Lightroom degrading images before my eyes

[Barney]

Has anyone else come across this phenomenon?

When I click on an image in the Lightroom filmstrip to bring it up in the loupe, all looks well as Lightroom displays "loading form Previews", but as soon as dialogue box changes to "Rendering Higher quality" I sometimes see a huge increase in noise and/or what looks like over exposure.

Is there likely to be some sort of default processing going on which is altering the files causing this?

[geoffL]

Have you got it set to apply some develop settings as default?
Sounds like you have set some adjustment in the develop module which are being applied to all your images....

There is a setting which decides if some presets are applied as default when you import images....

[Barney]

Thanks Geoff. There are no presets that I can find when I import the shots, so I'm still at a loss.

[Rugby_Nut]

Two things to check:-

1. When LR2 renders a preview it will use the default Develop settings. If when you go into the Develop module your image looks OK then ignore this step. If in Develop mode you are still seeing a dodgy image then get back to me.

2. Edit -> Catalogue Settings -> File Handling: Play around with the first two settings to suit your screen. The preview size should be larger depending on the size of your screen. Small laptop = 1024. Big screen (30") = 2048. Preview quality should be at least medium.

Get back to me if you are still having problems.