If you have been reading my blog posts this past year then you have heard me say quite a few times that building 1:1 previews in Lightroom will help speed up the editing process drastically. I say that because it allows me to zoom into images to check sharpness or details instantaneously. If the 1:1 previews are not built on import (or after import) then every time you click on an image to zoom in you have to wait for the preview to be built. If you only zoom into one or two images it is no big deal, but after four or five it just becomes a nuisance. I begged the Lightroom engineers to allow us to create the 1:1 previews on import and I must not have been the only one asking for it because they added that feature in Version 1.3.

I realize that 1:1 previews take up a lot of hard drive space but they are critical to my workflow and allow me to make sure images are tack sharp. Unless I am importing images to get a cursory glance at a shoot - which happens often in the field - I generally build 1:1 previews on import. It takes a little extra time but it is worth it for the speed it affords me in the editing phase.

Right now, I have 30-plus gigabytes of Lightroom catalogs on my hard drive - I'm sure mostly due to all of those 1:1 previews from recent shoots. To avoid this glut of previews from getting too big I have my preferences set to delete the 1:1 previews after 30 days. This has kept the fifteen or so Lightroom catalogs from getting horrendously large.

There are many reasons to use or not to use 1:1 previews - it just depends on your workflow. If I were a photojournalist on deadline everyday, I certainly would not be waiting around for 1:1 previews to be built. I'd just import the images with the standard previews, then do a quick edit based on composition. Once I had it narrowed down then I would build 1:1 previews for those selects and go from there. For my work, in general I am not on such a tight deadline, so I can take more time and do a larger edit that includes images for the client, my stock agency and my portfolio. Hence, my habitual use of the 1:1 previews.

That's it for this session. See you next week.

Adios, Michael Clark