Lightroom Smart Previews

[Mrs T]

I was just reading this article on Lightroom Smart Previews:

http://www.creative-photographer.com...ews-lightroom/

And I can understand some of the benefits of it, and wondered if anybody here used them. How easy is it to move photos onto the external hard drive without losing the editing links (I've always had a disaster when I try this)!

Amanda

[Ian]

Re: Lightroom Smart Previews

I just export what I need to a catalogue and use the catalogue on my laptop when travelling and then re-export back, if necessary, any changed images.

I also keep my master images on a RAID 5 NAS anyway, so they aren't 'local' anyway. Only the catalogue database is on a local drive.

Ian

[pdk42]

Re: Lightroom Smart Previews

I've always thought it a bit dangerous separating the images like this. In fact a friend of mine lost a lot of images recently using Capture One due to a similar concept.

[Mrs T]

Re: Lightroom Smart Previews

I remember getting into a bit of a mess when I was new to Lightroom, and Paul you gave me good instructions to help rescue me!

Ian do you find the exports work OK? I'd be wary of doing something in one that messed up the other!

I was just curious to see if there is a better way than I'm using.

My imports for some reason this year started going into the last folder I used as a sub folder instead of creating a new dated folder like they used to, so I guess somewhere I have something ticked I shouldn't!

[Ian]

Re: Lightroom Smart Previews

I've always thought it a bit dangerous separating the images like this. In fact a friend of mine lost a lot of images recently using Capture One due to a similar concept.

Not sure if you are referring to me or Amanda?

Basically, I keep all my images on the NAS in three catalogues; images up to 2008, 2008-2012 and currently 2012-2016. I will need to start a new one from 2017 as I feel the current one is as big as it needs to get. I have experienced instability in the past with previous versions of Lightroom when the catalogue gets too big (around 100,000 images).

I run a separate catalogue on the laptop and periodically transfer images from that to my main archive . I do this by exporting a catalogue of selected images from the laptop in order to retain key words and edits.

I then import the laptop catalogue to the current catalogue on my desktop. The flow is usually from laptop to desktop but occasionally I might go in a trip wioth the laptop so I will copy selected images from the desktop to the laptop.

It works very reliably and I'm pleased with the NAS, which I have been using for a couple of years. Prior to that I simply had several large hard drives in the desktop box.

Ian

[Ian]

Re: Lightroom Smart Previews

I remember getting into a bit of a mess when I was new to Lightroom, and Paul you gave me good instructions to help rescue me!

Ian do you find the exports work OK? I'd be wary of doing something in one that messed up the other!

I was just curious to see if there is a better way than I'm using.

My imports for some reason this year started going into the last folder I used as a sub folder instead of creating a new dated folder like they used to, so I guess somewhere I have something ticked I shouldn't!

I have not had any problems with catalogue import/exports. The actual folder structure can sometimes go a little odd and every now and again I tidy this up, but this is all hidden when using Lightroom anyway.

Ian

[pdk42]

Re: Lightroom Smart Previews

My imports for some reason this year started going into the last folder I used as a sub folder instead of creating a new dated folder like they used to, so I guess somewhere I have something ticked I shouldn't!

In the import dialogue there's a panel on the right called "Destination" There's a field there called "Organize". You can select "Into one folder" or "By date". I'm guessing you've set it the wrong way.

[pdk42]

Re: Lightroom Smart Previews

I guess there are lots of ways to use Lightroom. For what it's worth, this is what I do:

- I create a new catalog every year. That way it never gets too big. Big catalogs have known performance issues.

- I put the catalog and other LR temporary files on the C: drive, which is a fast SSD. This gives the best performance.

- I put image files onto a big (2TB) HDD drive. I've got shots going back to 2001 and it's a little less than half full. At some point I may need to upgrade the disk to a bigger one. With my rate of photo taking and ever increasing HDD capacity I reckon it'll meet my needs without needing ever to archive files off it.

- For performance, I mount a smaller SSD as a directory within this large disk. I put the current year's images onto this meaning that access to current-year images is done on a fast SSD. This makes a significant difference since nearly all LR's disk access is on SSD (either the C: drive for temporary files and catalogs or the mounted SSD for images). Most of the things I do in LR are on current year images of course.

- The big disk gets backed up regularly to removable disks. I've got a big tower PC and there's a SATA removal drive bay in it so I can have very fast connection to removable drives. Much faster than USB drives. I always backup to two drives at once so that I've got two copies plus the live copy.

- I arrange for LR to backup the catalog once a week. When I do a backup I copy these LR backups to the sale backup disk.

- I don't use LR previews.

I'm definitely not saying this is the best way - and of course I'm just an amateur so may be missing important things that would matter if my workload and volume were much higher.

[DerekW]

Re: Lightroom Smart Previews

Paul - you say big catalogs have known performance problems. How big is big? how many images before you think that the catalog should be split.

[Ian]

Re: Lightroom Smart Previews

My current catalogue has 95,000 images in it. It's stable and I am not noticing any performance issues. But in the past I have had problems with catalogues slightly smaller than this.

The main performance factor is access to the catalogue database, which has to be a local drive and I have this in my C: drive which is an SSD. The actual image archives, though, are on the NAS. The NAS (a QNAP TS453 Mini) has four 2TB drives arranged in a RAID 5 configuration and the NAS is in a different room to my computer but is connected using a gigabit LAN connection. The NAS is there for convenience and reliability (if a drive fails I can still work and no data will be lost and the NAS operates like one big 5TB, approx, hard disk). I have a 5TB USB3 backup drive semi-permanently attached to the NAS for backups. I also have secondary backups on other spare drives I mount onto a SATA docking station. I should really keep those backups off-site for peace of mind. I also have a degree of back-up to the cloud using LievDrive. The NAS is available via secure connection to the Web and the idea is, eventually, to work out a way of enabling my laptop to work via a Web connection with my image archive through Lightroom. But with my Virgin broadband connection only offering a 12 megabit upload speed (as opposed to a measured 160 megabit download speed), I am not expecting the performance to be too hot!

Ian

[pdk42]

Re: Lightroom Smart Previews

Paul - you say big catalogs have known performance problems. How big is big? how many images before you think that the catalog should be split.

I think the general consensus is to keep them at 10,000 images or fewer:

http://digital-photography-school.co...onal-hardware/

[birdboy]

Re: Lightroom Smart Previews

Interesting post, thanks for the link Amanda. I knew some of this but your link is very comprehensive. I use LR extensively, I do not have Photoshop or Elements. When on holiday I use a dual core laptop (slow) with LR 6. I mainly colour tag the files on a passport 1 TB USB3 drive, then create an export catelogue and when home merge it into the main LR cat on my desktop. The files are kept on a 3TB USB3 drive. I do not think I have ever mastered the merging of cats, and it always seems to take longer than If I had just imported the cards from my camera, but I will have spent each day on holiday deleting some files and colour coding others which I can preserve when finally imported into my main desktop cat.

I do use previews which are stored on the 500GB SSD drive and I have over 135,000 images on the LR6 cat. I have read all the pro's and cons about large cats and while I did have a problem sometime back I have struck with one cat. The main power to me for LR is its cat features and search facilities. I sometime export the processed images and back up those jpg files on another drive on the computer, but I am not very disciplined at this, one day you may find me crying.

[Ian]

Re: Lightroom Smart Previews

I think the general consensus is to keep them at 10,000 images or fewer:

http://digital-photography-school.co...onal-hardware/

That's quite conservative. I know people who have 300,000+ catalogues and I run three with almost 100,000 each.

Ian

[Invicta]

Re: Lightroom Smart Previews

I am in the one catalogue only camp and for one reason only and that is to search key words across all my photos.

Early Lightroom versions were slow with large catalogues. With the modern versions of Lightroom four million photos is considered big by Victoria Bampton "The Lightroom Queen"

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/one-o...iple-catalogs/

[Invicta]

Re: Lightroom Smart Previews

I was just reading this article on Lightroom Smart Previews:

http://www.creative-photographer.com...ews-lightroom/

And I can understand some of the benefits of it, and wondered if anybody here used them. How easy is it to move photos onto the external hard drive without losing the editing links (I've always had a disaster when I try this)!

Amanda

Smart previews where originally designed for working with Lightroom mobile and being able to sync photos to a tablet or smart phone.

As for editing photos on the system with the master catalogue I would stick with the original raw file especially for critical things like input sharpening.

Smart previews are also OK to have a lightweight folder you can copy to your laptop then you can have access to a viewable version of all your photos, can make slide shows etc. when away from your main system.