Nitro reads thumbnails and previews from the RAW file. Many camera manufacturers produce substandard thumbnails and previews. For example, Hasselblad is infamous for its tiny preview for gigantic sensors. Sony historically also produces needlessly small embedded thumbnails / preview.
You can see the size of the embedded preview by using Exiftool.
This is what I get for a Sony A7R3 (42 megapixels) – the preview is 1.7 MP. That’s bad!
Full Image Size : 7952×5304
Preview Image Size : 1616×1080
Lightroom does not have this problem because it requires that all images be imported. During that process it replaces the thumbnail and preview with its own rendering. But that import process takes time. Nitro avoids import entirely and just reads the files. The downside is that it is reliant on having a decent thumbnail / preview from the camera.
There is a solution to this. You can do one of two things (short of using a camera that produces decent embedded images)
1) Select the images and use Build Thumbnails. That will take some time, but it has to open each image and process it.
2) Go into Nitro Settings and turn OFF “Quick Preview” and also turn ON “Update Thumbnails in Quick Preview”. The app will then replace thumbnails as it goes with the RAW rendering.
Of course, you can do both.
These are not the default because rendering thumbnails from the RAW slows the app down.
Jock, my feeling are not easily hurt, so your comments did not bother me greatly. However, I would say that you seem aggravated and that tone did seep into the post. And despite your statement, “I was pointing out a scenario they apparently didn’t consider and haven’t addressed,” I have both considered and (attempted) to address it.
I hope these features in the app help with your workflow.