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Hi All - I have a desktop PC with a built-in Hard Disc drive.
100% of my photo editing involves editing "online" photos.
I never outsource my editing, nor do I edit "offline" images.
1) Having said that, is it necessary to enable smart previews on import? Are smart previews only idea if you're editing "offline" ?
2) What are the ideal import settings that strike the perfect balance between saving disk space/catalog size while enabiling images loading fast in the loupe and/or develop module?
Thanks!
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Smart previews are perfect for mobile sync. You can select manually what to sync from Classic collections. Any editing from Mobile previews automatically sync back to original files in Classic. No need to generate smart previews for everything.
Choose embedded & sidecar for the most efficient import method.
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Thanks for all your help!
As a test, I created 4 test catalogs with all my 2019 photos (10,000 in total) using 4 different import methods.
Why does the embedded & Sidecar catalog take up the most space (vs let's say, Standard?)
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Embedded preview means the jpeg preview created by the camera and stored in the raw file. Depending of the camera, the preview size is more or less big. Some camera even creates preview at the same size as the original (1:1).
Standard preview are created by LR at the size of your screen. If your screen is 1920x1080, the previw will be 1920x1080. If your screen is 2560x1440, the preview will be 2560x1140.
Therefore, you can have embedded preview bigger than the Standard preview.
It looks like it's your case.
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If all of your editing is always on the same computer, then Smart Previews have only one advantage: Potentially faster editing in the Develop module. Smart Previews are limited to 2560 px on the long side, so if your originals are significantly larger than that, Smart Previews mean fewer pixels to keep updating as you edit. However, that means Smart Previews are not ideal for evaluating images at 1:1 magnification, such as for checking sharpness and detail.
I agree that the fastest, most space-saving import setting is the Build Previews option “Embedded & Sidecar”, in the File Handling section of the Import dialog box. By using the previews that are already available with the images because they were built by the camera, the Embedded & Sidecar option doesn’t make Lightroom Classic build its own previews on import. That saves time, because Lightroom Classic won’t spend CPU time to build previews, and because the embedded previews display instantly. And it can save space, again because the Lightroom Classic previews are not being built. However, as soon as any edit is made to the image in Lightroom Classic, a current preview must be built for that image. But at least the previews will be built only as needed, not for all images at import.
The size and quality of embedded previews depends on how the camera is set to create previews, so if a camera is set to create smaller sized previews to save card space, its embedded previews may be smaller or lower quality than you want.
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This is my opinion, and only my opinion. If you are going to share images online from Lightroom Classic then you need to create collections and choose to share those collections. Lightroom Classic will automatically create smart previews because that is the only way images are shared online from Lightroom Classic. If all of your other editing is done on the internal hard drive my opinion is that there wouldn't be any other need to create smart previews. "IF" you were storing your images on an external hard drive that was often not connected to the computer, that would be an ideal time to create smart previews that would be stored in the catalog folder on the internal hard drive. This would enable you to edit the images without having the master images connected. But if the master images are there I don't see any real advantage to having smart previews. I haven't seen any speed advantage to having them in that situation.