It is all very well using software but sometimes, you simply have to know WHAT is going on behind the scenes to enable full control and to prevent weird and unexplainable things happening. This video is essential viewing for any serious LR user. It is also a lesson in how to add very subtle music that most content makers overlook with their distracting and pointless music. A brilliant, concise and educational video - thanks.

This tutorial was exactly what I was after. Thank you Mike!

I watched several less helpful videos before finding this gem. I was so frustrated always being out of room on the laptop and never understood why. I've been incorrectly using the develop module for previewing, which caused endless unnecessary previews to be built. This was the explanation I needed. Thank you so much!

Thank you for this! I have the Canon R5 and and old iMac, the slower speed in the develop module was killing me. It's so good to know that you can edit on the smart previews, this has saved me an incredible amount of time. Smart preview are not just for working offline, they can really speed up your workflow.

Great thank you, I wondered why my laptop was slowing down. There was nothing out there on this.

Thank you for this video, which is really helpful. I came here because my hard disk is really filling up on my Mac. My Lightroom Catalog previews file is showing over 230Gb, with over another 100Gb for the photo library in my Lightroom folder. I hope that going through these settings can help save me a lot of space.

You’re tutorials are the best. 🙌🏼 Thank you 😊

Awesome video thanks !

Hi Mike, Thanks for another useful tutorial.

Great advice for those with older, slower computers.

Tons of useful information here, Mike. I don't use Lightroom but I can see how this would help. Stay safe.

Brilliantly helpful. Thank you.

Superb informative video. I only miss one thing: a table recap of how fast switching between photos "feels" in Library mode for each of the preview types and drives. The laggy culling is really what's driving me nuts in LR, and what has made PhotoMechanic so successful.

This is so helpful Mike, thanks!

Thanks so much for this recap of the various options. I've been struggling with this question for several years. I need to dump forever previews and wasn't sure what I should do going forward, so this provided some timely insights.

awesome explanation of the import possibilities! Thank you

Awesome info, Mike. I have never completely understood what was going on with the previews and why, depending on what module I was in, one photo would act differently than another. Now I know. I am sorry to hear that you guys are having to hunker down again over there. Hopefully that will not last long. I will look forward to more editing content, Take care of your better half over there and you guys stay safe.

Mate! Your timing is crazy.... Only this morning I was cursing LRC for the fact that it filled my dedicated SSD with previews. The problem is I access my whole catalogue of 150k images every day, so everything needs a thumbnail at least. I now stick to Embedded with Sidecar... I just build standard previews when necessary..... Very bored with a screen full of grey grid-squares watching them arrive one by one!

Great stuff! Thanks for it !

very helpful Mike, thanks for this informative video!👍

Great Video! It puzzles me that the Lightroom app and Documentation doesn't have a simple explanation like this. I'm loading in about 2.5 TB from a Synology NAS and have decided to go with Smart Previews and Embedded/Sidecars, exactly as you mentioned. I also finally understand why I was so frustrated with the performance of Lightroom on my old gaming PC. (Ends up I was building the wrong kinds of previews)

Great video!Thanks !Please do more!

Hi Mike, it was a great vid, though, I didn’t get what I was looking for. You’re focused on saving space and optimizing time it takes initially, before you can start working. I have neither of those problems - plenty of NVMe space and I don’t mind clicking “import” and leaving my computer for a couple of hours. What I really care about is performance during the edit, particularly at earlier stages, when I select the images, and I totally can’t do it looking at screen-sized previews in library mode. I need to see if all faces are good, so even in library mode, I have to enable second monitor view, where I’d zoom in (now it’s terribly sluggish!). Also, I do a lot of night or high dynamic range photography and I don’t always have the right exposure on faces. So what I have to do is to apply auto and some exposure boost right there in library mode, and then also view the zoomed-in version on the second screen. It takes literally many seconds to switch between images, even with having top config of my desktop computer. I am sure there something I am doing wrong here, or else millions of people would compain how ridiculously slow lightroom is, and Adobe would’ve invested in improvements.

Great video Marc. Exactly the topic I was looking for!! However for Smart Preview, you should have mentioned that the images are actually resized to 2540px (I've just learned this point on a previous tutorial done by LrC) so it's not possible to export those files at maximal sizes if the HD having the pictures is offline. It's also may cause an editing - before and after - problem if we're adjusting the sharpness. Best.

Great, great great video! I just tried to upload 1600 photos standard with my Mac mini M2 Pro and for second the computer was thinking creating the previous. I’m like what’s going on. That thing has to fly, I changed the setting like you just suggested 1600 for and previous created in one second!

Love the new intro! Very dramatic

Thanks Mike. I’ll have to try the Embedded/Smart option as the move to a Z7 from the D750 has really bogged things down.

Hi Very informative however for me the minimal is the FASTEST for me to import and start to work on it. In other settings, they import and building the previews which require more time. especially those who are using less speed PC.

Wow--so thorough and well described Mike! Kudos! I came looking for a way to speed up my previews in my VERY large catalog and this video was sooo helpful! Going to watch it again to take notes and implement! Wondering about editing w/out being connected to original files w/the smart previews. Can the file be edited in PS? I'm guessing not, but wanted to hear your thoughts. Thanks!

I've been using the default Lightroom preview settings which were slow to build Standard Previews every import. Based on your video I'm going to try Embedded & Sidecar. I have also changed my Standard Preview Size to "Auto (96016px)" for my 4K monitor. I'm a pixel peeper always checking focus, especially on macro images. My A7R4 is recording 60 mb raw compressed, so hopefully both of these changes will improve my workflow and usability. Thanks for the video Mike!

Amaizing Information, Laptop saved being thrown out the window.

Great video, thanks.

Thanks! That was very usefull

Wow so much info here, I'd totally forgotten how to use the preview settings and this vid has the potential to give me all the info I need to speed things up. However listening to your brilliant explanations, it suddenly dawned on me that Lightroom might not be the right Software for me. I'm Dyslexic and I just can't get my head around the different modules, and there are other glitches that don't work for me. Down loading can be very frustrating as I like to keep thing in folders, and theses folders seem to disappear in different modules.

Thank you so much

Excellent.

Chock full of well explained options, Mike! Vid index a plus - multiple views to digest content, for sure. Been using standard previews but will experiment a bit after mulling options anew. Surprised you aren’t using external SSD. New cams sport ever growing megapixels - think medium format beasts - perhaps making in-cam image deletions and ratings preferable, no? Vid thumbnail hints you’ve been drinking way too much tea😁. BTW, something must be amiss w/e-mails from Thailand - your last “weekly” dated 3/11/21😁. Cheers!

For my Canon camera the Embedded Sidecar previews are usually resolution (sometimes they just fail to load as such). Most annoying is if my catalog folder becomes too large, and deleting the lrdata previews permanently removes access to these embedded previews which slows things down a lot. It's a weird design since those JPEG previews should remain accessible (I can see and edit them with Windows photo viewer for example)

This is perfect information, thank you! Question: my 1:1 views are deleted in a week. Still the preview cache indicates 21 GB (!). How to get rid of that?

Ive just started using smart previews and its soooooo much faster

wow. Great video, this helps out A LOT. You’re very thorough. Question... If you import as a smart preview, then say you go to a cafe, without your hard drive, and edit the photos at the cafe, it sounds like if you export, they will be of smaller size, and lesser resolution correct? Is the only downside of smaller size the lesser resolution? Also, what if you then go home, plug up your hard drive and then export, would it then revert back to a full size and full resolution export even if smart previews are selected? Kind of getting tired of lugging around my hard drive and adapter every time I go to a cafe to get work done. Also, lets say you imported the photos in one format.... say sidecar, can you later change those to smart preview? I mainly use a sony a7iii, I also have a sony a6400, and i use a 2019 macbook pro 16 inch Thanks for your insight and I'm already subscribed

Thank you sir

Thank you sir!!!

I am so happy I found your channel and this video. It was very very helpful. If I use Smart Previews (I keep my Catalog on my MacBook Pro SSD Drive) does it store the Preview with the files of my Catalog or on my External HD? I am thinking it's probably the former. I love the idea that with Smart Previews I can leave my External HD at home if I want to and just bring a smaller SSD HD with me.

5:30 To clarify. Lightroom works faster off of a external ssd than when the photos are on the actual computer working off the internal ssd? Correct?

I don't know if I missed it in the video but where does it save the previews? Is it on your local drive? Say your laptop drive as opposed to someplace else. great videos buddy. well done

Can I apply picture profile such as S-Cinetone to my raw files in lightroom? I would love to use those in-camera picture profiles for RAW preview and as start point for further editing. Love your videos. Thanks.

I'm confused. 1. I thought Smart Previews = ARE the "standard" / 1:1 / Embedded & Sidecar etc. options. You wanna tell me these are two different sets of preview files? What if I'm not pixel peeping [will do that in Photoshop later], and I just wanna organize+color correct all images as an initial step in lightroom? Which preview setting will suit that best? 2. At @14:36 - if you filter out your chosen images [2 stars]- and click the develop module- then it will only display those - therefore creating previews /or smart previews/ (or both?!) only for them? Workflow options are confusing as of now, yet I hope they'll look clearer. Especially involving Photoshop later on. This will detach from the LR process as you're moving to another software.

Can you still not go out yet Mike, be great to see some images of Thailand, we should have gone last year and won’t be getting there this year either ☹️ miss the place. Thanks.

Great informative video. My SSD boot drive is filling up (on a PC) and I have very little space left. I would like to adjust Lightroom to build previews on my secondary internal mechanical HD. I believe there's a way to adjust this, but it is alluding me. I'd like to have the backup files on my secondary drive as well, if possible. Can you offer any advice on doing this. Thanks Mike and great info on this video...... Phil NYC Area

So what do recommend for wildlife? I heard 1:1 is the best one? Thank you

Thank you but I have a question: I don't want to see the preview version cause It makes a lot of differeces from my original raw files, about: exposure, saturation and vibrance ... So how can I fix it?

Hello Mike, yet another clear explanation of concepts. Thank you again! I have a few questions that I would like to clarify. (1) When we use minimal and embedded preview option during the import at what point in time does LR build a better preview of them? Is it in the background as soon as the import is over (or) when we zoom (or) open in Develop module (or) edit in Develop module? Through the 4:43rd minute in the video you say it builds when an image is opened in Develop and also that if there is an edit the sidecar preview is discarded. So just to clear my understanding, if there is no edit then the library still uses the sidecar preview for display but when we go into Develop it will load the cached larger size file for editing purpose? And if there is an edit the sidecar preview is removed and replaced with a standard preview for library view. Is this understanding correct?

Thank you, Mike, great video. I did not understand how previews worked at all, so this really helped. I have about 265,000 photos in my catalog now, and the Previews data file for the Lightroom Catalog (the filename is "Lightroom Catalog-2-v12 Previews.lrdata") is taking up about 450 Gbyte on my hard drive. I have my controls set to eliminate 1:1 Previews after 30 days, and I have it set to Embedded & Sidecar when I import, and I do not build Smart Previews. Any suggestions for reducing the size of the Previews data file in my Catalog?

Thank you for the video. I now use Standard. Lately, the option to "edit in Photoshop" is greyed out. Do you know how to fix that?

Do I need to plug SD card back in when exporting? I print enlargements for clients and want to make sure the original is exporting (unless smart previews still print ad well)

Hello, I have a photo collection of around 40k images on a Dell Latitude 7480 with the Intel i5-7300u and 32GB of RAM. I want to clean up redundant and not needed photos before migration to a new MAC Studio. Since applying the 2022 updates I find Classic painfully slow. I optimize the catalog regularly. I have a 1TB Crutial SATA SSD and outside of Classic this well turned machine has no performance issues. I have already tried many of the recommended performance tips and they have only helped a little. I tried turning SYNC, Face detection and address detection off again with minimal improvements. I did not have these issues before the latest updates. This machine seems to meet the HW requirements. Does anyone have a similar configuration and if so how is the performance? I am wondering what I may have missed or if for Classic 2022 this machine is underpowered. I am a DBA and have worked in large ERP system tuning since the 80's. As a DBA I am following a rule around cleaning up data before migrating to the newer modern MAC Studio platform. If I can't resolve this I may just move everything to the MAC Studio. Any comments or suggestions are welcome. Thanks Btw, only 10% are raw

Hello Mike, Thanks for the video. I thought previews could have helped me but they did not. When I import a picture and go to develop module I can instantly (without any previous edits just pure import) tab before / after and there is slight change in photo. Shadows are bit darker and the whole photo is slightly out of focus. And I do not apply any preset while importing. Develop settings - none. Do you happen to havy any idea what it might be? Thank you very much for your help. Pavel

I don't see any links to the work flow video you mentioned?

Woah! Way too fast, how did you get that 'File Handling' window? This is presented in way too much of a hurry as I'm a beginner with this...Where can I find information that I can read and discover each step along the way. I want to select proper Library previews as my original files went missing and I had to export my library previews to images I could use which essentially became 'backups' I need to be saving the jpeg previews in the highest possible resolution for safety if this ever happens again that the originals are lost.

To be honest this was just super confusing