Getting faster performance out of Lightroom

- If you're using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC, that's the actual full name of the product so I feel like I need to say it that way. If you're using Lightroom, the latest version of Lightroom, there's a single switch you can throw in Lightroom's preferences that may speed up certain parts of your post production process. To understand that switch though, you need to know something about how Lightroom works under the hood. When you import images into Lightroom, one of the things that Lightroom does during that import process, is build preview files. Basically, it takes your RA file or whatever it is, and builds just a nice size JPEG that it can stash in its own catalog.

So that when it needs to show you the image while you're just thumbing through the images in a folder, it can just quickly show you those JPEGs. Rather than having to grab a RA file, decompress and apply it, so on a so forth. 'Cause JPEGs are not necessarily full size. The size of that preview that it's generating, depends on a preference that you've set. If you go up here to the Lightroom menu to Catalog Settings and over to this Filing Handling tab, you'll see something called Standard Preview Size. This is the size of the preview that it's going to build on import.

And I've got mine set to the default of 1440 pixels. That means the long side of an image is going to be 1,440 pixels. You can see that you can make it bigger or smaller. The advantage is that bigger preview is going to let you see more detail but it's going to to more time to build and it's going to take up more disk space in your catalog. You also have the option to build one to one previews. Those are full size previews and there's a checkbox for that, for building those when you do an import. Those automatically get discarded after a month, just to save disk space. So, that's what happens normally with Lightroom.

But when you import, there's also the option to have it build Smart Previews. Smart Previews are a completely different thing from a normal preview. Normal previews are dumb. And Smart Previews are smart. It's that simple. What actually going on is that Smart Previews are a variation of DNG, Adobe's digital negative specification. They're digital negative format, they're kind of generic open source raw format. What's great about Smart Previews is that when you build a Smart Preview from a RA file, even if you don't have the RA file around, as long as you've got a Smart Preview, you can still adjust white balance, you can do highlight recovery.

All of those things that you're used to do with a RA file, you can do with a Smart Preview. They're this magical little file that's much, much smaller than an original RA file but that still gives you all the RA capability that you want. They're basically allowing proxy editing. I don't need my original RA files, as long as I've got Smart Previews, I can do all of the editing I need to do and not have to carry around a huge mess of data. Recently, Adobe added to Lightroom, the ability to do something that you can actually do in Lightroom mobile on your phone. Which is to use Smart Previews when you're editing on the desktop, rather than loading the full image data.

For example, normally, if I want to edit this image, I would click on it and then hit D to go to the develop module. Now what's happening is it's loading all of the original image data. And that can take awhile, depending on the speed of your computer and the size of the file. Here in the develop module, if I then want to edit this and just go onto the next image by hitting the right arrow key, I have to wait while it loads the next amount of data. And it's going pretty quick. And that's great and all but I can speed it up because if you look up here under the histogram, you can see that this image right now, I actually have stored two things.

I have the original file and I have a Smart Preview because I built a Smart Preview at some point. I mentioned earlier that you can build Smart Previews when you import and that's true. But you can also, from the library module, at any time, select a range of images. And then, go up here to the Library menu to Previews and say build any of these different kinds of previews. So, I can build Smart Previews later. I'm very careful to build Smart Previews for everything in my library because I travel a lot and this allows me to do editing when I don't have my original files around.

But it now allows me to do this other thing. I'm going to go up here to Lightroom to Preferences. And over here to the Performance tab, where I have under this Develop section here, a checkbox that says Use Smart Previews instead of originals for image editing. And it gives you a little crib sheet here to tell you what it does. "This will allow increased performance "but may display decreased quality while editing. "Final output will remain full size and quality." So, I'm going to turn that on. And you may or may not be able to tell the difference right now. Before we started this video, I tried to find a collection of images that I was sure weren't cached and all that kind of thing.

It's hard to get it set up so that I know that this is a real world situation. But now, as I thumb through these images in the develop module, things go very, very quickly because instead of it ever having to load original data, all it's doing is loading the Smart Preview. So, now Lightroom goes much faster on a shot to shot basis as I'm navigating around. But I still have all of the image editing that I want. Now, what it said about decreased quality, you don't need to worry about that. Because if I ever do a final output, say exporting an image file, round tripping a photo to Photoshop, printing from Lightroom, any of those things, will actually go back and access the original files.

So, I'll get my full quality then. If I don't have my full, original image with me, that's okay. I can do my edits here. And when get back to wherever my original images are, when I plug them in, those edits will be applied to those images. So, Smart Preview is really providing this seamless mechanism of working with raw data that may or may not be present. And if you flip that one switch in the preferences, they're also going to make Lightroom go much faster when you're in the develop module. Once last thing, I've got Smart Previews for my images, that's also going to greatly accelerate my workflow with my Lightroom mobile devices.

That is my iPhone or an Android phone or an Android or an IOS tablet. Smart Previews are the mechanism that is used to transfer images around. So, if I've got Smart Previews made, things go up the creative cloud very quickly. And therefore, off to my devices very quickly. So, there's nothing to lose by turning that switch on. Give it a try and see if you notice a performance difference when you're working with Lightroom on your desktop.