Lightroom Image thumbnails

[Anthony Glick]

My Lightroom import dialogue is displaying the images in a VERY low resolution. Is there any way to make them higher res so I can properly preview the files before I import them. They appear very pixelated at the moment. I have been trying to fix this issue for a while now. I have attached a screenshot to show you what I am talking about. Cheers!

[Christina Keddie]

Let me first state: I think it's a little insane that you're using the LR import window to cull.  That's like the slowest possible way to cull.

But I've never experienced the pixelation you're showing here.  I even just opened my LR to test it out again, and whether I double-clicked the thumbnail or clicked the fullscreen preview button, my large previews were crystal clear.

So can you tell us more about your computer health?  http://www.damiensymonds.net/thread1.html

[Anthony Glick]

I have a Mac laptop running OS X EL Capitan and Lightroom cc. It is over 2 years old, and has 8GB of RAM. Its hard drive has 87GB free out of 500GB. The last time I shut down was earlier today. I have never run a cleanup program.

It is very slow to cull my photos. Would you be able to point me in the direction of a solution to this?

[Christina Keddie]

The 87GB free is a big part of your problem -- you want to keep your hard drive at least 1/3rd free at all times.  I'd strongly recommend clearing off a ton of space -- get files off of your HD and onto externals, etc. 

Also note that the Mac OS treats all files saved on your desktop as open and active files, thus eating up all your RAM, so if you have any files saved in folders directly on your desktop, move those elsewhere. 

Clearing enough space on your hard drive will also enable you to cull faster -- because you really should be downloading all your files onto your computer, and *then* going through and culling.  You can do it through LR if you'd like -- when you import your files, set it to build 1:1 previews while importing, and then you'll be able to zip through the files in your Library module and flag rejects with keyboard shortcuts.  Or you can get dedicated programs like PhotoMechanic to make culling lightning fast.  But this requires having the space on your hard drive to download all your files, and also to not overtax your system RAM. 

[Anthony Glick]

Thank you very much this was very helpful!