Lightroom Question

Hector1970

CR Pro
Mar 22, 2012
1,554
1,162
Hi All,
This is perhaps a slightly silly Lightroom Question but I'll ask it anyway.
When I load a picture into Lightroom (especially if its busy loading files from a memory card) the picture pops up and then at the last second changes slightly. It's as if the picture is processed a bit. It might be a little darker or the colour tones are slightly different.
Sometimes the photo looks good firstly and then slightly changes to something not so good.
What is going on with Lightroom when its doing that?
(Also maybe I'm imagining things).
 
LR has always done this. It doesn't matter how fast your computer is, the amount of RAM, video card, SSD or if you have a large FLUX CAPACITOR installed, it will still take FOREVER to fully render the image and allow you to determine if it's in focus, etc. (FOREVER = 2 - 4 sec or more per image.)

It's for this reason that I started looking for a better program to do the initial culling and sorting of images. See my other thread I just started to see what I found to greatly speed up this process... (Spoiler: Get FastRawViewer. http://www.fastrawviewer.com/ )

http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=27192.0
 
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Mar 25, 2011
16,848
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A RAW file contains both the RAW information and a jpeg thumbnail. The thumbnail is displayed while the file is being decoded. Pretty much every RAW editor works that way.

Since the jpeg is already processed using your in camera settings, it usually looks different from the raw image that is processed according to the defaults you set in Lightroom.
 
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RustyTheGeek said:
LR has always done this. It doesn't matter how fast your computer is, the amount of RAM, video card, SSD or if you have a large FLUX CAPACITOR installed, it will still take FOREVER to fully render the image and allow you to determine if it's in focus, etc. (FOREVER = 2 - 4 sec or more per image.)

It's for this reason that I started looking for a better program to do the initial culling and sorting of images. See my other thread I just started to see what I found to greatly speed up this process... (Spoiler: Get FastRawViewer. http://www.fastrawviewer.com/ )

http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=27192.0
This isn't quite correct.
It is dependent on the size of the build preview that you select in the import screen. If you select the minimal setting then you will get what you describe. If you select the standard setting then full screen previews will load almost instantaneously,but there will be a delay when you zoom 1 to 1. There is also a one to one setting which builds large faster loading previews. The disadvantage of the standard and one to one settings are that the create larger previews which consume more storage space. They also increase the time it takes to complete the import of files. Personally I use standard previews which take maybe three times as long to complete the import as the minimal previews, but have no delay when I review the files. While the files are being imported I find something else to do. You do need a 7200 rpm sata 600 hard drive or an SSD, but you don't need a Flux Capacitor.
 
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jthomson said:
RustyTheGeek said:
LR has always done this. It doesn't matter how fast your computer is, the amount of RAM, video card, SSD or if you have a large FLUX CAPACITOR installed, it will still take FOREVER to fully render the image and allow you to determine if it's in focus, etc. (FOREVER = 2 - 4 sec or more per image.)

It's for this reason that I started looking for a better program to do the initial culling and sorting of images. See my other thread I just started to see what I found to greatly speed up this process... (Spoiler: Get FastRawViewer. http://www.fastrawviewer.com/ )

http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=27192.0
This isn't quite correct.
It is dependent on the size of the build preview that you select in the import screen. If you select the minimal setting then you will get what you describe. If you select the standard setting then full screen previews will load almost instantaneously,but there will be a delay when you zoom 1 to 1. There is also a one to one setting which builds large faster loading previews. The disadvantage of the standard and one to one settings are that the create larger previews which consume more storage space. They also increase the time it takes to complete the import of files. Personally I use standard previews which take maybe three times as long to complete the import as the minimal previews, but have no delay when I review the files. While the files are being imported I find something else to do. You do need a 7200 rpm sata 600 hard drive or an SSD, but you don't need a Flux Capacitor.

Well, in my experience, I've always used Standard previews, used an SSD and had 32 GB of RAM or more on an i7 CPU running Win7 x64. Didn't matter, still took about 1.5 - 2.5 sec to load the large previews in LR Library view. On two different high performance PCs. Graphics card or drivers didn't matter either. And I've been a computer nerd ever since the '80's, much longer than I've been a photo nut. It's definitely inside LR. Then I installed Photo Mechanic last fall and WOW! WHAT A DIFFERENCE. Then I recently tried some other apps and hit another home run with FastRawViewer for a fraction of the cost and frankly, more customizable features.

At least that's my personal experience and the delays seem to be what a lot of other folks out there are complaining about as well. (I saw a lot of testimonials on YouTube, etc for Photo Mechanic among others when I was searching for better apps.)

Oh and the Flux Capacitor doesn't actually speed up the previews per se, but since there is a space/time continuum shift, it seems like it's going much faster. That was better than nothing until I found a better app that actually worked faster in real time. Once that was fixed, the flux capacitor got cancelled out and I had to remove it. Now I can listen to Pink Floyd again while I work and I don't get as confused. :D
 
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There was an interesting discussion of this in Art Morris' s Birds as Art Blog. Art is long time user of Breeze browser on the PC but that wasn't an option when he recently switched to a Mac. He eventually found Photo Mechanic and in typical Artie fashion was promoting it and asking everyone to order it through his on - line store.
His big gripe with lightroom was the delay in rendering and he couldn' t understand how anyone could not be using photo mechanic.
I and a few others said that we experienced no delay.
A few weeks later someone on one of his photos tours had a Mac that also showed no delay.
The first blog post was April 17, the second was May 21.
I posted some times for importing and rendering the standard previews. At the time I was reading from a usb 3 card reader and writing to a sata600 hard drive. I've since upgraded to 500 Gb SSD and I know that the import/rendering time has dropped, but I haven't done any more timed imports.

My desktop machine is a 3 year old Dell, with a 3.4GHz i7-2600 and 12GB of ram and a Radeon HD 7700 series GPU with 2 Gb of ram running Win 7 - 64 bit. Not a bad set - up, but not something that would set a gamers heart on fire.
Sorry for not including links to Artie's blog, but I'm working on a tablet and I'm kind of clumsy at selecting things without a mouse. :-[
 
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Hi,
When you import LR by default creates standard previews. This is what you see on the screen not the actual RAW. When you click on one to make it full size it creates a 1:1 preview.
For what it's worth, when I import I set the preview size to 1:1 in the build previews option box. It takes a little longer to finish the import but after its done flicking through images when reviewing is much faster as the previews don't need to be created.
Also yes the 1:1 previews will take extra space, but I would be odd if you had space for lots of RAW files and not enough for the previews. Also when LR does your weekly optimisation/backup by default it removes those over 30 days old.
 
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Sashi said:
Hi,
When you import LR by default creates standard previews. This is what you see on the screen not the actual RAW. When you click on one to make it full size it creates a 1:1 preview.
For what it's worth, when I import I set the preview size to 1:1 in the build previews option box. It takes a little longer to finish the import but after its done flicking through images when reviewing is much faster as the previews don't need to be created.
Also yes the 1:1 previews will take extra space, but I would be odd if you had space for lots of RAW files and not enough for the previews. Also when LR does your weekly optimisation/backup by default it removes those over 30 days old.
I was under the impression that minimal is the default setting and that standard are created when you click to go full screen. One to one are only created when you zoom to 100%.

I run my operating system on an SSD, raw files get stored on a hard drive. Space on the SSD is limited and expensive . Space on the hard drive is large and cheap. Ideally everything would be on the SSD, but that's not going to happen until SSD prices drop some more.
 
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