There’s a specific kind of frustration that hits when you’ve just come back from a shoot with 400 raw files and Lightroom turns every arrow key press into a three-second waiting game. I’ve been there more times than I’d like to admit. Early on, I thought it was just the price of shooting raw. You take the slow rendering as payment for the flexibility. Turns out, I was wrong. I was just using Lightroom in the worst possible way for browsing.
In this Matt Kloskowski tutorial, Watch the full tutorial on YouTube, Matt breaks down why Lightroom Classic drags during photo selection and exactly where to change it. The fix lives in two places: your import settings and your module choice while browsing. Both are small. Both are free. And together they make a genuinely dramatic difference in how fast you can move through a shoot.
Once I understood the logic behind why Lightroom slows down, the solution felt obvious in hindsight. But that’s the thing about workflow problems. They hide in plain sight until someone who thinks about this stuff every day points directly at them.
Step 1: Open Your Import Dialog
File import dialog open in Lightroom Classic
Head to File and then Import Photos. This opens the full import dialog where most people spend their time checking the destination folder and then clicking Import without a second thought. That habit is costing you time on every single shoot. The setting that matters is on the right side panel, inside the File Handling section. Don’t skip past it.
Step 2: Set Build Previews to Embedded and Sidecar
File Handling panel with Embedded and Sidecar option highlighted
Inside File Handling, you’ll see a dropdown for Build Previews. Change this to Embedded and Sidecar. What this does is pull the small JPEG preview that your camera actually bakes into every raw file, rather than having Lightroom build a full preview from scratch on import. That embedded JPEG is already there, sitting inside the raw file your camera created, and it renders almost instantly compared to a freshly rendered full-resolution preview.
This is the key insight Matt makes here: Lightroom doesn’t have to do any heavy lifting when you’re just trying to look at your photos and decide which ones are worth keeping. The embedded preview is plenty sharp for that job. You’re not color grading here. You’re culling. Use the right tool for the right task.
Step 3: Complete the Import and Stay Out of Develop
Lightroom Library module showing imported photo grid
Once the import finishes, this is where the discipline part comes in. Do not go to the Develop module. I know it’s tempting. You spot a frame that looks promising and your hand reaches for that D key out of habit. Resist it. The moment you switch to Develop, you’re telling Lightroom to render a full high-resolution preview for editing. That process takes real computation time, and if you’re flipping through frames to find the keepers, you’re triggering that heavy render for every single image whether you need it or not.
Stay in Library. Everything you need for culling lives there.
Step 4: Use the Spacebar to Enlarge the View in Library
Single photo enlarged in Library module loupe view
In Library, pressing the spacebar toggles between the grid view and the loupe view, which gives you a large single-image display. This is your working view for culling. It’s big enough to check sharpness, expressions, and composition. It’s not Develop, so Lightroom isn’t spinning up the full rendering pipeline. You get a large, usable view without the wait.
Use this as your default culling workspace. Grid for getting a lay of the land, spacebar for a closer look, and then the arrow keys to move.
Step 5: Browse with the Arrow Keys and Feel the Difference
Right arrow key advancing quickly through photos in Library
Once you’re in the loupe view inside Library, tap the right arrow key. With Embedded and Sidecar selected at import, the transition between photos is nearly instant. Matt demonstrates this in the video by holding down the arrow key, and the photos flip past like frames of video. That’s not a trick or an edit. That’s just what Lightroom can do when you’re not asking it to do more than necessary.
This is where the workflow shift really lands. If you’ve been culling in Develop because you wanted a bigger view, the loupe in Library gives you that same size with a fraction of the load time. The trade-off between speed and view quality basically disappears.
Step 6: Rate and Flag Photos, Then Move to Develop
Pick flag and star rating tools visible in Library filter bar
While you’re flying through frames in Library, you can rate photos with number keys (1 through 5 for stars), press P to flag a pick, or press X to mark a reject. Do all of your sorting here before you ever open Develop. Once you’ve worked through the shoot and have a filtered set of keepers, pull up your picks using the filter bar at the bottom of the screen and then, and only then, switch over to Develop and start editing.
Yes, switching between photos in Develop will still take a second or two while Lightroom builds the full preview. Matt is upfront about that. But now you’re only triggering that render for the photos that actually made the cut, not for every frame in a 400-image folder.
One Thing I’d Add From My Own Experience
The Embedded and Sidecar setting won’t persist between sessions by default if you switch import presets or use a different import source. I’ve caught myself halfway through an import wondering why things felt sluggish, only to realize I’d accidentally reverted to Standard previews. Worth building a habit of checking that dropdown every time, or saving an import preset with Embedded and Sidecar locked in so you’re not relying on memory.
The other thing worth knowing: if you shoot with a camera that produces JPEG previews on the smaller side, like some older mirrorless bodies, the embedded preview might look soft in loupe view. Still use it for culling. Soft is fine for deciding yes or no on a frame. You can always trust Develop to show you the real thing once you’re editing.
The single biggest takeaway here is that Lightroom’s speed during browsing is not fixed. It’s a function of where you are in the application and what you asked it to do at import. Library plus Embedded and Sidecar is fast by design. Develop is slow by design because it’s doing serious work. Use each module for what it was built for, and culling a large shoot goes from a chore to something that actually moves.
Watch the full tutorial on YouTube to see Matt demonstrate the speed difference live. Watching it happen in real time made the concept click for me in a way that reading about it wouldn’t have.
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