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What is causing this.

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jjlad

Active Member
Joined
Jan 18, 2009
Messages
612
Location
Winnipeg, Canada
Lightroom Experience
Advanced
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version Number
10.0
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
Hope to get some insight into this.
I have jpeg images that I:
1) imported and smart previews were built for them
2) cropped them, and adjusted white balance and tone
3) exported to Photoshop and performed several functions on them in that
4) saved them as jpegs, overwriting the originals because I had no further use of the original files
5) in Lightroom they all showed the Metadata has been changed flag so I imported the metadata from disk for all of them,
6) that put one more entry at the top of the develop stack showing "Reset Settings"
7) I noticed the "Import" layer in the develop stack now matched the "Reset Settings" layer so for each photo and none of the Steps between the Import and Reset showed any change. I guess that is what happens when you overwrite the image when saving from Photoshop.
8 Because of those steps now being useless I selected the Import step for each photo and Cleared the History Above This Step.
8) I have closed LR and backed up the catalog several times since all this started

Accordingly the originally imported photos are no longer on the disk and the catalog has only the "Reset" images which are now the "Import" layer

Something really weird is happening though. For some reason LR is remembering what the original image looked like and every time I click on a photo it first displays the original image and then morphs into the current image. In that the original image doesn't exist any longer ...where is it getting the original look from?

I'm thinking it is still addressing the Smart Previews that were made during the original import process.
If that is the case I would like to update the smart previews or alternately just get rid of them but I don't see that as an option in the Catalog Settings.

It is both annoying and unnerving to have these ghosts appearing each time I click the affected images (now a thousand or more) so I'd sure like to resolve this.

Thanks
 
You could try selecting all the images, then Library menu>Previews>Discard Smart Previews.
 
Thanks Jim. I was looking in the wrong place for that option. Also I wasn't sure if that was the problem or not but after you confirmed I deleted them it and the problem has disappeared. Still a little strange though, in that the first time I click on them now they still very briefly display the original, but after that they don't. All the images load so fast there is no need for those previews as far as I can tell. They are all on a USB3 drive and load as fast as I can click through them. Are Smart Previews really that necessary?
 
Are Smart Previews really that necessary?
They have a couple of definite purposes:

1. They allow users to leave their images at home when travelling. With the catalog and Smart Previews they can continue to edit the images despite the fact they are "missing".
2. There is now an option to use Smart Previews for editing even when at home with the originals online, useful for performance reasons on slower systems.
3. And as you have discovered, if they exist they are used for the initial load of raw images into the Develop module while the original image is converted in the background (if they don't exist the ACR cache entry or DNG Fast Load Data is used instead).

Apart from that, they aren't used at all....so really it's up to each user to decide if they are needed. I don't typically build them at all.
 
Thanks Jim. Things seem faster without them actually, but right now I am going to post about much more important problem that befell me today.
 
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