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Participant
May 14, 2021
Question

Pictures are pixelated until I zoom in

  • May 14, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 829 views

When I'm editing a picture, they'll often show up very pixelated and hard to see.  See attached picture for reference:

 

It's particularly bad on blue sky pictures, but not as bad when there's more texture.  I've purged my previews cache and tried creating 1:1 previews, standard previews, whatever.  The only way I can get the pixelation to go away is when I click to zoom in.  Then it clears up, I can zoom out, and all is well.  However if I edit, move onto another picture and come back, it will have the same pixelation until I zoom in and out again.

Any idea how to keep this from happening?  It's really slowing down my workflow and is massively distracting as I edit (in other words I can't just ignore it).

 

Key computer specs:

Lightroom Classic version: 10.2 [ 202103041821-226a1211 ]
Operating system: Windows 10 - Business Edition
Processor speed: 3.6 GHz
Built-in memory: 32645.8 MB

1 reply

Participant
May 15, 2021

Well in case anyone else comes across this, I think I solved it.  In Edit>Preferences, then under the Performance tab, I unchecked the box marked "Use Smart Previews instead of Originals for image editing".  Now when I go to a pixelated image, it snaps to a full resolution picture almost immediately.  I don't seem to be taking a performance hit, and the quality is what it needs to be instead.

Participant
November 27, 2023

THANK YOU! I have been trying to figure this out for weeks and you saved me!