lightroom Raw/compressed raw "loading" times

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Andrew
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Might have asked this before but maybe not as directly so apologies if so.

Anyway know how the hell to speed this up? I need to go through about 6000 photos from the last 2 weeks but its taking about 10-30 seconds sometimes longer for lightroom to "load" my Compressed Raw files (canon) so I can check the sharpness of an image....

The camera can do this instantly when on the SD card so I don't understand why on earth lightroom make it so difficult.... Must be a quicker way - all i want to do is check the sharpness.Capture.PNG
 
Your camera doesn’t display the RAW file directly, but instead it displays a JPEG that it has rendered in advance, quite possibly at a lower resolution than your camera’s sensor (it uses the same JPEG for calculating the histogram). That’s why it’s so quick.

At defaults, Lightroom does similar, but with a Standard JPEG Preview at a lower resolution than your RAWs.

if you are zooming in to 1:1 or closer, the Standard size JPEG Preview will not be at high enough resolution, so LR needs to generate another JPEG at 1:1

That then means loading the RAW file from disk (which in itself is much more data than the JPEG) decompressing it if necessary and then rendering the JPEG using all the adjustments you may have made. The latter two a steps may be constrained by the performance of your computer’s CPU and GPU.

Setting LR to always use 1:1 Previews should improve your experience, at the expense of taking up much more disk space

More background here

mastering-lightroom.com

The Complete Guide To Lightroom Classic Previews | The Creative Photographer

Did you know that there are six types of Lightroom Previews? Read this guide to decide which ones to use for optimum speed and performance in Lightroom.
mastering-lightroom.com mastering-lightroom.com

PS As noted toward the end of the article above, if you are just checking sharpness and flipping between photos at 1:1, do that in Library view rather than Develop module to take advantage of the 1:1 Preview. In Develop, LR renders what you see on screen anew each time you open the image, which will be slower.
 
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I no longer use LR so things are possibly different now....

I too found it too slow but my PC is now 10 old technology, having said that there were guides as to optimising LR.

I now use FastRawViewer to appraise my files.

In regard to seeing the files on the camera LCD screen....you are not seeing the raw but but the embedded jpeg 'preview' file
 
Musicman said:
Your camera doesn’t display the RAW file directly, but instead it displays a JPEG that it has rendered in advance, quite possibly at a lower resolution than your camera’s sensor (it uses the same JPEG for calculating the histogram). That’s why it’s so quick.

At defaults, Lightroom does similar, but with a Standard JPEG Preview at a lower resolution than your RAWs.

if you are zooming in to 1:1 or closer, the Standard size JPEG Preview will not be at high enough resolution, so LR needs to generate another JPEG at 1:1

That then means loading the RAW file from disk (which in itself is much more data than the JPEG) decompressing it if necessary and then rendering the JPEG using all the adjustments you may have made. The latter two a steps may be constrained by the performance of your computer’s CPU and GPU.

Setting LR to always use 1:1 Previews should improve your experience, at the expense of taking up much more disk space

More background here

mastering-lightroom.com

The Complete Guide To Lightroom Classic Previews | The Creative Photographer

Did you know that there are six types of Lightroom Previews? Read this guide to decide which ones to use for optimum speed and performance in Lightroom.
mastering-lightroom.com mastering-lightroom.com

PS As noted toward the end of the article above, if you are just checking sharpness and flipping between photos at 1:1, do that in Library view rather than Develop module to take advantage of the 1:1 Preview. In Develop, LR renders what you see on screen anew each time you open the image, which will be slower.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll give it a go. The space is not an issue as I only edit on laptop, export as new catelogue (minus previews) and re-import to my desktop so the photos don't stay on the laptop long with the previews.

Computer should be able to handle it as its a 2020 laptop with 16gb Ram, I7 and dedicated GFX card. Geforce, forget how much video memory though.
 
edit: seems to take just as long to build the bloody things :p at least I can use my time elsewhere while it does that anyway!
 
Yes, it will do.

Once the 1:1s are built, you should notice the difference when stepping between photos at 100% in Library module, though. You might set Lightroom to generate 1:1 Previews during import from your SD card, but obviously that will significantly increase the time taken to import pictures. That's why it's not the default setting, along with the disk space they take up.

Your camera likely has dedicated hardware to generate the JPEG previews it displays from the RAW data that it captured, which will make it orders of magnitude faster at the job.
 
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Yes really speeds things up! bit of a revolation really! Thanks very much
 
Lightroom (not Lightroom Classic) is much, much faster at this kind of thing. But as has been said, building 1:1 previews at Import is the way to go. Takes ages but makes processing in LR much faster. I used to do this when I used Classic.
 
If you really want quick previews the fastrawviewer, as already mentioned, is the business.
 
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