I just got back from a 2 month trip with over 3500 images taken.  They are in folders by date, some have 3 images, some have 300.
I want to be able to quickly scan thru the images and pick a few of the very best to print
However it takes a very long time for Qimage to load up the thumbnails, then create lightning RAW cache - with the rest of Qimage slowed down to a near stop during the process.

Is there a way I can have Qimage just load the embedded thumbnails that are in the RAW file already as I open and search for images?  I am happy to let Qimage process it's custom thumbs/lightening RAW later, but initially can't afford the time it will take to do all 3500?

My work around is to use a separate image browser (in this case Fastone Viewer) which can load up and display the RAW images in a directory near instantaneously.  Then I can find the images I want to print and go to Qimage, to open the specific date from the trip.  This however is also frustrating as I may have one image from one day and one from another so I still have to wait a very long time just to work on those two images out of a directory of hundreds.

This was not previously an issue for me as I loaded only 100-200 images at a time into Qimage from a weekend trip and waiting for the thumbs was not as big a deal.

Thanks.

This is true, but note that most all of my images are underexposed (to capture sky and other highlights).  I go by composition first and know that I can get the exposure/color correct in Qimage.

Yesterday evening I did select the entire root directory of the 3500 images (about 60 sub folders) and selected the option to generate lightening RAW cache, but several hours later I saw no indication of progress and no way to stop it (OS told me Qimage was unresponsive)  I gave Qimage another hour to get responsive, but eventually gave up and forced a Qimage shutdown.

If I switch to fast thumbs temporarily does Qimage erase the 'non-fast' thumbs and the lightnigh RAW cache?  I don't want to loose the 600 or so that have already been generated.

I have ~60 directories containing the 3500 images.  My desire is to select about 20-30 of these 3500 images to print.  It takes too long to go to one directory and wait for the 50-200 images to be cached to decide if there is an image in there I want to print.  That is why I use a separate image browser first to find which images I want to select, then target that sub directory in Qimage (and wait and wait to just add one image to the queue before moving to another directory and repeat...).  With this waiting it took me over an hour just to get eight images printed last night and I have barely gotten into the 3500 images yet.  I have a quad core 3ghz system.

I understood it the first time   At estimated 10sec an image its about a 10hr wait for all of them.

Bottom line is that if one comes back from a 2mo trip with thousands of photos, Qimage is not ideal to use to determine which 1% should be printed.  Ultimately I will likely print 5%, but want to get the cream first.

Yes I do have all four cores used in preferences, it defaulted that way on install.
Your rate is 9sec/image.  For 3500 images that would be 8+3/4 hours.  (I estimated ~10sec per image which is about 10hrs for all)

That math holds up for the 8 images I got printed in about an hour, that was ~45min waiting for thumbs to be built from four different directories and about 15min of minor edits, adding to queue and processing for printing.  That is only four of 60 directories so far and thinking ahead that does not seem very time efficient for printing out a few of the best from the remaining 56 directories, so I came to this forum to ask if there was a quicker way instead of waiting for each directory to be built out.

So I can use 'fast thumbs' and non-lightening RAW, but then I loose out of the cache that has been built so far when I switch.

excellent, thank you.  At one point in the last few days I switched to 'fast thumbs' and then back and I did have a directory of three images that I am certain I had fully built out before and later noticed that Qimage rebuilt the thumbs and lightening cache a 2nd time, so I thought that may have been the reason.

Thanks for the tips Mike and I look forward to that update.

The thumb speed increase (.252) and the interval printing capability of the unclog pattern (.248) will certainly make me spring for another year of Qimage updates (I'm stuck on .240 now)

Also want to add that the addition to allow for sorting by exif shot date (instead of file create date) many releases ago was one of the best improvements for my work flow.  I love how Qimage keeps getting better.