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Help after a leave of absence please :-)

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rjalex

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Work and life have kept me from photography and Lightroom for a long time. Now just back from a long sought little vacation and I realize my skills have faded :-(

Here are a few things I'd love to have a refresh on:

Shot around 700 photos on a week trip to Andalucia (wow what a place in this season). Have imported them as usual in my usual format: one folder for each day of the travel.

Question 1) Can I rename the 7 LR folders in one shot postfixing them all with "_Andalucia 2014" ?

Question 2) Aside from "regular" shots I have several triplettes of shots to use in HDR and some sequences of shots to build panoramas. I use external programs for both tasks (Autopano and Photomatix). While going through the "rate/delete/tag" phase I was thinking about tagging all HDR triples say in red and all members of the panos say in yellow and also stack them to occupy less space in the grid view. Would this be the best way to handle them ?

Question 3) After importing the raws, LR went through a "Building standard previews" phase (out of my memory). But now each time I display a new photo I have a longish (2-3 seconds) "Loading" message with the image looking as if it was out of focus (sadly sometimes they really are LOL). Can I have this "Loading" phase done once and for all to work more swiftly now that I need to delete or rate/tag through all of them ?

Thank you very much. Robert.
 
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Hello Bob, welcome back.

Q1: Don't think so, but it's only 7 folders to rename, so not a big deal, right?

Q2: That's one way, but I'm sure there are others which our Pano/HDR shooters will advise on.

Q3: Select all the 700, then do Library>Previews>Build Standard-Sized Previews. That will check all the 700 and will build standard previews only for those images which need it (so if you find it building all 700 you'll know that your memory is failing and you probably only rendered minimal or embedded previews during import, lol). Another possibility is that you'll also get the "loading" if you're trying to view in 1:1 mode, because that of course requires a full 1:1 preview to be created. So if you're viewing in 1:1 mode regularly, instead of building Standard-Sized previews, build 1:1 previews instead. Takes a bit longer, but eliminates all that loading. One other thought is that if you're actually working in Develop, not Library, pre-building 1:1 previews won't help as the raw image is converted anew every time you call it up in Develop....so you'll always get that loading indicator, though you can turn it off in View Options if you find it distracting. Won't make the image load any quicker, though it might seem as though it does.
 
Hey Jim ! Happy to see you're still here helping out humanity ! :) Hope all is good for you.

Q1) Yeah no big deal, just trying to be lazy :)
Q2) Let see if the "composite shooters" have better tricks up their sleeve !
Q3) Well this is strange. My memory was not failing :) After importing it had built the 700 standard previews (asking to rebuild them told me so) but I still got that longish preview (in Library mode Loupe (E) and unzoomed). I have now launched the very lengthy Full Previews generation and that eliminates the Loading time I was experiencing even though I am browsing mode in Loupe (E) mode and not 100% zoomed. The process is now about 90% and if I go onto any of the very last images I still have the Loading phase but if I go to any prior image it loads immediately. Go guess. Of course as expected the full previews also render the fully zoomed (Z) image quickly.
 
Re Q3):

Hmmm...one thing to check. Go to the File Handling tab of your Catalog Settings menu and check what you have set for "Standard Preview Size:". I'm thinking that if the setting size is LESS than the window size of your normal Loupe viewing mode, then clearly your standard previews won't be big enough, so causing a larger preview to need rendering even when using Fit or Fill modes. If that;s the case, change the setting to select the next size up from your usual window size....but no need to re-render standard previews as the 1:1 previews will fit the bill. Increasing the setting will, of course, fix the problem for future imports.
 
Yay Jim thanks so much. This happened since the resolution there was 1024 but I have a 27" imac with a native res of 2560x1440 and use LR almost to full screen (Fullscreen with menubar) and therefore as you suggested the STD preview was not enough and probably LR did a 1:1 render for every image I navigated to !!! I have now set it up to 1440 and next time I import photos will see if it's enough.
Take care !
Robert
 
Bob, if you really are using a large Fit/Fill window, then even 1440 won't be big enough. I use 1440 on my 1920x1200 monitors, which is OK (I also tend to render a lot of 1:1 previews also). I'd maybe think at least 1680, perhaps even 2048 might be better on a 2560 monitor. But easy enough to test and adjust as needed.
 
It was recommended early on to set a preview size the next size up from the monitor pixel width. So go as big as possible with yours RJ.
You may also want to consider upgrading to Lightroom as that may help with speed - maybe!!


Back to hibernation myself.....:grin:
 
What is 'the next size up from the monitor pixel width'?
 
If say your monitor resolution is 1920 x 1200, then Geoff means the "width" would be 1920....so the next step up is 2048 in the Lightroom preview size option box. That's the completely safe option, i.e. your standard previews would always be larger than the monitor, so LR wouldn't need to render 1:1 previews in order to display the preview (which was Bob's problem). Depending on how you setup the Lightroom screen, you may find that a "smaller than the width" setting would be OK....my monitors are both 1920 wide, but I can get away with a preview size of 1440 pixels, as I generally have both side panels open.
 
Thanks Jim and sorry for the late reply. As usual I cannot decide if your greatest value to this forum is your knowlege, kindness or capability to explain for a thick sculled user like me :)
Take care
 
LOL, thank you Bob!
 
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