Speeding up Your Process With Pre-Rendered Previews

Hey again Lightroom Lovers! I’ve got a great tip today to share with you to speed up your Lightroom work. Today, we’re talking previews and how we can use them to work faster when we render them.

So here’s deal. When you start to import photos into Lightroom, the program is going to build previews. That’s what makes those images pop up quickly when we are browsing around the filmstrip or moving around in Lightroom.

There’s a couple of different sizes of previews that we can render. Let’s take a look at them:

Minimal – the absolute smallest previews that show in the filmstrip and thumbnails
Standard-sized – average sized previews – a happy medium of the settings above and below
1:1 – the biggest previews, this renders a preview that lets you zoom in and out without delay

(there’s also an embedded option but I’m not a big fan of it, so for simplicity’s sake we’re looking at these three options)

Consider the fact that 1:1 sized previews will take the longest to render and take up the most disk space, but will provide the smoothest Lightroom experience once we’re using it. Handling the rendering of previews ahead of time will save time later, so I’m a big fan of this.

When I’ve got big work to do, I like to render all of my 1:1 previews ahead of time. The best way to do this is handle rendering them while importing photos. On the import menu, there’s a dropdown box on the far right side under “File Handling”. I’ll set the Render Previews option to “1:1” for big portrait or wedding edits.

Rendering 1:1 previews can be done while importing images. On the far right of the import box, click the dropdown box labeled “Render Previews” and change the selection to “1:1”.

If you’ve already gotten your images imported and want to render previews, you can still do it! Make sure that you’re in the Library module and go the “Library” menu at the top of the application, choose “Previews” and then “Render 1:1 Previews”.

Previews can also be rendered in the Library module after importing by going to the Library menu, choosing “Previews”, and then selecting “Render 1:1 Previews”.

If you only have one image selected, it will ask you if you want to build previews for the selected image, or for all images. Click “build all” to build the previews for all images.

Select “build all” to begin building previews for all images on the filmstrip.

Once previews start rendering, you’ll need to leave Lightroom alone for a few minutes. You can work in Lightroo while previews are rendering, but it’s kind of slow and I just don’t recommend it. Step away from the PC and get some other things done and come back with Lightroom preforming at peak performance.

Also, when you’re finished with a catalog, I would recommend that you discard the 1:1 previews. This will save a lot of space on your hard drive and keep them from accumulating. This has to be done from the Library module. Go the “Library” menu, then select “Previews” and choose “Discard 1:1 Previews”. A menu will pop up asking if you want to discard just one preview, or all of the previews that Lightroom built. I usually will go ahead and throw away all previews once I’m done with the bulk of my work.

You can also discard the previews you’ve built to save disk space by first entering the Library module, then accessing the Library menu and choosing Preview -> Discard 1:1 Previews.

Do you usually pre-render big previews? I find that it really makes Lightroom snappier – how about you?