Stop "regenerate previews"
When I go to an album or project with a different preview size than that in the settings, Capture One regenerates the previews. This also happens for images found in a search. The regeneration process is in the background, but it takes about half sec per regenerated preview and slows other processes. I cannot find a setting for automatic versus manual regeneration. I also cannot find a way to stop regeneration once it starts.
How can I stop Capture One from regenerating previews.
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How would you have Capture One show you the image? The alternative would be to open each individual RAW file. That would take much longer. So it's a tradeoff.
Here's a pretty decent writeup of what's going on and some ways to optimize the experience. Fstoppers article.
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Capture One shows the image at full resolution (if the monitor supports that resolution) regardless of the preview size and the referenced file is on line or the the file is managed. It uses the preview in an attempt to accelerate this process or when the referenced image file is off line. Previews are generated according to the preview size setting when you import an image and are regenerated when you change the preview resolution setting. This makes sense and is not a problem.
Capture One does store the previews forever unless you delete them from the package (process not recommended). There is no option to remove previews after a certain time. You can regenerate them to a smaller size to reduce the space taken up by the previews (recommend process). The Capture One recommended preview setting size matches your monitor's resolution, but it really does not do much to accelerate the display of a fully resolved image, although it does allow you to view and edit the image when the referenced file is off line.
If you change the preview size, Capture One will regenerate the previews to match that size selected in the settings. When capture One encounters images with previews that do not match the settings (happens a lot when one upgrades monitors over th years), it sometimes regenerates images.
My question relates to stopping regeneration from occurring automatically after changing the setting for preview size or at minimum being able to cancel regeneration when it occurs. There is no apparent option to cancel regenerating previews, once Capture One starts the process.
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Agreed and I edited my reply, perhaps while you were writing this. Again, how would you have Capture One show you the image? What display size are you using? 4k? 5k? 6 (daaaang!)? Different from the one you were using when previews were originally generated? I understand where you're coming from but what would you have C1 display? If the preview is generated at a lower resolution than the one you're using now, the image will be pixelated as it's displayed somehow bigger or will have to be upsampled which will take time. If it's generated based on a bigger/denser display, C1 will have to downsample which will take time and give you an untrue representation. It seems to me that the best compromise is simply to regen the preview if the current display is different from the cached preview. Or am I completely misunderstanding your question?
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I rechecked and believe that Capture One does not normally regenerate previews without the user asking for it to do so.
Capture One will regenerate previews automatically under certain conditions: If it compares the EXIF image capture date to the current date and if the date is in the future (incorrectly set in the camera), it regenerates the preview. Normally, previews are generated on import or by the user asking for them to be regenerated. However, I encountered Capture One regenerating all previews of files found in a search. This, I think, is a bug.
Additionally, you select a number of files and unintentionally request them to be regenerated, you cannot cancel the process. It would be nice to have the option to cancel this task.
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Brian, in answer to your question, above, I set the resolution in the setting way below the 5k my monitor will display. Capture One attempts to utilize the low res preview and it is pixilated only for a moment until Capture One recalculates and displays the full resolution image. Preview size does not affect the resolution of the image ultimately displayed. If you go from one image to the next in the browser, you can see that the difference to display the fully resolved image differs very little using the "correct" preview setting as opposed to a much smaller preview size.
Perhaps, in the past with much slower processors, correct preview size made a difference in performance, but these days, it is hard to see the difference. Consequently, reducing preview size can save space without much effect on performance.
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Regarding display size, I use both 4 and 5k monitors.
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So maybe the right answer is to request that Capture One offer a setting to the user to not regen. But before they can even consider that, they have to consider the impact on all the users who won't know why what they see on the screen is of poor quality (assuming, let's say, the preview was generated on their laptop and now they're sitting at their 5k monitor). Adobe goes about this a different way. They just delete all previews after x days. **Smart previews may stick around longer, I haven't used it in a while.
I do truly get what you're saying. Personally, I solved the problem a different way. I have a couple of good 24" reference monitors that display good color at a reasonable density. Scaling to ever larger and denser displays eats up time with little upside to my photo editing (imo). That's my compromise.
So if you're sitting with the developers, what do you tell them that solves the problem such that it works for everyone? Once you have that figured out, I'd fully back you (for what little that means :) ) on submitting a feature request. You can submit that here.
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Brian, try this. It will help clarify what I am saying. Temporarily change your setting for previews to 640 and regenerate a few previews. Then view them in the viewer. You will not see a difference in the final display of the image, although it might take longer than if you used the right preview size. I did this again just to be sure and there is no difference, except that when selecting an image it take 5 seconds for Capture One to display it full resolution instead of 2 seconds on a 5k monitor. The best Capture One can do is still too slow, but that is another problem for another day.
As I said, I was wrong about automatic regeneration of existing previews. When it happens (as in a series of images found in a search) it is not normal. It is only supposed to happen only when requested from the drop down menu when clicking on selected images. I do not want to change that.
The user already has the option to use whatever preview size is desired. That selection will be used on new imports and when requesting regeneration. This is fine.
So all I want is the ability to cancel the regeneration process, just like cancelling anything.
This is bit off topic. You said, "Scaling to ever larger and denser displays eats up time with little upside to my photo editing (imo)." If you are referring to the sluggishness when trying to rapidly display one image after the next on high resolution displays, I agree. Using a lower resolution display does speed this up considerably and makes the response to editing with sliders much faster. This does not work on the high resolution smaller retina display on my Mac Book Pro because the amount of calculation to display the final image or recalculate edit changes is still substantial. I cannot see any change in speed with or without graphics acceleration, with Metal or in the past with Open CL. Better use of the graphics hardware and multi threaded code by Capture One would be my wish. I also wish we could choose separate preview resolutions appropriate for each display, but I digress. Sluggishness with editing loses me a lot more time that going from one image to the next, but if culling was my big task, I'd see this the other way.
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The easiest way to find a solution that fits every user is a configuration option in the preferences, if the current behavior of preview generation triggers would be changed. A stop button in the activities window would not hurt anyone either, on contrary.
I did not notice that searching (probably 'finding') images triggers preview regeneration if the setting is different. Actually I just tested this in a session with C1 15.2 on Windows and this seems not to be case. Either a new feature in v23 or a difference in the Mac version, or a bug?
And I agree with you Jerry, preview generation should only be executed on import and on explicit regeneration request of the user, imo.
I think there is hardly an argument that the user maybe wants to have regenerated images implicitely he might have found during a search, because 1) the search could have been 'wrong' and the user is not actually interested in these images, or only in a subset of these images as he refines his search, and 2) an adjusted preview size only helps the next time the user wants to see the images, after a lenghty preview generation process if many images are found during search, which C1 of course cannot predict just bcause he searched for them now. And regeneration occupies computer resources which can be counterproductive to a smooth user experience too.
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P.S. Even if I scroll through the found images in the viewer one by one, the previews are not regenerated on my computer.
Which is expexted, so regeneration as a result of a search really looks like a bug.0
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