Alan321 Online Upload & Sell: Off
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It can't match in terms of appearance, for the simple reason that there is less info to work with, and so there is a risk that you will not apply an amount of sharpening that is appropriate for the full data of the raw file. However, what was mentioned by Ian still applies - whatever sharpening commands you do apply to the smart previews will be applied to the full data of the raw file when the opportunity arises.
You can probably minimise the discrepancy by using larger previews but the smart previews will always involve a compressed version of the available image data and will never look absolutely identical to what the full raw file data can produce.
The limitations of editing smart previews are not so much what you do with them but rather what the results look like while you do it. That end result will be updated when the original data is available from the raw files but the same instructions will be used. At that stage you may or may not notice some differences. That's the general theory but there are exceptions to every rule. e.g. If you try making a high quality large print from a smart preview then you are committing to paper the result of working with a restricted set of image data. In that sense there are limitations to working with smart previews.
Julieanne is being wisely cautious in her recommendation but not overly cautious.
Something I am not clear on about editing smart previews is when the edits will actually be refreshed with the raw file image data. Early indications were that it would happen as soon as the raw files were available but I suspect that it may not happen straight away; that it might be delayed until those images are viewed again or you tell Lr to update its previews. The reason I think it might happen this way is that I don't notice any significant processing burden or extra drive access immediately after I re-connect my laptop to the main raw file storage after working away from home with smart previews. On the other hand, I do notice a significant burden when I tell Lr to rebuild previews even though it only updates those that need to be updated - and why would they need to be updated if Lr had already updated them from smart preview edits ? Either way, building previews is done by applying the latest list of edits to the raw file data and should involve a lot of processing.
Also, I believe that applying new edits to my raw files does not automatically update the smart previews, which probably therefore need to be rebuilt manually.
- Alan
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