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António Gil250908655h1g
Participating Frequently
October 10, 2026

Denoise is not using GPU even if Lightroom preferences says that my system supports full acceleration

  • October 10, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 28 views

Description of Issue: I recently upgraded Lightroom classic to version 15.6. Before that it used to take around 10 seconds to run Denoise in one of my files (photos from Nikon Z8). Now it takes around 25 to 30 seconds. This time does not change if I set the “Use Graphics Processor” preferences to off or custom. It seems that the software is always using the CPU instead of GPU. In spite of this behaviour, the application is recognising my processor (Apple M1 Ultra) and it says that it supports full acceleration.

Lightroom Classic Version 15.6

OS version 26.7.1

Camera model: Nikon Z8

Hardware: Mac Studio M1 Ultra, 128 GB

    1 reply

    JohanElzenga
    Community Expert
    JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 10, 2026

    AFAIK, denoise always uses the GPU, regardless of that setting. The real reason for the slow down is that Lightroom Classic is no longer using the Apple Neural Engine for denoise, because that still caused quality issues.

    -- Johan W. Elzenga
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