Does Lightroom 12 make use of eGPU?

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
March 10, 2023
3 replies
2476 views

Hi,

I have Lightroom and other Adobe programs on a 2018 Mac Mini OS Monterey with 64GB of RAM. The GPU is Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536MB. The new individual AI masking tools for people require a minimum of 2000MB to activate.

Here is my question: will an external GPU be recognized by Lightroom and release the restricted functionality? I am thinking of the Black Magic solution.

Cordially, Paul

macOS

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer JohanElzenga

I used to have a Mac Mini with a BlackMagic eGPU. Lightroom Classic recognised it and worked fine with it. I now have a MacBook Pro with M1 Max, so I can't check if anything changed with Lightroom Classic 12, but I would be very surprised if it all of a sudden would not work anymore.

johnrellis

Legend

"The GPU is Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536MB. The new individual AI masking tools for people require a minimum of 2000MB to activate."

It's most unfortunate that Adobe stubbornly refuses to let users disable the use of the GPU for AI masking:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-allow-users-to-disable-the-gpu-for-ai-masking/idi-p/12480845

AI masking, and People detection in particular, runs just fine (albiet more slowly) on computers with no GPU or on GPUs that LR deems as not meeting minimum requirements.

JohanElzenga

Correct answer

Community Expert

I used to have a Mac Mini with a BlackMagic eGPU. Lightroom Classic recognised it and worked fine with it. I now have a MacBook Pro with M1 Max, so I can't check if anything changed with Lightroom Classic 12, but I would be very surprised if it all of a sudden would not work anymore.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

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alpshiker2Author

Participating Frequently

Oh, great! That comes as a confirmation! Thank you Johan.

AxelMatt

Community Expert

I don't have experience on Mac and MacOS, but I think yes.

If the automatic detection doesn't work, you can disable the internal GPUs on Windows Notebooks. I thinks there's a similar function on Macs.

My System: Intel i7-8700K - 64GB RAM - NVidia Geforce RTX 3060 - Windows 11 Pro 25H2 -- LR-Classic 15 - Photoshop 27 - Nik Collection 8 - PureRAW 6 - Topaz Photo AI

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alpshiker2Author

Participating Frequently

Thank you for your advice. Yes, Lightroom offers those possibilities in the prefereces on Mac too. However, there are differences in the way the two OS deal with allocated memory as far as I know, so what will work on one system will not automatically work the same on the other. I wish someone had first hand experience to share. Thanks!

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