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Lightroom too slow for previews, need to filter out photos fast


robgomez

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<p>Hello,<br>

the way that I edit a 2k photo wedding down to about 100 photos is putting all the images in Quick selection, and pressing B for each photo I don't want. Much faster than Delete, and press another Delete. </p>

<p>First, tell me if this is the fastest way to edit out photos. <br>

Second, the previews take too long to load in each pass of a photo.</p>

<p>Is there a way to load all of the photos at the start, so they are already fully rendered when I go on to that photo?</p>

<p>Thank you!<br>

Rob</p>

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<p>Rob,</p>

<p>Coupla tips.</p>

 

<ol>

<li>Don't ever delete anything — at least not until <em>after</em> you've delivered the photos or album to the bride and you're putting the event to bed for good. </li>

<li>To speed up the display of photos, let Lightroom create the larger size previews for you. You can set it to do this and walk away from the computer for a minute or two while it does. The images will load faster. Lightroom can delete the previews after 30 days or something like that.</li>

<li>Going through my initial bunch of photos from a wedding, I simply rate them and move on to the next photo. My right hand is on the right arrow key (next photo) and my left hand is typing 1, 2, 3 or x (for delete). I don't try to distinguish all five ratings at this point. For a handful of images that are for-sure hero images, I might rate 'em a 4. When I'm rating, I'm not looking for 1s, I'm looking for the 3s (I'll definitely want to use 'em) and 2s (might need to think about it some more).</li>

</ol>

<p>I can get through about 800 images (my normal "catch" from a wedding) pretty quickly this way.</p>

<p>When I'm done I can start working on rating sets. Sometimes I will create a smart album for the wedding that automatically selects everything rated 3 or better. </p>

<p>I've used the method you're using (tapping "b") as well. Problem is, my initial pass isn't always completely reliable. There might be two shots that are almost identical. I normally will <em>not</em> show both to the bride: I feel it's my job to decide which is better and show her just that one. So I want to have the entire photo set readily available to me.</p>

<p>Of course, more RAM in your computer will also help. When I do this, I usually restart my iMac and jump into editing before I've opened any other apps.</p>

<p>Good luck.</p>

<p>Will</p>

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<p>Using the quick collection seems like the wrong way to choose photos. It's backwards, it should be used once you've sorted through the ones you want.</p>

<p>My workflow, which is fast and doesn't need replacement with yet more software that provides a partial solution, is to go through a first pass and delete anything that obviously isn't ever going to be useful. Bad exposures, photobombing, test shots, flash failures, etc. Then go through and hit everything that might make the cut with "P". Then you filter just the "P"s and choose the ones you want to save with the quick collection shortcut. It's a three-pass method that will make it a lot easier to figure things out.</p>

<p>For slow previews, use LR5 and smart previews, which is very fast. There are some bugs with LR5 at this point, but they may not affect you at all, and the major one should be sorted fairly quickly.</p>

 

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<p>If you are previewing RAWS, and using a system w/ a mechanical HDD (as opposed to an SSD), set your import to generate smaller previews (or new 'smart' ones ;-) ), and once the import is done, it should give you a full screen rez preview in under a second. that's enough to do initial culls. Personally, I prefer the 'P' method as Jeff suggests, since it is, in library, simply right arrow, 'P' or not, right arrow, 'P' or not, right arrow...(etc.) within a couple hours I can cull thousands of images. Using an SSD can speed things up considerably even with full size previews (esp. if using RAWS).</p>

<p>As far as LR5 goes, the main bug I saw was that at random intervals, it pulls full cycles on the processor (!?!) even when doing nothing! (essentially locking down the whole computer w/ ~95-100% CPU use) Very frustrating, but I chalked that up to betaness, sad to hear that they released with the flaw still in place, since the only 'fix', was to fully exit LR, and reenter it. I'll wait for them to fix it before I upgrade.</p>

 

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<p>I import into LR, generate 1:1 previews (and walk away while it's churning away) then go through in one pass and mark images that I know I'll never use with 1 star. Anything that is immediately evident as outstanding will get marked a 5. After I make that pass I sort by rating and delete the 1s. What's left is potential product when then gets more attention during the 2nd pass.</p>

<p>I also find that it's helpful to edit one image (for a set) that is representative, getting the sharpening, smoothing, WB, clarity, exposure, etc in the ballpar, then copy those settings onto the other images in the set. Then, when I go through and spend more time, I only have to make small adjustments to a subset of the parameters.</p>

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<p>Lightroom is still painfully slow on a lot of systems; even fairly powerful systems. Check this out if you don't think so: <a href="http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1117506?start=0&tstart=0">http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1117506?start=0&tstart=0</a> </p>

<p>Version 3 was fine, but LR4 is very annoying on my Core i7 with 16GB RAM, SSD and fast graphics system. Supposedly version 5 works faster on some systems but not on others and I haven't tried it yet on mine. I would pay dearly for 1 second renderings when moving to the next image. And yes, I have tried small, standard and 1:1 previews -- no difference. On some machines, LR is always slow when nothing else is.</p>

<p>Corel AfterShot Pro is blazingly fast compared to Lightroom but it does a poor job of salvaging highlights and rendering deep shadows. Anyone know of something better but still quick?</p>

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<p>You want a quick selection of possible to show. It would be faster to pick out what you want then throw out what is bad then you still have to pick out what you want. My guess is that you are shooting raws, for the newer bodies raws can be computer intensive. I am using a D800 and even on the current higher spec standard IMac with 16 gig ram it can run slow. The work around I am being to use now is to shoot raw on one card, the other saves Medium , fine. I do the quick edits on the jpegs - it is much quicker plus the size on a D800 is more than enough to do most things. Same day edits are a PITA to do - after selections you still have to export and then do up a slide show. LR's slide show capability is no the best for this.</p>

<p>Your problem is a work flow issue not a hardware issue.</p>

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<p>Hi Rob,</p>

<p>I have similar feedback to some above.</p>

<p>On import to Lightroom, make the selection that says render 1:1 previews. It takes a bit longer as it renders images immediately after importing, but it's a single step from your point of view and nice and easy. It makes the photo's load correctly and immediately when culling.</p>

<p>Secondly... "P" and "X" are the best method I've found for culling. "P" is to "Pick" an image and "X" is to "Reject" an image. Pick's get a white flag and rejected images get a black one. An excellent tip when doing this, is to make sure the Caps Lock is on. This tells Lightroom to skip straight to the next image, once you've made your decision. You can always flick back and give a rating if you really want to do this at times, but I never do at this stage.</p>

<p>After you've been through all images, just filter by flagged images and all of the rejected images will disappear.</p>

<p>If possible, get someone else to do the cull for you! My wife does my cull and it's awesome. Sure, if I suspect something is missing, I can go back and check, but that rarely happens. I just get to see about one third to one quarter of the images shot.</p>

<p>Good luck.</p>

<p>Scott.</p>

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<p>Fastest option is to not use LR at all for this. Secondly it's faster to select the ones you want instead of the ones you don't want, aka edit in. At least as long as you are culling more than you are keeping.</p>

<p>Use photomechanic, it's way, way faster than LR. It uses the jpeg preview embedded in the raw file so you can zoom to 100% lightning fast even before importing them into LR.</p>

<p>That's why it's the standard for editors that selects the sportphotos from thousands and thousands of shots that they have to wade through for every game.</p>

<p>I found this for some tips on using photomechanic and LR together. Might be of some assistance.<br /> http://www.luminescentphoto.com/blog/2013/04/12/how-photo-mechanic-saved-me-from-hours-of-image-review-in-lightroom/</p>

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