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About this lesson
Work with files in an offline mode.
Exercise files
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Quick reference
Topic: Lightroom: Smart Preview
Work with files in an offline mode.
When to use
If you are on the move with a camera, a laptop and a hard-drive at home, this tutorial is perfect for you. With Smart Preview you create and edit light versions of the images, which will then update the large versions with your edits when you reconnect.
Instructions
Preparing by Importing Photos into Lightroom with Smart Preview
- Connect photo media (or camera) and hard drive.
- In the import screen of Lightroom, under the file handling section turn on the ‘Build Smart Previews’ check box.
- Select destination for import to the external hard drive.
- Make sure that the catalogue is located on the computer drive (usually the C drive).
- Press Ok to import.
Building Smart Previews from pre-existing photos
- Navigate in Lightroom to the photos you want as a smart preview.
- Menu/Library/Preview/Build Smart Preview.
- Select OK (or all photos in current folder).
Editing off-line with Smart Previews
- With the external hard drive disconnected, you can see the images in your catalogue with a black box on top (to indicate they are off line).
- Double click on any smart preview image and go to the develop module to edit the light version of the image.
- When the hard drive is connected again the edits that you applied to the light version of the image will be applied to the larger version on the drive.
- 00:03 Hey everyone Howard Pinskey here,
- 00:05 taking a look at one of the new features coming in Lightroom five, smart previews.
- 00:09 Now, you should look at a smart preview like a light version of your
- 00:12 original image, which comes to the rescue, when that original is nowhere to be found.
- 00:17 This happens a lot if you store your photos on an external hard drive but
- 00:20 your catalog is still on your laptop.
- 00:23 And if you're traveling and you still want to edit those photos on previous versions
- 00:26 of lightroom, let's say lightroom four, that really wasn't possible.
- 00:29 You would get a message that the photo is offline.
- 00:32 But now in lightroom five with smart previews.
- 00:35 You can still edit your photos, you're editing a light version but
- 00:38 when you plug your external hard drive back in and
- 00:41 Lightroom detects that the original file is now online, it takes the adjustments
- 00:45 you've applied to the smart preview and puts it on the original file.
- 00:49 Let me show you how this works.
- 00:51 So I've just gone ahead and put my SD card in my laptop and
- 00:54 I'm gonna go ahead and import these photos that I've just taken.
- 00:57 Now when you're importing your photos,
- 00:58 if you take a look to the right, you have a new Build Smart Previews option.
- 01:03 And when you turn this on and
- 01:04 you go ahead and import your photos, you take a look down here.
- 01:07 I'm importing these photos to my external hard drive.
- 01:10 I'm gonna import.
- 01:11 And once it does import those photos, it's gonna start generating Smart Previews.
- 01:16 Now these smart previews are stored with your catalog.
- 01:19 So my catalog right now is on my laptop.
- 01:21 But my photos are being stored on my external hard drive.
- 01:25 So in the case that they do disconnect my external hard drive,
- 01:28 I still have a light version of that image that I can go ahead and edit.
- 01:31 So I'm going to press OK.
- 01:33 Now if you think you may be generating smart previews on most of your imports,
- 01:37 if you go to your Lightroom preferences, you have the ability to turn on,
- 01:40 Build Smart Previews during import.
- 01:43 That way every time you go to import your photos,
- 01:45 that check box is going to be turned on.
- 01:48 Of course on a case by case basis, you can turn that off if you think you
- 01:51 won't be needing those smart previews for your editing.
- 01:54 Now what about existing photos, can you build Smart Previews for
- 01:57 photos that already exist?
- 01:59 Of course, you can.
- 02:00 If you head up to the Library menu and
- 02:01 down to Previews, you have the option of building Smart Previews.
- 02:05 Now, right now, I only have one photo selected, so
- 02:08 Lightroom's giving me the option of building only one Smart Preview for
- 02:11 that one photo or all of them that are contained within this folder.
- 02:15 Now as I've already gone ahead and built the smart previews for
- 02:17 these photos, I'm going to cancel out.
- 02:19 But I will let you know that if you are dealing with thousands of images in
- 02:23 a single folder this process can take a while.
- 02:26 So you may want to dedicate some time to building these smart previews.
- 02:29 But the nice thing is for
- 02:30 your existing photos, you don't have to build all of them into smart previews.
- 02:35 You can only build select folders or select images,
- 02:38 that way if you are traveling and you do wanna edit specific photos, you don't have
- 02:42 to bring that external hard drive with you, you can just edit the smart previews.
- 02:46 And let me show you how that works.
- 02:47 So right now,
- 02:48 these photos are online because my external hard drive is plugged in.
- 02:51 But if I go ahead and
- 02:52 switch over to Finder and eject my hard drives, you're gonna notice when I
- 02:55 switch back over to Lightroom that those files are no longer online.
- 02:59 And that's communicated by the little black box at the top right corner.
- 03:03 If I hover my mouse, it says we're working in offline mode.
- 03:07 In previous versions in Light Room four you just had a question which basically
- 03:11 told you the files offline, there's nothing we can do.
- 03:13 But now because these images have smart previews generated part of
- 03:18 my catalog which is stored on my laptop, if I click on this photo here and I go to
- 03:23 my develop module, I still have access to all of my adjustments that I had before.
- 03:28 Of course there are a few downsides to using smart previews.
- 03:31 Because it is a light version of your original file, it's not as large.
- 03:35 So if I zoom in I don't have access to the whole entire image, but for
- 03:39 most of the editing that you're going to do, this won't be too much of a problem.
- 03:42 So I can go ahead over here,
- 03:43 I can increase the exposure a little bit, bring out some of the shadows.
- 03:47 Drop down the Highlights to bring out some of the sky, and
- 03:50 then bring up the Clarity and then the Vibrance.
- 03:53 So, I've made all the adjustments that I usually would to my original image.
- 03:57 But I'm applying them to the Smart Preview.
- 03:59 But here's the best part of all of this.
- 04:01 When you go back and plug in your external hard drive once again like I'm
- 04:04 doing right now you can see that the hard drive is now plugged in again.
- 04:07 Light Room's gonna automatically recognize that the original files are back online.
- 04:11 So, if I switch over to my grid view, you'll notice that little black box,
- 04:14 the offline mode, is no longer there.
- 04:16 Because Lightroom has recognized that my original files are now online, and
- 04:20 it's already gone ahead and
- 04:22 taken the adjustments from my smart preview and put it on my original file.
- 04:26 And it's all seamless.
- 04:28 So, if you're someone who travels a lot, and
- 04:29 you think you may wanna edit your photos on the go,
- 04:31 you now have the option of not bringing your external hard drive with you.
- 04:35 You can just edit the smart previews.
- 04:37 And when you get home and you plug in your external hard drive,
- 04:39 Light Room's gonna automatically recognize that the files are back online and
- 04:43 apply those adjustments right onto the originals.
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