Skip to main content

⚠️ Please note that this topic or post has been archived. The information contained here may no longer be accurate or up-to-date. ⚠️

When is preview size relevant?

Jerry C

As computers increase in speed, what is the point of bulking up the size the previews take on the media up when preview size is largely irrelevant.  

After installing version 16.3.1, I regenerated catalog previews to the Capture One recommended size of 5120 for my Mac Studio monitor. Capture one is running on a 24 core Mac Studio Ultra with 128GB RAM. Because most of my older files had smaller previews, this increased the size of my catalog (catalog size is largely dependent on preview storage). 

I cloned some of the 45K Canon R5 RAW file images and regenerated the preview's size for the clones to 640. There was no difference in the minuscule time to view the image at full resolution and I cannot see any difference in going back and forth between the image with the higher resolution preview and the lower one. 

I have been doing this experiment since I started Capture One on my 2009 Mac Pro, and later with my iMac Pro. Decreasing preview size made a difference in time to show a full resolution image on the Mac Pro, but had little effect with the iMac Pro and now has no effect on the Mac Studio. Image quality is identical.

So what is the context in which preview size is relevant?

 

0

Comments

6 comments

Date Votes
  • BeO
    Top Commenter

    I think you named it, performance was probably the main reason back in the days, or still is today with slower machines or notebooks.

    Then there is the functionality to take a catalog with previews with you for metadata edits but also image adjustments without the need to have the raw files at hand, and you can very quickly export your previews at its size incl. adjustments via the JPG QuickProof recipe/format, and 5k for example is plenty enough for a website.

    0
  • Jerry C
    • Edited

    So, if you don't have access to the RAW files, you would see the difference as you lower preview size.

    In my case, the catalog and the referenced images are on an external very fast OWC NVME SSD and backed up to another SSD. This makes for a very portable system with redundancy. 

    Going down a couple of levels below the recommended preview size should not make a noticeable change and would save a lot of room on the SSDs.

    Addendum: I regenerated all images from 5140 to 3840 and saved 50GB with no appreciable change in quality or  time to view full resolution image. 

    0
  • BeO
    Top Commenter

    Why not 640?

    0
  • Jerry C

    Why not 640? In case I have a problem with or forgot to pack the external SSD and have to use the copy of the catalog on the laptop to show on a 4k monitor. I could probably go down another level.

    There are too many people who have sad stories due to lack of redundancy and backup strategies. Mine is the time I packed every bit of equipment I had for a trip to Sedona, but somehow forgot the camera body and had to make do with my iPad.

    0
  • BeO
    Top Commenter

    I see, then redundancy is another relevant case for a decent preview size, I misunderstood you would argue against a bigger size :-)

    0
  • Jerry C

    My argument is with the size bigger than needed for off line editing or display. In my case, I should not need it, but, you never know.

    0

Post is closed for comments.