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JacksterD
Participant
April 24, 2015

P: File handling much slower

  • April 24, 2015
  • 48 replies
  • 1599 views

I'm having an issue with Lightroom CC being very slow at file handling. In Lightroom 5 I could move files from one folder to another on the same drive very quickly (almost instantly, never more than a few seconds), but in Lightroom CC I'm currently moving 400 CR2 files to a different folder and it's taken 10 minutes. This is on a Retina MacBook Pro with an SSD.

Also, the way Lightroom CC converts to DNG seems to be different. Normally when I import files I choose to convert to DNG in the Import dialogue. Normally in Lightroom 5 I ended up with a folder full of DNG files. However, in Lightroom CC I seem to get a folder of CR2 files which are then converted to DNG. I tried moving these files (from within Lightroom) while this process was going on and Lightroom got very confused and around 25% of my files could no longer be found by Lightroom (they were still on the disk, but with "DNG" extensions as opposed to the "CR2" which Lightroom seemed to be expecting, even though it had just converted them!).

Overall, this has slowed my import workflow down hugely. I used to Import as DNG, move my files around and boom, done. Now I need to import as CR2, then move the files into the right folder (which takes at least 100x longer now), and then convert to DNG. Not good!

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    R
    Runspud
    Participant
    May 4, 2015
    import speed is so much slower since new Lightroom cc from Lightroom 5. I too choose to copy as DNG and the "copy to new location, import, then Convert to DNG" has my MacBook Pro fan working overtime. I'm not happy-hoping there is an adjustment made when enough users voice their dissatisfaction with the slow down.
    A
    amdkt7
    Inspiring
    April 29, 2015
    I have yet to try importing with the GPU acceleration turned off. I turned it off a couple of days ago and have not noticed much difference. I suspect that while my video card qualifies it is probably slower than my CPU. Supposedly the GPU is only used while in the Develop module, but perhaps there is some overhead with it turned on that slows everything down.

    This weekend I will try some different things, such as moving the catalog and camera raw cache to a different drive, trying different options for rendering image previews, anything I can think of.

    A few people are using a RAM Disk to store the catalog and it works well for them, but is there any advantage over an SSD?
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    April 29, 2015
    With my 13" Macbook Air, general slowness until I turned OFF gpu acceleration. I'm not sure if the speed-up I've experienced in various processing areas since turning the graphics acceleration off is throughout every part of Lightroom. I'm guessing that the speed improvement Adobe claims is only in machines with a separate, speedy graphics card. (Preferences > performance > Use Graphics Processor. Uncheck the box)
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    April 28, 2015
    Well, we've been doing some benchmarks here in France and for me for instance, it appears that LR CC is 30% slower to import files in t eh catalog, 18% slower to render the 1:1 previews and 40% faster to export to jpeg.

    Not the speed breakthrough we were expecting according to Adobe announcement...
    J
    JacksterDAuthor
    Participant
    April 28, 2015
    That's interesting. I suppose I can see the advantage of splitting up the import and the conversion process for some people.

    I'm not talking about moving the files using the OS file manager, I'm exclusively moving files within Lightroom. Essentially, I work at a nightclub, and so a lot of my photoshoots will be spread over two days (as I'll be working from, say, 11pm one day through to 2am the next morning). I normally just import by date and then move the files (inside Lightroom) from the later date into the folder of the first date just to keep everything together. I found that if I did this while Lightroom was converting to DNG, instead of queuing the process and doing the move once the conversion was complete, it started doing both at the same time and that seemed to result in LR losing track of a bunch of files because it was expecting the wrong file extension.
    A
    amdkt7
    Inspiring
    April 27, 2015
    I am seeing the same sluggish behavior when importing raw files to DNG. Three times longer does not seem to be a stretch. I also find that moving from one image to the next (in develop) to be just as slow as before. Rendering 1:1 previews does not seem to help. I initially tested with and without the GPU option, and did not see a difference.

    I have a gone through all of the standard performance guidelines and have not improved anything. I do need to try deleting the preferences file and perhaps removing my color calibration software and it's profile.

    I have a 4GHZ 8 core AMD cpu, and 16 gig of memory, two SSD hard drives. What more can I do?
    J
    jgcrowder123
    Participant
    April 27, 2015
    The bottom line is this "new and improved" way of doing things is much slower.

    The old 5.x way simply read the CR2 file off the memory card and then wrote the file back to the hard drive in DNG format. This required only one hard drive write per file.

    The new method reads the CR2 file from the memory card then writes the CR2 file to the hard drive and then reads the CR2 file from the hard drive and then writes it to the hard drive again in DNG format and then deletes the original CR2 file from the hard drive. This now requires two hard drive file writes and one delete process per file.

    How can anybody think this new way is faster than the old way? This slows down the import process tremendously. Importing and converting a card full of raw files now takes 3 times as long.
    Wolf Eilers
    Wolf Eilers
    Inspiring
    April 25, 2015
    Lighroom 6/CC has changed it's import method when converting to DNG. The raw files (CR2 in your case) are copied as fast as possible and then converted to DNG in the background. Don't touch the files in the OS directory while this is happening!

    I don't understand your workflow in the last paragraph. When you move files do you mean moving within Lightroom or within the OS?
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