Preview File Size in Lightroom

Is anyone else finding that the size of the preview seems excessively large? I'm not sure if I'm having an issue so I don't want to invest a lot of time inporting images into LR until I figure it out.

I just did a test with a new library and imported 117 RAW files 903mb image size and my library ended up at 606mb. Something seems out of whack here - my preview file is 2/3 the size of my RAW images! This was using the Adobe recommended preview size of 2048 for my 1920x1200 monitor resolution with a quality setting of High. I tried to re-render to a lower quality preview, but that didn't appear to work at all. I'm at a loss as to what to try next. There's really not a lot of settings in LR that have an effect on this.

Zoom out - choose "Fit"... Zoom in - choose 1:1... now, the app should remember those two choices and toggle between the two.

Maybe I'm missing something amonline, but I don't see what that has to do with my issues unless you're thinking that would solve the re-rendering issue. I'm trying to go between two preview settings for my entire library, not render 1:1 previews, which are huge.

I'm at a loss as to why you would not want to see your quality at 1:1. Processing is the most important step next to...shooting. Why wouldn't you want to see what you're producing in regards to noise, sharp, etc...

The reason I pointed out the two preferred choices is because you can get everything you need from those two choices alone. If you ever find yourself cloning, then you can 'choose' to go to 4:1 if needed.

As for your mb monitoring, the maximum jpg/tif quality (which is what you are using for a preview) is going to be nearly that of the size of your RAW itself. I would assume the app is rendering at 8bit, which explains the 30% difference.