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Inspiring
August 8, 2021
Open for Voting

P: needs a Queue Management System i.e. exporting photos

  • August 8, 2021
  • 5 replies
  • 897 views

Problem:

 

When I export more than 11 photos, my computer will be slowed down significantly. This might not be a problem, when I export just one folder, but in order to separate photos from an event of different people, I need to start several export processes and also have to wait for them to finish. Additionally, I cannot work on anything else.


I usually have a lot of photos around 20.000 to 60.000 in one catalog. They are distributed/organized in several folder by date and by events. My usual process is to import all my photos, sort them, discard them, edit every photo, export those in different folders. An export of around 1000 photos (32MP) can take around 1/2 hour up to 1 hour easily. I want my computer to work on them, when I don't use it.

 

I have a decent computer (AMD Threadripper 24 cores, 64GB RAM, NVMe SSD 2T, NVIDIA Geforce RTX 2060 Super), which needs to work on 45MP Photos in RAW.

 

What I need and probably other users as well:

  • I need to queue an export process. By queueing, I mean initiate an export, put it into a queue and immediatly pause it.
  • I need to have the ability to queue several exports.
  • I need to have the ability to start executing the queue, when I'm done working on all my photos. For example, when I go to bed.
  • I need to have the ability to restrict the amount of executed tasks in the queue. On task means sequential processing. More than 1 means parallel processing.

Solution:

 

Lightroom really needs a Queue Management System! Every Process uses this System and you can configure it with settings like:

  • How many Tasks / Processes  should run in parallel?
  • Which processes are allowed to run in parallel?
  • Which processes should run sequentially?
  • Which processes should be enqueued on default?
  • Is there a timer, which can start all processes in the queue on it's own at a certain time? (For example, the queue gets executed at midnight)
  • You should be able to move processes in front or in the back!
  • You should be able to priorities tasks (CPU power)
  • You should be able to priorities tasks (order in the queue)
  • When Lightroom shuts down, the queue has to have a backup! Therefore, you can resume every task after a crash or a needed shutdown after an update or a general restart!
  • Every process should be pausable, resumable, cancelable or restartable!
  • There should be a history of all tasks executed!
  • Every Task should be editable (Editing the list a file been exported, deleted, converted, etc.)

I probably could go on for the features, but this is really basic stuff and this was already implemented in many programs handeling files. Lightroom isn't any different, but it really is unpleasent, when working with it when files are touched! 

5 replies

Participant
August 24, 2026

I would particularly like this queue system to include Metadata > Save Metadata to File, not only exports and AI operations.

My Lightroom Classic catalogue contains approximately 33,000 photographs. The catalogue and previews are on my Mac’s internal SSD, while the originals are stored on an external LaCie 1big HDD.

After substantially reorganising my hierarchical keyword library, I need to write the updated metadata to the original photographs and XMP/ACR sidecars. This can take many hours or continue overnight.

At present, I have two unsatisfactory choices:

  1. Process one year at a time, with the risk that it finishes during the night and the computer then sits idle.

  2. Select several years or the entire catalogue, with no safe way to pause and later identify precisely which photographs completed before cancellation.

Please include metadata-writing operations in a persistent Lightroom task queue with:

  • Multiple folders, years, collections or selections queued separately.

  • Sequential rather than simultaneous processing.

  • Start now, start later or start at a scheduled time.

  • Safe pause and resume.

  • Persistence across Lightroom restarts and disconnected drives.

  • Counts for completed, remaining, failed and skipped files.

  • The name of the file currently being processed.

  • A durable completion log with timestamps.

  • The ability to retry only failed or unfinished files.

  • Optional disk-activity throttling so Lightroom and the computer remain usable.

The important requirement is that Lightroom remembers completion at the individual-file level. Cancelling or pausing a large operation should not make it necessary to repeat the entire selection or guess where Lightroom stopped.

This would make catalogue-wide keyword and metadata maintenance substantially safer for photographers with large archives stored on external drives.

KR Seals
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 22, 2024

@WesMasonMedia If importing multiple cards at once is important to you, Photo Mechanic will do that. It will import/ingest from as many card readers as you have connected.

 

Ken Seals - Nikon Z 9, Z 8, 14mm-800mm. Computer Win 11 Pro, I7-14700K, 64GB, RTX3070TI. Travel machine: 2021 MacBook Pro M1 MAX 64GB. All Adobe apps.
Known Participant
May 21, 2024

Proper queue management would also allow you to export that one file you wanted NOW, while you were in the middle of a big export.

What it also needs is a "don't use all the CPU cores for backround opperations so I can keep doing work" slider. 

WesMasonMedia
Participant
May 20, 2024

I decided to look into if this was a thing and found this.  I am using the AI GPU enhanced denoise and I have maybe 30 collections I need to run this against and I realized that it is trying to run them in parallel.  This is awful.

 

I also know that I can't import more then one SD card at a time either, every import needs to finish EVERYTHING before I can start another.  It tends to cancel any remaining things like smart preview generation.

 

A real queue with dependancies would be a significant upgrade to this system.  

Victoria Bampton LR Queen
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 9, 2021

Converting to feature request. Thanks for the idea. The forum does not automatically apply a "vote" to your post so don't forget to click the green arrow in the upper left.

Victoria - The Lightroom Queen