Fine Tune Lightroom 3

Here are some quick setting changes to fine tune your settings in Lightroom 3.

What Happened to Optimize Catalog?

One of the first things you may have noticed upgrading to Lightroom 3 is “Optimize Catalog” appears to be missing from the Catalog Settings.

Optimize Catalog Moved to File Menu

As in previous versions, optimizing the Lightroom 3 catalog may take time due to the size of the file.

Increase Camera RAW Cache for Develop Module Speed

Lightroom 3 & Bridge CS5 share the Camera RAW Cache Settings. You can refer to the article by ACP Sean McCormack for details, but suffice to say increasing this cache should give the Develop module a bit more pep in its step. According to the Lightroom Queen, the Camera RAW cache can be preloaded by rendering new previews. Also consider keeping the Lightroom catalog & cache on separate physical drives from your images.

Render Standard or 1:1 Previews?

Look at how YOU use Lightroom 3 to determine the best previews to render. If you are not zooming images within the Library module, standard previews should be fine. If running exceptional video hardware, render standard previews closer to your monitor size. Don’t forget you can render 1:1 previews during the Import process.

XMP – To Write or Not?

If something were to happen to you Lightroom 3 catalog, you would still have your images, just not the adjustments you made to the files. You can automatically write changes to XMP for some piece of mind. In previous versions of Lightroom this caused a significant slowdown, LR3 seems better to the task. Another popular tweak is to uncheck metadata list suggestions.

One Keyboard Shortcut to Rule Them All

You only need to remember one keyboard shortcut in Lightroom 3 — CMD+ / (Mac) CTRL+ / (PC). That key combination opens the shortcut list for each module in Lightroom 3.