How To See Your Imported Images Fast in Lightroom Classic

I’m back from my travel photography workshop in Rome (an awesome group of folks – had a blast, missed a bunch of blog posts during [sorry ’bout that]), but glad to back and in the saddle again. Here we go:

Above: To see the thumbnails from your RAW images as quick as possible in Lightroom Classic (and maybe even your standard size images, too, depending on your camera’s make and model, and how large a preview they embed in their RAW images) in Lightroom Classic, it’s pretty easy — just choose ‘Embedded & Sidecar’ (as shown here). This tells Lightroom to just grab the JPEG image embedded into your RAW image from the camera, and while it’s a JPEG thumbnail, and not the most color accurate, it is fast.

Above: If you double-click one of these thumbnails when it first comes in, you might see a message in the bottom right corner that lets you know you’re viewing the ‘Embedded Preview’ (that quick JPEG preview from the RAW photo). That’s giving you a heads up that you’re not seeing the true color of the RAW original.

Above: If you click directly on that ‘Embedded Preview’ message, it renders the RAW preview (so it might take just a moment or two), and when that message disappears, you’re now seeing the RAW image (and you can see the difference in color between this RAW image and the JPEG preview in the previous image).

Above: This isn’t really part of the thumbnail tutorial, but that color is so off it’s driving me crazy, so I headed over to the Develop Module; grabbed the White Balance Selector Tool and clicked on something light gray (the wall on the right), and the color looks a whole lot better!).

Hope you found that helpful.

We’re just 5 days away!
It’s this coming Saturday, Oct. 6th, so head over to the official site right now and sign up to be a part of a photo walk set-up near you (if you haven’t checked in a while, it’s worth checking again – we have photo walk organized in over 900 cities around the world). Plus, it’s free; you’ve got a chance at some amazing prizes (including awesome Canon Cameras and lenses, and Adobe software, and lots more!), you’ll take lots of photos, meet some new people, and you’ll just have just a ton of fun.

Here’s to kicking off an awesome week! 🙂

Best,

-Scott