Hello,

Let me start off by saying that I have a lot of pictures on different folders and different locations. Some are on my MAC Powerbook, some on CDs and DVDs and most are scattered among my three external drives.

Now, I want to have access to these pics without having to load them all into my laptop or bring along my external drives. I tried using Apple's iPhoto and was able to create a library with thumbnails of my photos. Problem is that when I disconnected from the external drives, the thubnails were still there but when I clicked on one, it only shows a VERY low res and pixelated picture. Same thing happens with Adobe Lightroom.

Is this the limitation of the software or is there an option to make the offline pictures display in a decent resolution? My intention is not to be able to edit the pictures wherever and whenever but just to be able to view them.

Help me out here guys. Thanks.



A

I found it ;D. I should have RTFM ;D.


Anyway, in Lightroom, under the Preference option, go to the File Management tab, and chose the Standard Preview Size (1024, 1140, 168 or 2048 pixels) and the Preview Quality (High, Medium, Low).

Then in the menu bar, click Library, then Previews, then chose either Render Standard-Sized previews or Render 1:1 previews.

You should be connected to storage device where the orig pics are located and based on your preview selection, it will "rebuild" the preview pics.

After that, you are now free to tag, add keywords, rotate, sort and preview your pics without having access to the originals. Of course if you want to edit them and do a little PP, the orig files should be accessible by the program.

I'm in the process now of importing most of my pics into Lightroom (around 10,000 as of now and climbing) specifying to "Import photos at their current location" and the database file of Lightroom is around 3GB. So now, at least I can view most of my photos on my laptop without eating up all my hard disk space.

Hope this little discovery of mine helps some of you guys out there.

A

Thanks for this info Allan. I've planned to figure it out as soon as I find time but thanks to you, I don't have to dig deep into Lightroom :D

@allan

How do you store your Raw files? Do you use the Lightroom DNG conversion and store 2 files of the same images (Raw and DNG) in different storage, one storage for all Raw and one storage for all DNG converts?

Also, though I know that DNG is lossless, Im wondering why a DNG convert file is smaller than the original Raw file.

@allan

How do you store your Raw files? Do you use the Lightroom DNG conversion and store 2 files of the same images (Raw and DNG) in different storage, one storage for all Raw and one storage for all DNG converts?

Also, though I know that DNG is lossless, Im wondering why a DNG convert file is smaller than the original Raw file.

Hello,
Sorry but I can't answer your question. I only shoot in jpeg (RAW files in the Sony takes too long for the camera to process, delaying the next shot).
Maybe someone else can shed some light here.


A

Hello,
Sorry but I can't answer your question. I only shoot in jpeg (RAW files in the Sony takes too long for the camera to process, delaying the next shot).
Maybe someone else can shed some light here.


A

Thanks anyway.