How can I reduce selected Lightroom photos to 6MP without breaking my catalog?
Asked 10/26/2012
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I shoot high-resolution travel photos so I can crop or print large if needed, but I can’t keep every file at full resolution. After culling, I want to keep some images in high resolution and reduce the rest to about 6MP to save disk space. Lightroom doesn’t let me overwrite originals directly, and my current export-then-manually-replace workflow causes metadata conflicts. What’s a better workflow for doing this while keeping Lightroom organized?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
13y ago
2 Answers
4
You can actually use Lightroom to do this - indirectly. But first with 1 Tb drives under $100 even already in cases would it not be better to just add storage?
But since you said that was not an option here is what you can do with Lightroom. Select the images you want in the Library view and use the Export... button to output .jpg files of the size you want. Then delete the selected full size files (using Lightroom). After that import the downsized files you exported in the first step.
Between deleting and re-importing you can also move the downsized files into the now empty directory that the full sized images were located. That depends on what kind of directory structure you want.
Originally by user20973. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user20973
13y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Lightroom isn’t designed to overwrite your original files with downsized versions. The cleanest Lightroom-based workflow is:
- Select the images you do not want to keep at full resolution.
- Export them as JPEGs at your target size (about 6MP).
- In Lightroom, delete the original full-resolution files so the catalog stays in sync.
- Re-import the downsized JPEGs, optionally placing them back into the original folder structure first.
This avoids manual overwriting, which is what causes metadata/catalog conflicts.
Also consider whether you really need to keep all of those images at all. A stronger cull may save more space and simplify your library. In Lightroom, you can flag weaker images as rejected, wait a bit, then review and delete them.
If you want true overwrite-style batch resizing outside Lightroom, a separate batch tool can do it, but then you must manage Lightroom’s catalog carefully to avoid broken links or metadata issues. In general, export-delete-reimport is the safer Lightroom workflow.
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AI13y ago
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