# Force editing as smart preview?



## Marsu42 (Jun 23, 2015)

I just created a 300mp panorama and LR gets nearly stuck editing it. I can resolve this with a smart preview, which I found to be a good idea even for regular shots when just doing sorting or basic retouching operations. Yes, you all i7-ssd-64gb-whatever users shake your heads in disbelief, I'm on an old 4gb dual-core laptop here 

*Question:*_Is there any (built-in or plug-in) way to force LR to edit only the smart preview without taking the disk containing the original file offline?_

Thansk for any hints!


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## Jim Wilde (Jun 23, 2015)

I don't think there is natively, and I haven't heard of any plug-in that would enable this either.


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## clee01l (Jun 23, 2015)

Jim Wilde said:


> I don't think there is natively, and I haven't heard of any plug-in that would enable this either.


The event that triggers the use of the Smart preview in computation is the presence or absence of the master image file. If your master images are on an EHD, then simply disconnecting the EHD will force LR to use the Smart Preview. If it is not disconnectable, then renaming the file outside of LR should make the file go "missing" and trigger the use of the Smart preview.

It is worth a try to find out.


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## Jim Wilde (Jun 23, 2015)

Sure, that works Cletus, but that wasn't the question....the OP wanted to be able to use the SP *without* forcing the original offline (by whatever means).


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## Hoggy (Jun 26, 2015)

I agree it would be wonderful to easily force 'offline' editing of the smart preview...  (Like say, an "Offline" option in the File menu, perhaps?  hint, hint, nudge, nudge..)

What I do myself is import and point all images to a mapped drive, "P:" in this case (which is actually pointing to an internal drive's partition of "S:" on this laptop).  When I want to force offline editing of the smart preview, I disconnect that secondary "P:" mapping.  I can still access it outside of LR by using the drive's native device letter "S:".

Not the most elegant solution, and a slight PITA, but it can be worth it for those merged HDR's and Panos.  Although I haven't tried any panos just yet, I know the HDR's can slow LR to a crawl depending on how much is being done.


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## Marsu42 (Jul 12, 2015)

Hoggy said:


> What I do myself is import and point all images to a mapped drive, "P:" in this case (which is actually pointing to an internal drive's partition of "S:" on this laptop).  When I want to force offline editing of the smart preview, I disconnect that secondary "P:" mapping.  I can still access it outside of LR by using the drive's native device letter "S:".



Thanks a lot, that's just the solution I was looking for and it even works for internal drives that cannot be physically disconnected.


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## MutantLabs (Jul 17, 2015)

Marsu42 said:


> Thanks a lot, that's just the solution I was looking for and it even works for internal drives that cannot be physically disconnected.


To make it a single double-click operation you can create two command files (e.g. name them "connect.cmd" and "disconnect.cmd") and place them on your desktop, like this:

To connect to the original images:
net share Pics=C:\MyPictures

To disconnect to the original images:
net share Pics /delete

This assumes that your share name is "Pics" and the images are in the folder "C:\MyPictures". LR will be pointed at the "Pics" share instead of the physical path "C:\MyPictures".


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## Marsu42 (Jul 19, 2015)

MutantLabs said:


> To make it a single double-click operation you can create two command files (e.g. name them "connect.cmd" and "disconnect.cmd") and place them on your desktop



Thanks again for this elaborate method - but the drawback would be that this needs admin rights?

I imagine a way to achieve the same thing as a mere simple user is "subst p: c:\" and "subst p: /d" (where p: is the path for the lr db and c: the actual drive with the pix). My guess is that the subst method could be faster as well as it doesn't require the whole networking subsystem to redirect the data.


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