P: Automatically use Originals for AI tools when available

Since version 14.4, when a user enables the “Use Smart Previews instead of Originals for image editing” option, and are editing an image where both the originals and Smart Previews are available, they may be shown the following message when they edit an image:

You have enabled "Use Smart Previews instead of Originals for image editing" in the preferences. When using the latest Al features, it is highly recommended that you always work on Originals. For best results disable this preference.

A better implementation for this is to automatically load the originals when needed, rather than telling the user to disable “Use Smart Previews instead of Originals”. For instance, if the user attempts to use an AI tool that works better with the originals, and the originals are available, Lightroom should automatically load the original and use that. The user should only be warned if the originals are not available, telling them that the tool might not work as well on a Smart Preview. Lightroom already does this when exporting: the originals are always used regardless of setting unless they’re unavailable, in which case the user is warned about using Smart Previews to export.

The advantage from an end-user that finds the “Use Smart Previews instead of Originals for image editing” feature useful is that they could make basic adjustments using the Smart Preview first, taking advantage of the improved performance, and then Lightroom will automatically switch to the originals when they need to use an AI tool. This is a much more seamless experience than asking the user to turn off a setting they find useful.

Currently, the workaround to use the originals without turning off the “Use Smart Previews instead of Originals for image editing” feature is set the zoom to 100%, which will cause Lightroom to load the original for pixel-level editing. It’s doable, but the user needs to know about this first, and it seems to make more sense for Lightroom to just load the original automatically.