Lightroom Smart Previews

englishpremier · 4 Apr 2016 at 12:03

I thought the whole idea of smart previews were to allow you to edit, and export photos (up to a certain resolution) without the raw file being attached/available.

This doesn't seem to be working for me. I have my raw files on a network drive. When away from the network all of the development functions are greyed out.

My smartpreview Irdata file is with my catalog, on my laptop so I don't understand why I can't make development changes.

An Exception · 4 Apr 2016 at 18:14

You have actually built smart previews?

englishpremier · 4 Apr 2016 at 18:31

Yes. As I mentinoed my Irdata file is in with the catalog. It's over 600mb

RussD · 11 Apr 2016 at 23:34

All my RAWs and my Tiffs + my Jpgs from those RAWs are in one folder (each shoots folder) so that Lightroom can then read those Smarts easy. When on seperate drives you have to point Lightroom to them or it can't find them.