evikne Posted July 12, 2020 Share #1 Posted July 12, 2020 (edited) Advertisement (gone after registration) I use Lightroom's smart previews a lot, because it is very handy to have the possibility to edit and export photos from my MacBook Pro without having the originals connected. The originals are moved to an external HD after a while to save space. But I discovered that smart previews don't always have the same size. They are like small originals with all information intact. So if an image is cropped, the smart preview is cropped too, which makes it even smaller than it was initially. It was difficult to predict the maximum (without enlarging) exported size of a smart preview. So I made a spreadsheet that calculates the export dimensions, so I can easily decide if a smart preview is large enough for an export job, or if I have to connect the external HD. I just fill in the cropped dimensions found in LR (the first time I also fill in the camera model's original dimensions). I don't know if this is interesting to others than myself. But in case, I've shared the OpenOffice document in my Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/s/irplymqh8u103a9/Smart Previews Export.ods.zip?dl=0 Edited July 12, 2020 by evikne 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted July 12, 2020 Posted July 12, 2020 Hi evikne, Take a look here Smart Previews Export. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
Jeff S Posted July 13, 2020 Share #2 Posted July 13, 2020 Unless there’s been a change since Smart Previews were introduced, these are compressed, lossy files limited to 2540 pixels on the long edge (should be checked prior to export). These can be used if highest file quality isn’t a concern. Magnification will not still be 1:1 (as with the original) when working with smart previews, so one might want to recheck things like detail sharpening if there’s a need to return to the originals. Jeff Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
evikne Posted July 13, 2020 Author Share #3 Posted July 13, 2020 (edited) Smart Previews are actually small, intelligently compressed DNG files, but with no visible difference, except the smaller pixel dimensions. So I use them a lot for all kinds of web sharing etc., as long as there are enough "effective pixels" left. The only problem to me has been that Lightroom doesn't show this info anywhere. Edited July 13, 2020 by evikne Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff S Posted July 13, 2020 Share #4 Posted July 13, 2020 (edited) Julieanne Kost from Adobe says that "they can be used in a pinch", and she markets the product features. Different strokes... https://blogs.adobe.com/jkost/2013/06/video-tutorials-smart-previews-in-lightroom-5.html See about the 7:30 mark. Jeff Edited July 13, 2020 by Jeff S Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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