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TAP Photography
Participating Frequently
May 28, 2024
Question

Lrc 13.3 how does now preview handling work?

  • May 28, 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 426 views

the release notes simply state, that a new preview method is now in use but does not provide any details.

What I have found is that for every photo in the catalog, there are now multiple preview files. The naming of these files implies, that various sizes are created: *_90, *_180, *_360, *_720, *_1440, *_2880 or *_105, *_210, *_420, *_840, *_1680, *_3360 or *_320, *_1024, *_2048, *_4096, *_8192

I presume these numbers corrispond to the pixel size of the previews.

And I assume, that all of these different previews are being updated every time a photo is developed - which adds quite a lot of processing to the creation of the previews and on the other hand presumably improves preformance when in library module. Hopefully the performance improvements warrant that.

 

What I find a somewhat bad design decision, is that the preview files do not have a file suffix anymore. This makes it very difficult to exclude these new previews from backup software, also because there is no fixed pattern to the sizes. Some engineer at Adobe might want to take another look at this little detail.

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2 replies

Conrad_C
Community Expert
Conrad_CCommunity Expert
Community Expert
May 28, 2024

If the Generate Previews in Parallel option is enabled in Lightroom Classic Preferences / Performance, then the more CPU cores a computer has, the less preview generation gets in the way of whatever you’re doing. If a computer has 8 CPU cores that aren’t very busy at the moment, then it won’t take long to build an image’s preview pyramid. (Lightroom Classic is not nearly the first software to build image preview pyramids, it’s a common technique.)

 

Regarding backups, I agree with Johan. In one step, I just add the entire folder to the exclusion list in my backup software, and everything inside that folder is kept out of my backups.

 

The one thing I did need to change for backups has nothing to do with the new preview architecture. The catalog upgrade to 13.3 format required a new copy of the catalog, which has a slightly changed filename (for me it now ends in “…v13-3.lrcat”), so the name of the new previews folder also ends in “…v13-3” instead of “…v13”. I had to add the upgraded copy of the previews folder to my backup exclusions list to continue to keep previews out of the backups.

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
Community Expert
May 28, 2024
quote

What I find a somewhat bad design decision, is that the preview files do not have a file suffix anymore. This makes it very difficult to exclude these new previews from backup software, also because there is no fixed pattern to the sizes. Some engineer at Adobe might want to take another look at this little detail.


By @TAP Photography


I'm not sure I understand your point. The previews are still stored in a folder called 'catalogname previews.lrdata', aren't they? Any decent backup app can exclude a specific folder, so what's the problem?

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
T
TAP PhotographyAuthor
Participating Frequently
June 2, 2024

yes, the previews are still stored in that folder - but the folder name changes every time the DB is updated.

Of course I can reconfigure the backup applications manually every time this occurs - but this adds a manual step that must be remembered. 

In my configuration, I have a parent folder under which all my Lrc catalogs live. This parent folder is configured to be backed up (meaning everything inside it) and a simple file exclusion for *.lrprev is configured that gets rid of all the preview files. This assures, that all catalogs, present and new ones created along the way, are always backed up without any manual intervention. I call that best practise.

 

So I stand with my opinion about the preview file extiention. It would be quite simple to make the new previews also use the lrprev file extenition - the is no possible name conflict with the old previews as the new ones have unique file names with that pixel size in the file name.

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
Community Expert
June 2, 2024

You can file a feature request in "Ideas". In the meantime, consider this workaround. Only the first part (the catalog name) of the previews folder is renamed when the catalog is upgraded and so it is renamed. It should be possible to exclude the previews from your backup by using something like 'Name ends with 'previews.lrdata' in your backup utility. * previews.lrdata will do that, just like *.lrprev did.

-- Johan W. Elzenga
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