Making room on Hard Drive?

[sactown024]

I have lightroom 4 and only a 220GB SSD drive on my macbook. I want to clear the original files (RAW) that lightroom uses but when I do that I get "?" on all of my photos in lightroom. How Do I clear up this space on my drive without losing all my photos?

Is there anyway to remove the original RAW files without losing the lightroom data?

Also for any Mac guru's out there, I have a yellow bar called "other" that is takign up almost half of my hard drive, any idea what this is?

 

[Big Mike]

You could export the images as JPEGs and then re-import them (not sure if there is an automatic way of doing that). You wouldn't be able to 'reset' them back to original (raw) though.

But really, if you are running short of HD space, just get an external/portable drive. There are probably some good sales on around this time of year.

 

[Light Guru]

Hard drives are cheep! Why not upgrade your internal drive or move files to an external drive.

What ever you do just make sure they are backed up.

Edit- just noticed you said SSD drive, keep hat as your system drive and move the photos to an external drive.

 

[KmH]

None of the photos you have 'Imported' to Lightroom are 'in' Lightroom'.

Lightroom only imports (and remembers) the memory path to the photos on your computer.

All your Lightroom edits are XML line commands in a .XMP file attached to, or embedded in, the Raw file.

The Raw files are like a film negative, and are very valuable. A JPEG file is like a print, and as such is can't be changed much, if any.

 

[matthewo]

if you import directly from your memory card lightroom will store the photos in the my pictures folder of the user, for windows. i usually copy my raws to my secordary 1tb hdd. then import to lightroom, so then it doesnt save to my primary drive. i will then burn important shoots raw files on a dl dvd for up to 8+ gb per dvd

 

[sactown024]

I have a external hard drive and I did move all the RAW files to it BUT lightroom uses the file path they were originally imported to (ex: photos/lightroom/12-05-12) so when I move them to my external hard drive Lightroom can no longer find them and all of my lightroom images have a "?" on them, basically saying they are lost.

 

[binga63]

no... not lost you just have to relink to the new path....and they are back again

 

[12sndsgood]

lightroom sees them in one location. you moved them to a new location so lightroom doesnt know where they are, the reason for the ? just re-import them if you need to.

 

[Big Mike]

You don't need to re-import them. Just point LR in the right direction (click the question mark and 'find missing files'). If I recall correctly, if the file structure is the same, you should only need to do it once, and it should find all the missing files in the new location.

But as a lesson going forward. If you are going to move your RAW files, do it from within the Library Module of LR. That way, LR will always know where you have moved your files.