Speed Up Your Workflow by Rendering Smart Previews in Lightroom

Pye Jirsa

After you have imported your images into Lightroom 4 and applied your standard import presets, it is a good idea to render the previews for your catalog before you start working on your images. In this article, we will discuss what rendering previews does as well as how rendering 1:1 previews can significantly speed up your workflow. In addition, we will also discuss the differences between Standard Previews and 1:1 Previews.

What are Smart Previews?  

Essentially, you know how Lightroom always freaks out if it can’t find your images?  Well now if you create Smart Previews for your images, Lightroom doesn’t freak out!  In a nutshell, that’s Smart Previews for ya.  You can view and even edit your images, …even if Lightroom doesn’t know where they are.

Okay, that’s the good news.  Before we get to the GREAT news in a minute, let me mention the bad news.  Lightroom can still “lose” your photos, and you should keep track of them.  Unlike Bridge and other browser-based, non-catalog type programs, Lightroom is still a catalog-based system.  If you move or delete a folder from your hard drive, you are still at risk of truly losing that image.

And now especially with Smart Previews allowing us to edit images even if Lightroom doesn’t know where they are, we need to be even more vigilant.  You might accidentally get a RAW file corruption, or delete an entire folder, and not even notice it if you manage to ignore the “this file is offline” label.  It’s pretty prominent depending on your viewing mode, but still, be careful!

Watch the Video

How to Render 1:1 Previews

First, go to the Grid View by hitting “G.” Then, go up to the Library Menu at the top of Lightroom and hit “Previews.” Then select “Render 1:1 Previews,” as shown below.

01-lightroom-4-render-previews-library-menu

Once you have selected “Render 1:1 Previews,” a dialogue box will appear, like the one below. Hit “Build All.”

02-lightroom-4-confirm-build-all-previews

Once you have selected “Build All,” Lightroom will start rendering your images. You can also view the progress of Lightroom rendering these previews at the top left hand corner.

03-lightroom-4-rendering-previews

Depending on how fast your computer runs and the size of your catalog, this process could take anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour or more.

How Do Previews Speed Up My Workflow?

When you render 1:1 Previews of your catalog, Lightroom will create all of the previews that are necessary for developing your images, as well as for zooming in and checking the sharpness of our images. In other words, Lightroom will render 1:1 Previews, Standard Previews, and Thumbnail Previews all at the same time. This means that Lightroom is rendering the previews that are necessary for both the Library Module and the Develop Module.

When you have rendered the previews for all of your images, you can quickly go from image to image in your catalog instead of sitting in front of your computer and waiting for Lightroom to render previews of every single image. Although it may only take a few seconds for Lightroom to render the preview of one image, these seconds will add up when you have to go through every single image in your catalog.

Emergency Backup / Export Trick

Of course if you generate Smart Previews, you’ll always have access to at least a Facebook-resolution version of your image, which in a total catastrophe is better than nothing.  I have experimented with making 4×6 prints from Lightroom’s in-catalog preview files, and they look pretty good!  Julieanne mentions that Smart Previews are about 2500 pixels wide, and you can even export these smart previews which is pretty cool in a pinch.

However the main point is that I still recommend you come up with a solid, sure-fire workflow that helps you track your images.  You know the drill: keep them backed up in two locations, and preferably on three separate devices if possible.  If you only have a single copy of your images, be ready to lose them eventually.

Travel Photography

The real use of Smart Previews is simply to let you edit photos that are on external hard drives without them being connected 100% of the time.  Even if you’re disconnected from the half-dozen external hard drives you may have accumulated over the years!  Say for example you travel with a laptop that has enough room on it for a week’s worth of photos, but nothing more.  If you’re like me and you have a 128 GB or 256 GB SSD instead of a big fat 1 TB laptop hard drive, then you know what I’m talking about.  Anyways, if you keep your main Lightroom catalog on your laptop, you can post-produce the photos you shot last month while you continue to shoot (and download) during your current trip or adventure.  Even if you’ve off-loaded your older photos to external hard drives back home.

A brilliant feature, if you ask me.  Way to go, Adobe! Of course in retrospect this is a feature Lightroom 4 should have had from the beginning.  So just in case Adobe is getting too proud of themselves, let me quickly point out that pretty much everything Lightroom 5 offers is just barely catching up with what Lightroom 4 should have been, over a year ago.  (And my Lightroom 4 wishlist, which you can read by clicking HERE, is still only 10-15% fulfilled!)

Okay, enough scolding, are you ready for the great news?

Smart Previews Make Lightroom Faster!

Yep, that’s right people, our extensive testing is showing that building smart previews is reducing the overall lag time from shot-to-shot in the develop module.  Significantly!  Especially those of you who are shooting 20-30+ megapixel RAW files, you should definitely check out this feature.

Try this test:  Grab yourself ~100 random photos, and render 1:1 previews for the entire set, but only render Smart Previews for the first half of them.  Then, scroll through them as fast as you can, but wait for the Develop Module tools to become available each time.  (when you first switch to a new image in the develop module, the tools are usually greyed out for a second or three)

You can edit the photos too, if you want, but the objective is to be speedy here.  When you pass the half-way mark and start going through the images that have 1:1 previews but no Smart Previews, you should definitely notice the lag time.

In my opinion, the shot-to-shot time in Lightroom 5 with Smart Previews is as fast or faster than it was back in Lightroom 3, which was VERY fast!  Of course, please post your input and your findings here in the comment section, we’d love to hear from you.

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