GETTING STARTED - Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3: Streamlining Your Digital Photography Process - page 11

c. 1:1: the largest previews in Lightroom, 1:1 refers to one screen pixel
per one image pixel. You'll ot en be looking at 1:1 previews as you
zoom in to look more closely at a photo.

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Previews can be purged, deleted and re-rendered at any time, as long as Lightroom
can i nd the original i les on disk. Lightroom can't build new previews from
missing i les, or i les stored on ol ine volumes. Previews are explained in context
at various places throughout this topic.

Maximizing Lightroom performance
Lightroom 3's processing routines have been re-engineered to provide faster
response and better quality than in earlier versions. h ere are a few things you
can to to ensure Lightroom is running at peak performance:

1. Keep ample free space on your system hard drive (where the Lightroom
application is installed) and the drive that holds the Lightroom database
and preview i les. h is is true for all photo-editing and imaging
applications—you don't want to be working from a drive with limited
free space, as data corruption may occur.

2. Load your machine with as much ram as i t will hold (or that you can
af ord). Lightroom likes to have lots of memory available.

3. If you have 4 gb of ram o r more, and your operating system supports
64-bit processing, make sure you're running Lightroom in 64-bit mode.
If you're not sure what this means, you can i nd more information
about it in the Adobe documentation.

4. Take control of your previews. Each time you make an adjustment to
a photo, Lightroom has to render new previews. h e speed it can do
this depends on your computer hardware and the size of the original
i les you're working with. Remember that Lightroom maintains
three separate previews for each image: thumbnail, standard size
and 1:1. Lightroom will generate any previews it needs on-the-
l y, sometimes this means you'll see a delay as Lightroom builds a
preview. If Lightroom already has all the necessary previews rendered,
moving between images should be quick. Using the commands on the
Library ➔ Previews menu or the contextual menu (discussed in Chapter
3), you can instruct Lightroom to discard and re-render the previews
whenever you choose.