Today’s Question: You said: “On the Performance tab you can then turn on the ‘Use Smart Previews instead of Originals for image editing’ checkbox.” I do not see this check box when doing the above. What should I be doing? I generate smart previews when importing new images.
Tim’s Quick Answer: The Lightroom feature that enables you to leverage Smart Previews (rather than the source images) to speed up your workflow in the Develop module was added with version 2015.7 of Lightroom. Updating to the latest version will therefore make this feature available to you.
More Detail: One of the “workflow” changes introduced when Adobe introduced the Creative Cloud version of most of their software applications is the more frequent updates that are available. I have found that many photographers haven’t developed the habit of keeping their Creative Cloud applications up to date.
It is worth noting that a variety of small but helpful features have been released with various updates, and so it is easy to miss some important features in the context of what seems to be a “small” update.
I certainly recommend in most cases that you not update immediately when a new version becomes available. At times a new update may break an existing feature or cause other problems that can impact your workflow. It is therefore a good idea to wait at least a few days, and perhaps check to see if you can find any reports of problems related to the new update. But by updating within a reasonable time you’ll ensure you have access to all of the latest features and updates that are now provided on a more frequent basis as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription model.