Smart Previews are used by Adobe to enable Lightroom Mobile and Lightroom Web. Smart Previews enable Lightroom Mobile and Lightroom Web This feature appeared in Lightroom CC 2015.7 and Lightroom 6.7. Go to the Performance tab in Preferences and tick the Use Smart Previews instead of Originals for Image Editing box. Lightroom now gives you the option to automatically use Smart Previews in the Develop module. Lightroom works quicker with the smaller Smart Preview than it does with the full-size Develop module preview. Using Smart Previews in the Develop module helps Lightroom run faster.

Smart Previews make the Develop module faster You can work on your photos while away from home, wherever you are in the world, without access to your Raw files. This is helpful if you’re a laptop user who likes to travel. When the hard drive isn’t connected Lightroom uses the Smart Previews. If you save your Raw files on an external hard drive (recommended, so they don’t clog up your internal drive) then without Smart Previews you can only develop those photos when the hard drive is connected to your computer. You can develop photos when Lightroom can’t find the originals If you get into the habit of building Smart Previews when you import your images into Lightroom you will enjoy the following benefits. Smart Previews are a fraction of the size of Raw files (as little as 2%). A Smart Preview is a highly compressed DNG file that measures 2540 pixels along the longest edge. So I thought it would be interesting to take a closer look at it to see what it can do and who might find it useful.īut first, let’s talk about Smart Previews. Lightroom web is probably the least talked about of those three options.

Lightroom CC subscribers can access Lightroom in three places on a computer using the desktop app, on a tablet or phone using Lightroom Mobile, or through an internet browser, using Lightroom Web (go to the url to check it out for yourself).

Free lightroom online