1:1 Preview deletion default keeps losing my work.

[CuriousJosh]

Yeah, I know this is a controversial title, but lightroom's preference to delete 1:1 previews keeps losing my work, and it just happened again tonight.

When I shoot a wedding or large event with multiple shooters and 5000-12000 photos, it takes so long to render 1:1 previews that I often leave the previews running overnight.

During busy season it can easily take me over 4 weeks to deliver the final edit.

I just opened up one of these weddings tonight to finish it off, and lightroom removed all my hard generated previews.

It often happens that I just forget to set the catalog preference to NOT delete the previews after 30 days, and then I lose an entire night's of processing as lightroom deletes all the previews I worked so hard to schedule time to build.

IS THERE ANY WAY AT ALL TO SET THE DEFAULT FOR ALL CATALOGS TO NEVER DELETE 1:1 PREVIEWS!?!?!?!!?

seriously. If I WANT to delete things I've scheduled a whole day to generate, I'll go ahead and delete them myself. It's so annoying to have a default preference that destroys important processing work unless I remember to turn it off.

Really hoping there's an overall preference somewhere, or a way to hack the lightroom preferences files to set the default to this to ALWAYS be never.

end rant.

[Per Berntsen]

Go to Edit > Catalog settings, then under File handling set Discard 1:1 previews to Never.

[Geoff the kiwi]

Your work should not be lost even if 1:1 previews are deleted or even if all previews are deleted.

Never happened to me or heard of at happening to anyone else.

How do you know your work/develop settings are lost??

What is your workflow?

Post some screen shots to illustrate what is happening...

thanks

[Just Shoot Me]

LR isn't deleting your work. All your edits are still with each image. It is only the PREVIEWS that are being deleted. None of the actual edits are stored with the previews. They are stored in the catalog file and if you have the option turned on to Auto write changes to XMP and the option to store edits in the actual image file with JPG, TIFF and PSD (those option are in the Catalog settings dialog) then the edits are also stored in those files respectively.

Once you change that setting it sticks forever. That is unless you are starting a new catalog then all you have to do before you start importing your images or at any time is to change that setting to Never. Not that hard to do or remember to do.

[Todd Shaner]

joshcali  wrote

IS THERE ANY WAY AT ALL TO SET THE DEFAULT FOR ALL CATALOGS TO NEVER DELETE 1:1 PREVIEWS!?!?!?!!?

seriously. If I WANT to delete things I've scheduled a whole day to generate, I'll go ahead and delete them myself. It's so annoying to have a default preference that destroys important processing work unless I remember to turn it off.

Really hoping there's an overall preference somewhere, or a way to hack the lightroom preferences files to set the default to this to ALWAYS be never.

I'm unaware of any way to permanently change the 'New Catalog' default setting from 'Automatically Discard 1:1 Previews After 30 Days. I agree that for many users the 'Never' default option makes the most sense. Try posting the above question (lost 1:1 Previews and not lost edits) at the Photoshop Family forum as an 'Idea.' Adobe Staff monitor this forum:

Photoshop Family Customer Community