Beginner ? about preview size on import

[Cynthia B.]

Please bear with me (a beginner) I am using a monitor with a resolution of 1600x1200. When Importing photos in LR I don't know whether to use the 1440 or 1680 size. I tried importing at both sizes but don't see a difference on my screen (newbie here). If I have preferences set to 1440 what is the difference in the thumbnail created if I have/don't have generate standard preview checked.
Thank you

[kwchung]

Hi Cynthia, this setting determines the size of the standard preview. If you're running 1600, I'd suggest 1024 (or any setting lower than your horizontal resolution), anything larger might be wasted on your display and ends up with very large preview cache files (also try choosing Medium preview quality). When you zoom into the picture Lightroom will create another type of preview called 1:1.

[Cynthia B.]

Thanks for taking the time to explain this!! I really appreciate your assistance!!!
Cyn

[kwchung]

You're welcome  Also, I'm not sure what type of computer and operating system you're using but most people including myself find it's faster to import photos without choosing "render standard sized previews" checked, then once all your photos have been imported, you can select them and render the previews manually. There's another option to write XMP data automatically. It's faster to turn off "write to XMP automatically", make all your changes, keywords etc, then export XMP metadata to file. Before I made these two changes in Lightroom I found the program unbearably slow.