A Lightroom Smart Preview is a compressed, lossy DNG copy of a photo file. It’s a fraction of the size of the original image file and is stored in an .lrdata file alongside your Lightroom catalog.
A Smart Preview is a high-quality, highly compressed preview that measures 2540 pixels along the longest edge. Smart Previews are used by Lightroom CC to synchronize with Lightroom mobile and Lightroom web.
While reading we ran into the inquiry “What are smart previews in Lightroom Classic?”.
Smart Previews in Lightroom Classic allow you to edit images that are not physically connected to your computer. Smart Preview files are a lightweight, smaller, file format, based on the lossy DNG file format. Smart Previews are much smaller than the original photos.
What are smart previews and how do they work?
Smart Previews are different from the other Library module previews because they can also be used in the Develop module. The advantage of this is that you can develop photos using Smart Previews when the hard drive containing your original photo files isn’t connected to your hard drive.
While we were reading we ran into the question “How do I create smart previews in Lightroom?”.
The most popular and the most obvious way to generate Smart Previews is when you import new photos into Lightroom. In the File Handling Panel, you can enable the Build Smart Preview option. If you want to generate Smart Previews for previously imported photos, you can do this in the Library Module.
One source proposed smart Preview files are a lightweight, smaller, file format, based on the lossy DNG file format. Smart Previews are much smaller than the original photos.
Why you should use Smart Previews. Using Lightroom Smart Previews has a few key advantages: 1. You can edit your images without the original files present. The first and most obvious advantage is that you don’t need to have your actual photos with you to work on them in Lightroom. Say you’re a traveller or tend to work away from home on a laptop.
One more inquiry we ran across in our research was “How do I create smart previews in Adobe Photoshop?”.
Select the files for which you want Smart Previews, and then click Library > Previews > Build Smart Previews. Smart Previews are stored in the [Catalog Name] Smart Previews. Lrdata file, located in the same folder as the catalog.
Another thing we wondered was do I need to build smart previews?
If you only ever edit your photos at home, and you always have the hard drive containing your Raw files to hand, there may be no need to build Smart Previews. It takes time for Lightroom to build them, and even though they are small, they do take up hard drive space.
What are the different types of previews in Lightroom?
Whenever you import photos into Lightroom it gives you the option of selecting the type of preview to build. There are four choices. The first two (Minimal and Embedded & Sidecar) are relevant if you want to import photos quickly and are happy with a low-resolution preview. These are the smallest previews possible.
Why can’t I process photos in Lightroom Classic without smart previews?
Without Smart Previews, you can only process photos in Lightroom Classic’s Develop module if the hard drive containing your photo files is connected to your computer. If you store your photos on an external hard drive, and it isn’t connected, you can’t process them. This is unlikely to be a problem if you do all your photo processing at home.
Why does Lightroom show previews when I edit a photo?
Lightroom is a parametric editor. It doesn’t change the original photo file in any way. Instead, it keeps a record of any changes made to the photo in the Catalog. As the original photo is unchanged, Lightroom needs to use previews to show you how your photos look after you have edited them.
Why does Lightroom take so long to preview after editing?
If you zoom in at 1:1 in the Develop module Lightroom switches from the Smart Preview back to the Raw file and creates a preview from that. There’s a delay while it does so, as it needs to add in the edits you’ve made. So I guess you could say this is when Lightroom updates the preview generated from the original file.