Lightroom Previews During Import

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
December 16, 2018
4 replies
634 views

I’ve been using a new Mac recently with the same catalog I’ve used On my external hard drive. The new Mac I’ve been using is importing photographs and building previews at the same time. I’m used to Lightroom importing the photos and once that’s finished to then build the previews. This new system is slowing down my workflow. Is there a setting I can turn off?

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JHJOwen-StoriCymruAuthor

Participant

I used to use Standard or 1:1 previews and it would build the preview after the import. I'm just frustrated why this has recently changed. I actually think it's an update in Lightroom that's affected it. It used to import, and when it finished importing it would build the previews. Tried the options on here but doesn't work. Embeded & Sidecar wouldn't work

Ian Lyons

Community Expert

JHJOwen95 wrote
It used to import, and when it finished importing it would build the previews.

Building previews 'concurrently' with import was a performance enhancement introduced in Lr Classic (2017) / 7.0. If you've chosen to build Standard-sized or full size previews then Lr will allocate all CPU cores to the process of import/preview building. In doing so, the time to 'import' is significantly less than what it previously would have been. Likewise, preview building will utilise virtually all CPU resources when building the remaining previews.

Above being said, there is a preference (i.e. Generate Previews in parallel) in the Performance panel that if unchecked will return the 'preview building' behaviour to what is was in versions prior to the introduction of Lr Classic (2017) / 7.0. Note that this preference has no affect on import and preview building being concurrent with each other.

elie_dinur

Participating Frequently

Or use the embedded previews and build LR previews later at your convenience.The purpose of adding the option to use embedded previews a couple versions back was to speed up importing.

elie_dinur

Participating Frequently

Seems like this should do it.

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

Yes, but that only affects anything if you use 'Embedded & Sidecar' when you import images. For all other choices of previews you can't determine when exactly the previews are being build.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

dj_paige

Legend

Are you running different versions of Lightroom on the two different computers? As far as I know, there are no settings to control WHEN previews are generated.

However, it may be that on the new computer, you have different settings in Lightroom that control the size and quality of the previews generated; naturally if you generate larger previews or higher quality previews, that will take longer. Under Catalog Settings, click on File Handling, then compare the settings between the two different computers.

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