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caprichoso
Known Participant
March 13, 2026
Answered

Is there a way to just update smart previews?

  • March 13, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 30 views

Lightroom Classic 15.2 on a Mac 26.3.1.

I was rebuilding Smart previews and was about ½ way done after a day.  Lightroom classic then stopped responding and I had to kill it.  I was doing other things in Lightroom which might have caused the freeze.

So I restarted the smart preview rebuild and it started again from scratch, which is going to take days.

Is there a way to just update them, i.e., just build preview for those pictures who don’t have them already?

    Correct answer JohanElzenga

    You confuse smart previews and normal previews. Smart previews is a misnomer. They are not previews at all, but proxies for the original images, so you can make edits while the originals are offline. What you see in the library are normal previews. There is usually no reason to rebuild them all. Lightroom will rebuild a preview if and when it needs to.

    1 reply

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    caprichosoAuthor
    Known Participant
    March 13, 2026

    Correction.  It looks as if it is seeing the existing previews and just generating new ones.

    JohanElzenga
    Community Expert
    JohanElzengaCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
    Community Expert
    March 13, 2026

    You confuse smart previews and normal previews. Smart previews is a misnomer. They are not previews at all, but proxies for the original images, so you can make edits while the originals are offline. What you see in the library are normal previews. There is usually no reason to rebuild them all. Lightroom will rebuild a preview if and when it needs to.

    -- Johan W. Elzenga
    C
    caprichosoAuthor
    Known Participant
    March 13, 2026

    Thanks. Sorry, used the wrong word.  Meant regular previews.  But it does seem as if LRC recognized the ones that it had already rebuilt.

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