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Desktop computer: Are Smart Previews worth it?

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reidthaler

reidthaler

Reid
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San Francisco Bay Area
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Classic
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  1. Windows 10
I'm working on a desktop so don't need the advantage of smart previews to work on images if an external drive isn't connected like a laptop, but is there much advantage to creating them on the desktop? I know it's supposed to help load images in the Development module quicker, but I'm not convinced.

I just selected all my image, told it to build standard previews, and am surprised that it's taking a while to run as I tell Lightroom to generate standard previews when I import. Maybe Lightroom needs to generate new previews for v10?

What do you think?

Thanks,

Reid
 
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LrC also uses the Smart previews as proxy images to speed up the develop adjustments. Unless you are doing fine detailed adjustments, the smaller Smart Preview is suitable for making edits like tone, exposure etc.
 
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Doesn't Lightroom access the raw file if a better preview is needed, which should be generated pretty quickly?
 
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reidthaler said:
Doesn't Lightroom access the raw file if a better preview is needed, which should be generated pretty quickly?
Click to expand...

It will use the Smart preview if the Smart preview is deemed suitable for the task. If it has to go back to the RAW file, it can. However, the smart preview loads quickly. If the Smart file is not present or is not suitable, LrC will call up the original RBG file created and stored in Cache from the original RAW file. If the RGB original file is not available, LrC will create one by demosaic’ing the RAW data. The larger original file will take longer to load and apply any previous adjustments, whereas (I believe) the Smart preview will be up to date with all of the previous adjustments
The reason for Smart Previdews in addition to not needing the original on an EHD, was to allow fast loading of the image files during develop.


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