# Tiny previews in import window



## Pintsizelukey (Jan 1, 2014)

I sometimes get full size previews in the import window (when I double click on a picture in the grid), but *usually* they are tiny and get extremely pixelated when I try to make them bigger. This makes it very difficult to decide if a picture is good enough to import. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why I am only sometimes able to see the previews properly. Any help would be much appreciated.


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## Selwin (Jan 1, 2014)

Hi, welcome to the forum!

I tried to reproduce your problem, but all of my images are displayed with good previews (not pixelated). Are you certain that you didn't zoom in more than 1:1? There is a zoom slider that you can control. If you zoom in beyond 1:1 you will always get a pixelated image. If this is not the problem, could you provide a screen shot so we can see what you mean? 

Apart from that, may I ask why you select before importing? The power of Lightroom is to import all images and select after the import, mark as Rejected what you don't want so you can delete them afterwards in one go.


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## Hal P Anderson (Jan 1, 2014)

Are you importing directly from the camera? If so, try using a card reader instead. Many users report import problems that go away when they import via card reader.


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## Selwin (Jan 1, 2014)

Hal, good point. Ultimately, copy your images to a temporary folder on your hard drive (using Finder) and import from there.


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## DianeK (Jan 1, 2014)

Pintsizelukey said:


> I sometimes get full size previews in the import window (when I double click on a picture in the grid), but *usually* they are tiny and get extremely pixelated when I try to make them bigger. This makes it very difficult to decide if a picture is good enough to import. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why I am only sometimes able to see the previews properly. Any help would be much appreciated.


I had this problem start a few months ago and never did get resolution. So I now import all and cull from LR. Not my preferred method but alas it seems once this strange import issue starts it is unresolvable. Sorry I don't have a solution. Just wanted to let you know you are not alone.
Diane


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## Pintsizelukey (Jan 1, 2014)

This is an example of what I mean. This preview is 1:1 and I can enlarge it, but it becomes extremely pixelated. To me it makes more sense to preview before importing and selecting the ones I want to keep. If I have a shoot with 100 photos and only want to keep 5-10 of the best ones, it doesn't make sense to me to import them all first, only to delete 90% of them.


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## Selwin (Jan 1, 2014)

DianeK said:


> I had this problem start a few months ago and never did get resolution. So I now import all and cull from LR. Not my preferred method but alas it seems once this strange import issue starts it is unresolvable. Sorry I don't have a solution. Just wanted to let you know you are not alone.
> Diane


Hi Diane, same question for you: why do you prefer to cull outside of Lightroom? I'm simply curious.

Also: when this small preview problem occurs, how are you importing (camera connected, card reader or directly from Hard Drive) ?


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## DianeK (Jan 2, 2014)

Selwin said:


> Hi Diane, same question for you: why do you prefer to cull outside of Lightroom? I'm simply curious.
> 
> Also: when this small preview problem occurs, how are you importing (camera connected, card reader or directly from Hard Drive) ?



Doesn't matter what mode; SD card slot, camera, card reader...sometimes I get full sized previews other times I get the tiny ones like Pintsizelukey posted in his screenshot. LR just seems somewhat capricious in this regard.

I am of the mind to keep as much junk off my hard drive as possible. Since nothing ever gets truly deleted unless you erase your hard drive I would just prefer to not import then send to trash...it's just a quirk of mine.

Diane


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## Selwin (Jan 2, 2014)

DianeK said:


> Doesn't matter what mode; SD card slot, camera, card reader...sometimes I get full sized previews other times I get the tiny ones like Pintsizelukey posted in his screenshot. LR just seems somewhat capricious in this regard.


 Meanwhile I also read your discussion from May 2013. Victoria asked you to install 4.4 to see if that would solve anything. Well regardless of whether you did or not, the OP has LR5 and is having the same issue... 



DianeK said:


> I am of the mind to keep as much junk off my hard drive as possible. Since nothing ever gets truly deleted unless you erase your hard drive I would just prefer to not import then send to trash...it's just a quirk of mine.
> 
> Diane


That is fair enough .


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## Selwin (Jan 2, 2014)

Pintsizelukey said:


> View attachment 4317
> This is an example of what I mean. This preview is 1:1 and I can enlarge it, but it becomes extremely pixelated. To me it makes more sense to preview before importing and selecting the ones I want to keep. If I have a shoot with 100 photos and only want to keep 5-10 of the best ones, it doesn't make sense to me to import them all first, only to delete 90% of them.


Which exact version of LR are you using?


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## Pintsizelukey (Jan 2, 2014)

I'm using version 5.3. I've had better luck using a card reader than by just plugging in the camera, but it still seems to be hit and miss, whether I get full sized previous or not in the import window.


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## Selwin (Jan 2, 2014)

What happens when you first copy the images to the hard drive (outside of Lightroom) and then import from there?


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## Pintsizelukey (Jan 2, 2014)

I haven't tried that yet, but that might be a good back up plan.


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## BrianPex (Mar 23, 2014)

*Same thing here*



Pintsizelukey said:


> I sometimes get full size previews in the import window (when I double click on a picture in the grid), but *usually* they are tiny and get extremely pixelated when I try to make them bigger. This makes it very difficult to decide if a picture is good enough to import. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why I am only sometimes able to see the previews properly. Any help would be much appreciated.



Happens when I put SD Card in card reader. (Mac OS X). Some pictures are fine and others are small. ALSO, some are upside down. Makes no sense to me...


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## Ryan (Oct 10, 2014)

Hi, I'm new here and was searching for an answer to a similar problem such as this. When I first tried to import some pictures into LR5 all my images in the preview window were pixelated - I only had a few. I used the slider and it didn't help.  Funny thing is I closed or minimized Lightroom (don't remember which) and came here looking for a fix. Went back to LR to try to import my photos again and lo and behold my photos weren't pixelated! I guess that next time I do this I'll just wait and see if waiting helps. Is there a cache that I could purge before importing?


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## Victoria Bampton (Oct 11, 2014)

Hi Ryan, welcome to the forum!

Were you importing from a memory card or a hard drive?  It could just be a bit slow reading the embedded previews.


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## cdbrauns (Oct 13, 2014)

I am having the same problem. It happens both when I import from an sd card and when I copy the files to my hard drive.

Has anyone found a solution to this problem?


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## Ryan (Oct 13, 2014)

Victoria Bampton said:


> Hi Ryan, welcome to the forum!
> 
> Were you importing from a memory card or a hard drive?  It could just be a bit slow reading the embedded previews.



Memory card. You reminded me of what I was doing and I realized I was using 2 different kinds of memory cards. One was from my point and click and the other was from my Nikon DSLR. One 4 year old card - Class 4 and the other a Class 10, a higher speed card. I've been using my Panasonic camera to snap things to learn how to use the pen tool in Photoshop with my Wacom Tablet.


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## Victoria Bampton (Oct 13, 2014)

It'd be interesting to know whether it was both cards that gave you the small previews or just the class 4 card.


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## Ryan (Oct 17, 2014)

It's been  few days and I've tried both. Even the previews were pixelated when zoomed in to fit. And blurry when first opened on import screen. Imported them and they were fine. I'd just like to see the pictures first so I can choose the ones to import, not import first and delete later. Either I slipped on a mouse click which change the settings somewhere (learning to use my Wacom) which is easy to do or there is a software glitch with the last update.


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## BI Photog (Jan 18, 2015)

Has anyone figured this out? I first had this problem importing directly from a Nikon AW-1 and thought that it was just that camera. I have had that problem a few times since then. Today I imported from a CF card in a card reader. I was able to edit prior to import with a full view un-pixelated preview image some of the images. I then was going to import images from the same card of a different subject and the full sized ( zoomed to fit) preview image was pixelated.


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## DianeK (Jan 18, 2015)

No, it is an unresolved bug that continues to sporadically rear its ugly head.  I started this thread quite a while back: http://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/showthread.php?19305-LR4-Teeny-tiny-previews
It happens with LR4 and LR5 (I never had this problem with LR3), Windows or OSX, CF or SD card, card reader or direct from camera.  I've given up my preferred workflow of reviewing previews in loupe view to cull rejects prior to import, and now just import all images from a shoot and delete rejects afterwards.  Doesn't appear to be a sufficiently significant issue to Adobe to garner their attention for a fix.  Sigh.


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## Ryan (Jan 19, 2015)

DianeK said:


> No, it is an unresolved bug that continues to sporadically rear its ugly head.  I started this thread quite a while back: http://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/showthread.php?19305-LR4-Teeny-tiny-previews
> It happens with LR4 and LR5 (I never had this problem with LR3), Windows or OSX, CF or SD card, card reader or direct from camera.  I've given up my preferred workflow of reviewing previews in loupe view to cull rejects prior to import, and now just import all images from a shoot and delete rejects afterwards.  Doesn't appear to be a sufficiently significant issue to Adobe to garner their attention for a fix.  Sigh.


Too bad, that's why I'm subscribed to this thread. The minute someone posts a fix I'll get it in email. For me it didn't happen until the last update. The earlier versions of LR5 were fine.


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## Selwin (Mar 21, 2015)

Hi Ryan, did 5.7 resolve the issue for you?


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## jan-zen (Jul 14, 2015)

Friends, this problem has a very easy solution  When you import anything, check the setting "Render Previews" in the right column inside of the "File Handling" section. If it says "Minimal" then you are getting this tiny previews. Change it to something else, like 1:1. You will not see the changes immediately, you have to enter any other folder first in the left panel and then come back to your SD card (or whatever you are using). And voila - your previews are fixed!


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