Lightroom Tips

Friday Tip – PSDs and Drive Space

Here’s one right from my past experience this week. Here’s the story: a few days ago I was trying to free up some drive space on my laptop (I know, this doesn’t happen to anyone else right?). Anyway, as I was looking through some photos in Lightroom I thought I’d filter through the whole library to see only my PSD files. HOLY CRAP! You wouldn’t believe the amount of files that popped up. Now realize, I’d never done this since the day I started using Lightroom. I had PSD files all over the place. Some where there for a reason but a lot (I mean like 60-70% of them) were there just because I was messing around. Then it hit me that Lightroom saves the PSD file as soon as you hit “Edit in Photoshop”. Regardless of whether you save it in Photoshop after that – it’s always saved in Lightroom, thus eating up a lot of hard drive space. So the tip is this:

1) Go to the Library module and scroll down the left side to the Metadata Browser
2) Expand the File Type item and click on Photoshop Document (PSD)
3) Select the PSDs that you don’t need anymore by Ctrl/Cmd – clicking on them.
4) Hit the Delete key to delete those photos. If Lightroom asks if you want to remove them from the library or delete from your hard drive go ahead and choose the Delete from Drive option.

Wanna know how much space I freed up by doing this? Over 4 gigs! Apparently, I like to hit the Edit in Photoshop button a lot. Actually, it’s probably from doing a lot of demos over the past year but I’d still bet you’ll free up a decent amount of hard drive space from getting rid of PSDs that you don’t need anymore.

Well folks, another week down. I’m really psyched because I gave up chocolate for lent (don’t ask me why – I have no idea but it became a personal crusade after a while to see how long I could go without eating it) and now I get to eat it again on Sunday. Actually, I was trying to be a good role model for my kids in joining them to give something up for lent and some how my absolute favorite food became the victim. Anyway, I predict a chocolate overload on Sunday (Lent is over on Easter) which could a) lead to a bunch of posts coming out on Sunday night because I can’t sleep or, b) lead to no posts on Monday because I have a chocolate hangover. We’ll have to wait and see. Happy Easter!

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