P: Better Library Module performance

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
May 22, 2011
24 replies
871 views

The Library module in Lightroom doesn't perform all that well in several ways. I used to think this was because of my ancient hardware, but now that I have brand new very fast hardware, it's still slow:

The thumbs are rendered in the import window very quickly, and some metadata is collected as well. This should be virtually instantly transferred to the main Library module once you hit import so the thumbs pop up right away and the rest of the import proceeds in the background.

No matter what rendering options you select in import, the thumbs should be fully rendered up to at least the default (middle) size and should be able to be recalled very quickly from the thumbs cache. Right now, it's often necessary to page through the thumbs and wait for rendering and for the three-dots to go away on each and every thumb.

Even if standard or 1:1 preview rendering is complete, grid searches aren't very fast and thumbs don't come up very fast unless the catalog is on an SSD. This indicates to me that there are inefficiencies in the way these thumbs and metadata are called up (lots of hard drive thrashing).

Even once the grid is available, grid scrolling isn't smooth even on fast hardware. This seems to be largely because of the application of the "other stuff" like drop shadows, borders, metadata, badges, and so on, but I'm not really sure about that. Once all these thumbs are in memory (after the previous call-up step is complete), scrolling on modern hardware should be buttery smooth, as it is on other applications, including the OS (I use Windows Explorer).

The main request here is to go through the Library module and improve its efficiency wherever possible, such as the way sync got around 1000 times faster after a rewrite during the last cycle.

Show previous replies

TheDigitalDog

Inspiring

What’s kind of amazing is to open say iPhoto with a lot of images and see how blazingly fast it preforms with similar functions. So yes, we really, really need some performance tweaks here. Faster scrolling, faster redraw of thumbs etc.

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"

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Lee JayAuthor

Inspiring

"Did you notice that "grabbing" the grid with the mouse cursor (you need to find the right spot between images) results in smoother scrolling?"

That's a very odd behavior, but you're absolutely right, it does.

F

FeedbackCommunityMember

Inspiring

Thanks, Victoria! Please feel free to remove this and this post as well.

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Thronsen

Known Participant

I completely agree with this post. The lethargy that LR demonstrates when scrolling through the grid view in Library mode is one of my biggest frustrations. I am using an i7-920, 24gb RAM and an SSD and still the lag is noticeable.

(btw, I dont want to distract anymore from this important topic, but thanks TK, appreciate it.)

Victoria Bampton LR Queen

Community Expert

Post removed as requested

Victoria - The Lightroom Queen

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FeedbackCommunityMember

Inspiring

Please accept my apologies for including your name in the above post. I checked your profile before and it was the only way I could refer to you.

I only wanted to make sure that your input wasn't lost accidentally.

I cannot edit my post anymore because you have commented on it. However, I flagged it as inappropriate, so hopefully it will be removed/edited soon. The report form said it may take "Get Satisfaction" up to four business days. Maybe someone from within the community with admin privileges could respond to your request more quickly?

Again, I'm very sorry for the inconvenience caused.

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Lee JayAuthor

Inspiring

Please re-enter your comments now that you've changed your screen name.

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Thronsen

Known Participant

Would appreciate if you could edit my name out of your post. No idea how this website got it, or didnt use a screen name. Thats why I deleted it. Thanks.