Skip to main content
outdamnscruff
outdamnscruff
Participant
April 6, 2018
Question

Extracting previews of 'lost' images, can I change resolution?

  • April 6, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 752 views

Hi,

I had a bunch of photos I feared were lost for good. However, I managed to locate a bunch of previews in old Lightroom catalogues I had thankfully backed up. Most came out at 1440px, which I'm exceedingly thankful for, but there's a few that are at 360px and are unusable (I post on Tumblr, and they just don't look good at that size). What's strange is that I found some overlapping images in separate catalogues and when I extracted them from one catalogue, they came out at 1440px and 360px from another. The remaining images (there's about 10 or so) aren't in any other catalogues so I can't try extract them again to see if I can fix the issue.

Is there any other way I can change the resolution?

Also, I'm guessing the answer is no, but a lot of the images come out at pretty small sizes (200-800kb). I'm used to working with RAW files, so the quality is pretty disappointing, but it's better than not having the images at all. It's not terribly noticeable when just posting online, but is there any way to improve the actual image of quality of what's being extracted from the previews? I'd assume no, as I said, but just wanted to make sure.

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Ian Lyons
Community Expert
Ian LyonsCommunity Expert
Community Expert
April 6, 2018

JPEGs, which Lr previews are, have already undergone a significant amount of lossy jpeg compression when they were originally being built. Unfortunately, there is no way of recovering the information lost when the original previews were built.

Regarding you smaller previews, I think you need to accept they're as good as they can now be, and leave it at that. There is no way of of making bigger without reducing quality even further than it already has been.

    outdamnscruff
    outdamnscruffAuthor
    Participant
    April 6, 2018

    Thanks. But why would the previews be 1440px in some catalogues and then smaller in others?

    Ian Lyons
    Community Expert
    Ian LyonsCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    April 6, 2018

    The default size for standard-sized previews is determined by how you've configured them in 'Catalog Settings' (see below screen-grab). The 'Auto' size (introduced late Lr5.x or Lr6.0) is based on your monitor. Prior to that the default was 1440. Lr also stores other previews as ratios this standard-sized. For example, 720, 360, 2880, etc.

    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices