lightly edit in a portable fashion around the house and for travel. When I'm home mom editing will be done on the iMac. LR Cloudy is installed on both machines. All original files are stored in the LR cloud and are backed up upon import to an attached RAID drive. On the iMac I have a file called Lightroom Library.lrlibrary which is 20gb. Will this file  also exist at 20gb on the MacBook? I went with a smaller SSD on the MacBook. If, at some point I want to save space is it advisable to move that to an external SSD? Or, since I'm still within the return period with Apple should I just return it and order one with a larger SSD?


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## Jim Wilde (Dec 3, 2019)

Yes, the file will also exist on the MacBook and will probably be of a similar size. You could try to keep the size down by setting the photo cache size to 0% (although there'll still be the minimum space used), on the Preferences>Local Storage tab.

However, you cannot move that library to a separate drive, as Lightroom will always keep it on the local system drive (if you move or delete it, Lightroom will just recreate it again).


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## mikebore (Dec 5, 2019)

JohnD19 said:


> Hi. I have just purchased a new 13" MacBook Pro. My main computer is a 27" iMac. I will be using the MacBook to lightly edit in a portable fashion around the house and for travel. When I'm home mom editing will be done on the iMac. LR Cloudy is installed on both machines. All original files are stored in the LR cloud and are backed up upon import to an attached RAID drive. On the iMac I have a file called Lightroom Library.lrlibrary which is 20gb. Will this file  also exist at 20gb on the MacBook? I went with a smaller SSD on the MacBook. If, at some point I want to save space is it advisable to move that to an external SSD? Or, since I'm still within the return period with Apple should I just return it and order one with a larger SSD?



What is your Smart Preview setting in Local Storage prefs?

I am in a similar situation to you and have Smart Previews unchecked in prefs. The Lightroom Library on my laptop is currently 28GB. With Smart Previews checked it says it would need 103GB.  My Library has 78,000 photos/581GB originals.

As Jim says, Adobe wants the library to be on the boot drive, but you can get round this by moving it to an external and putting a symlink to it in the ~/Library/Pictures folder. I did this for a year on my iMac without problem, but I wouldn't do it on my  laptop as I don't always want an external connected.


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