Adobe Lightroom (Classic) operates on a database-driven model. Unlike destructive editors that save changes directly to the image file, Lightroom records a set of edit instructions in a separate structure. Understanding these file types is critical for data integrity, performance, and migration between systems.
To accelerate browsing, Lightroom generates previews stored in a folder with the .lrdata extension (e.g., Catalog Previews.lrdata ). Types of previews: lightroom file cr