Lightroom Classic CC 2018 has introduced a new workflow when working with embedded previews. This new workflow may help you to reduce time you use to select the right images for developing.
When you import images into Lightroom Classic CC 2018, select Embedded & Sidecar option for Build Previews:
When you import images into Lightroom, it will create previews for you as it always has done. By default, Lightroom will create Minimal preview. What Minimal preview is is the thumbnail that you see in your Library Module in Grid view. When you take the image into Loupe View what you get is the Standard preview. As you start zooming into the image, Lightroom creates 1:1 preview. This preview is created by Lightroom automatically.
Standard and 1:1 previews are different from the previews your camera generated. When Lightroom creates bigger previews it may take a bit of time so you may see the message saying that previews are being generated. You can avoid that by creating 1:1 previews when importing images into Lightroom (which will take longer initially but you’ll have 1:1 previews already generated).
There is a solution to these challenges now in Lightroom Classic 2018. Instead of creating previews, Lightroom can now read embedded previews in the Library Module, which are previews embedded in your raw file by your camera. Some of the cameras will even embed full size embedded previews (not all and mostly newer cameras). if your camera doesn’t embed full size embedded previews, Lightroom will check for that and if your embedded preview is not 50% of the image, it will create a standard preview for you.
As you may have noticed while working in Lightroom, as images are being imported, you can start developing them and Lightroom will keep creating previews (standard or 1&1) in the background.
Images that have embedded preview are marked in the Library module with the icon which appears in the top left corner:
You can click on this icon if you prefer to convert the preview to standard preview.
More in the video I recorded – New Embedded Previews in Lightroom CC 2018.
