I am seeing very long "Loading" times when I zoom into a 1:1 on a photo. It's the same on both RAW and JPG photos.
Example - I just imported 50 photos in JPG format. Each photo is only about 4 MB. After the photos are imported, 1:1 previews are generated. I wait until this process is complete. But then when I try to zoom to 1:1 in the library or develop modes, it takes 6-8 seconds for the image to look sharp and the "loading" to go away.
To complicate things - if I select one of these newly imported photos and go to LIBRARY / PREVIEWS and tell it to generate a 1:1 preview, then I can zoom to 1:1 with no "loading" message at all. It still takes a second or two, but it's much better.
So what could be going on here? If 1:1 previews are being generated upon import (as it says by the progress bar in the top left of the screen), then why does it take so long to load at 1:1? And why would rendering 1:1 previews again make a difference?
I am using Lightroom 4.4 on a Macbook Air. I have 70GB free on my laptop, so I don't think hard drive space is an issue. Here are my current catalog settings: