Lightroom Smart Preview

wud

Senior Member
Does anyone know how to do, if I have my files in LR but (finally) got a new external hard drive, and want to keep the original files there, and only have smart previews on the computer? I've been googling without luck.

Will I move the files manually, and import to LR again? Or will that mess up all the albums I made?


Also, do I keep the Lightroom Catalogue on the computer, and not the external hard drive?
 

Fred Kingston

Senior Member
You can move/copy files anywhere you want within LR. LR keeps track of where you moved the files in the catalogue. Since LR reads the catalogue continually, you will want to keep the catalogue on the same drive as, and/or your fastest drive... You can also move the catalogue anywhere you want. You can also have as many catalogues as you want.
 

wud

Senior Member
You can move/copy files anywhere you want within LR. LR keeps track of where you moved the files in the catalogue. Since LR reads the catalogue continually, you will want to keep the catalogue on the same drive as, and/or your fastest drive... You can also move the catalogue anywhere you want. You can also have as many catalogues as you want.

You write, within LR? But I want to move the files from the computer, to an external drive. Do you mean I should make the move from inside LR?

I'll let the catalogue stay where it is now then, thanks :)
 

wud

Senior Member
Okay, just realizing how long it takes to build smart preview... And I have 15.000 files. Maybe I should figure out another way lol.

And do this smart preview while importing, from now on.
 

Fred Kingston

Senior Member
:eek: I wasn't gonna say anything about mass conversions to DNG/SmartPreviews...

You can move folders/files by simply dragging them and dropping them in the Library module... that way LR keeps track of the move in the catalogue. If you do the same thing outside of LR... LR's catalogue doesn't know where you put stuff and you'll either have to resync the folders, and/or re-import the files...
 

Eduard

Super Mod
Staff member
Super Mod
Does anyone know how to do, if I have my files in LR but (finally) got a new external hard drive, and want to keep the original files there, and only have smart previews on the computer? I've been googling without luck.

Will I move the files manually, and import to LR again? Or will that mess up all the albums I made?

Also, do I keep the Lightroom Catalogue on the computer, and not the external hard drive?

 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Here's my take on Smart Previews - they are (almost) completely unnecessary for images that you're finished editing. Here's why I feel that way.

I keep only the last 4-6 months of work resident on my laptop, the rest is offline. I keep catalogs by year. When I import photos I build 1:1 previews, not smart previews, because all edits are local. I keep 1:1 previews forever, because I delete what I do not want. I have a system for rating and flagging images that allows me to identify images that are fully finished (published) as well as those I want to keep around to potentially revisit (keepers). When I archive them to offline storage I look at the published photos and decide whether or not I might need to produce a JPEG for sharing online again down the road, and on those I will create a Smart Preview as it will allow me to export a 1000px copy without accessing the offline storage. For those I will dump the 1:1 previews as they are unnecessary. I will also dump the 1:1 previews of all the keeper images since the only time I'll want to access it at that level will be when I want to do full edits, in which case I'll be sending the image to Photoshop and will need to access the remote storage anyway.

I suspect that if I traveled and kept most of my images offline, or used my iPad to do basic edits, Smart Previews might be a great alternative. But I see no need for them unless you want/need to do actual edits on your photos when storage is offline, and then only if you do all your editing in Lightroom (you could certainly do all your prep work remotely). 1:1 previews are all I need.
 

DikiLikun

New member
I use smart previews in just the way you want it: Have my photo archive (2003-2012) on an external drive but created smart preview that I carry with my Macbook. On the road I can browse, edit and even export them for the web.
While traveling you can import new RAW files, why not.? Even if you decide to let LR render 1:1 previews, these will be deleted after a while (depending on your settings in Lightroom). Once home you can move the images to your external drive from within LR and decide later whether to use smart previews or not.
To speed-up my worklow I shoot JPEG and RAW, import both and browse through the JPGs to flag, sort, reject images. Later I transfer the flags to the RAWs, delete the JGS (sometimes I keep the JPG and delete the RAW) and do the edits on them. Why using JPGs for sorting etc.? It's much faster and no need to wait for LR to render the previews.
 

DikiLikun

New member
I use smart previews in just the way you want it: Have my photo archive (2003-2012) on an external drive but created smart preview that I carry with my Macbook. On the road I can browse, edit and even export them for the web. While traveling you can import new RAW files, why not.? Even if you decide to let LR render 1:1 previews, these will be deleted after a while (depending on your settings in Lightroom). Once home you can move the images to your external drive from within LR and decide later whether to use smart previews or not. To speed-up my worklow I shoot JPEG and RAW, import both and browse through the JPGs to flag, sort, reject images. Later I transfer the flags to the RAWs, delete the JGS (sometimes I keep the JPG and delete the RAW) and do the edits on them. Why using JPGs for sorting etc.? It's much faster and no need to wait for LR to render the previews.
 
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