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Answered

Experiencing performance related issues in Lightroom 3.x

Forum|Forum|15 years ago
June 9, 2010
102 replies
323781 views

Hi

I just upgraded from lightroom 2.7 to lightroom 3. I then proceeded to import my old catalog. this all went fine but lightroom is so slow, the thumbnail previews take forever to load if I manage to have the patience to wait for them.

is there a quick solution?? How can it be sped up?

thanks

Laurence

Message title was edited by: Brett N

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Tom Hogarty

Keith - that is part of the problem everyone is trying to figure out - why does LR3 work well for some and lousy for others. as MANY of us have posted - we have the SAME EXACT HARDWARE setup from 2.7 to 3.3 with VASTLY different results. If the only thing changing is the software then Lightroom IS the problem to be diagnosed...

If it is so offending then unsubscribe from the forum.

David - you clearly don't get the issue confronting those of us posting here.

LR 2.7 did everything we needed it to. The Beta was wonderful, and the ads for 3.0 certainly made it appear it would continue to be a set in the right direction. Your solution is for us to now go but other software? Hardly a reasonable one when 2.7 was great and we had every expectation that the new version would be an improvement.

If both of you are happy with the way it's running, then that is great but you are not at all helping discover why others are having legitimate issues.

If it's like groundhog day then why are you bothering to come back?

FYI, I need to lock this thread and start a new thread because I fear that customers will attempt to share valuable feedback in this discussion and it has become extremely difficult for the Lightroom team to follow the lengthy and increasingly chatty conversation. Please use the following forum topic to discuss the specifics of your feedback on Lightroom 3.3.

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/760245?tstart=0

Regards,

Tom Hogarty

Lightroom Product Manager

Show previous replies

B

Bernd_Hoeppner

Participant

I don't know, if somebody has given this answer some posts before, I did not read all of them.

(My machine: Q9550 at 3,2 Ghz, 8 g ram, Win7 x64, some hds in raid - about 3 tb, about 40.000 images, 40% 30d-cr2, 40% 5dII-cr2...)

I began with LR1, updated to LR2 and now to LR3 over the years.

My first cam was a Canon 30d, then I changed to 5dII. The raw files are very big, from 20 to 40 MB...

In LR2 it wasn't that big problem, I thougt...but in LR3 changing from image to image in dev mode ist slower,

changing from image to image in lib mode has become slower too. Always there was this message: "loading data..." for some seconds

I always let LR render default previews on import, 1:1 previews before developing images. In LR2 this was OK, LR3 was slowing down...

My problem was the default preview size, set by LR on install which was at 1000 (??). LR2 was faster, so I could live with this issue...

I work on a 24 inch monitor with 1920 x 1200 pixels and the default preview size after install is too small, I checked higher preview resolutions and selected 1440 pixels in the catalog settings of LR, rerendered all the default previews and...switching between the default images in library is very fast again!

So check your monitor resolution...with 19xx pixels take min. 14xx pixels resolution for default preview in LR3 and the "Loading..." message does not appear anymore. :-)

Bernd

T

tbob22

Participant

Hey Bernd, that is only true for library view.

I believe you will always get the loading box when switching photos when in the develop view, but it will be quite a bit faster if you have the standard size previews as well as the 1:1 previews than if you didn't.

L

Lee_Jay-ZyZk56

Participating Frequently

tbob22 wrote:
Hey Bernd, that is only true for library view.
I believe you will always get the loading box when switching photos when in the develop view, but it will be quite a bit faster if you have the standard size previews as well as the 1:1 previews than if you didn't.

Available preview size should not affect the speed of getting rid of the "loading" box in Develop. Develop uses the Camera Raw cache, not the previews. Making the CR cache bigger will allow you to store more previews before they are tossed, and rendering images, even the previews, should populate the CR cache for later use.

T

tbob22

Participant

I was able to get it working full speed. The main problem was speed in Develop Mode.

Sometimes it would sit for a minute before showing the 1:1 image, it could take 5 seconds or more for the sliders to respond, the brushes were unusably slow and sometimes it would take 30 seconds just to switch photos.

Now the sliders respond nearly instantaneously (~100ms to see a change, depending on the setting) I can switch photos in about 2-3 seconds and zooming usually takes under 1 second to render as long as you have the 1:1 preview, brushes are usable now but could be faster.

Here is what worked for me, you can try one at a time and see if it fixes the problem:

Update nVidia and Motherboard drivers to the latest you can find, if you don't know what motherboard or chipset you have you can use Everest to find out and of course make sure Windows is updated.
In Develop mode, hide the history panel on the left, for some reason this slows everything down on certain photos (can result in things taking 10x longer than they should), this does not seem to be consistant but you can try it anyway.
If you have an nVidia card make sure to try to override the 3D settings for Lightroom. Instructions can be found here:
http://www.thejohnsonblog.com/2008/09/06/lightroom-2-and-nvidia-performance/
http://lightroom-news.com/2008/09/02/nvidia-settings-to-speed-the-brush-tool-on-xp/
Disable Superfetch in Windows Services (google it), for me Superfetch seemed to slow things down by about 10%, not exactly sure why.
Defragment.
Disable your anti-virus and other programs running in the background, I did not have a problem with this but it is worth a try.

My computer specs just in case someone has something similar:

Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit

Intel Pentium E2160 Dual-Core @ 3ghz

4gb DDR2 1000mhz

Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L Motherboard
Nvidia 9600GT 512mb

4x 1tb WD Black HDD's

2x 22" Lenovo L220x monitors

Nikon D90 with NEF Raws

Library mode is still a bit on the slow side but it is usable and I think it feels faster than before.
Zooming 1:1 takes much longer (4-5 seconds) when compared to develop, it feels like it might be re-creating the preview every time you zoom in.
Switching photos is about 2x faster when compared to develop.

ChBr02

Participating Frequently

There is a lot of esoteric discussion on here.

Hey, I just want LR3 to work at least as fast and reliably as LR2.7.

There are a lot of things mentioned on here that I really don't care for either, but if I had to, I could live with. (even though I would be looking for another product) The thing that I can't live with is virtually no response to sliders. If I have to wait two seconds or more for each slight variation to react, it is totally unusable for me.

I checked doing the same operations on the same photos on LR2.7. No noticeable delay.

Dan, listen carefully..... Do you hear those people screaming at me, and demanding to know what is taking me so long to get their project done????

Can I get a refund on the "UPGRADE" until it is fixed (at least as good as 2.7)??????

Dan, What do we do until Adobe gets its fix out to us? Trust me, I don't want additional problems caused by a rush job. I just wished that you had waited to release LR3 until it was ready for prime time.

What is the best way to make an official complaint to Adobe?

L

Lee_Jay-ZyZk56

Participating Frequently

ChBr02 wrote:
Dan, What do we do until Adobe gets its fix out to us? Trust me, I don't want additional problems caused by a rush job. I just wished that you had waited to release LR3 until it was ready for prime time.
What is the best way to make an official complaint to Adobe?

This is why there's a trial period. Use it, if you like it buy it, if you don't, don't.

You seem to have 2.7, so just use that if you aren't happy with 3.

A

Anonymous

Lee Jay wrote:

"This is why there's a trial period. Use it, if you like it buy it, if you don't, don't.

You seem to have 2.7, so just use that if you aren't happy with 3."

Well for some of who ran the beta for months without any issues and have several thousand new images already in a LR3 catalog, going back to 2.7 is not viable, because the catalogs are not backward compatable. Its not just a matter of importing the last 2.7 catalog and going forward until a fix is released. I would have several hours of reimporting and correcting all the images that went into the beta and trial of 3.0. Not an option for me.

I will be forced to run 3.0 until the current prject in there are done. All new projects will be in 2.7.

D

DaveH1065

Participant

I upgraded 3 months ago to core I7, Win7 x64, LR3, Intel 150GB SSD, 12GB Memory, to be able to process photos as quick as possible. It sounds like I just hit the sweet spot because speed is no longer an issue.

All load times, edit and transition times in LR3 are less than 1 second or instanteous doing anything.

Stats as follows:

Photos stored on slow 2 TB hard disks

Catalog stored on SSD

Previews set to regenerate as used and discard after 1 day

(Why use up storage for 1:1 previews since it generates them almost instantaneously)

Preview Size max 2048 pixels

Preview quality high

Catalog size 80,000 Pictures - all raw

Camera 1DS Mark III

Picture size approx 25 MB

Some with HasselBlad

Picture size Tiff @ 40+ MB (still <1 sec load times)

Catalog size 1.2 GB

Working memory approx 1.2 - 1.5 GB

LR2 or LR3 were both almost instantaneous - saw no diffrence.

I defrag once a week and back up catalog almost after each use.

Optimize catalog about once a month.

J

john Nall

Known Participant

Ok. I'm having similar problems as reported in this forum string. I'm using a 24" iMac, with operating system 10.5.8, 2.4 GHz Intel Core Duo processor, 4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM. Here's some other info:

Lightroom version: 3.0 [677000]

Version: 10.5 [8]

Application architecture: x64

Physical processor count: 2

Processor speed: 2.4 GHz

Built-in memory: 4096.0 MB

Real memory available to Lightroom: 4096.0 MB

Real memory used by Lightroom: 1050.6 MB (25.6%)

Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 3655.4 MB

Memory cache size: 225.3 MB

Displays: 1) 1920x1200

I captured my experience trying to use the adjustment brush in a video. I used a wider brush, then a smaller one. No other program was running (other than iShowHD). You can see the video at http://jfnall.smugmug.com/Other/Movies/13203613_aKC5o#958477003_reRT2 As others have mentioned, at some point this program function (adjustment brush) becomes useless.

Ian Lyons

Community Expert

john Nall wrote:

I captured my experience trying to use the adjustment brush in a video. I used a wider brush, then a smaller one. No other program was running (other than iShowHD). You can see the video at http://jfnall.smugmug.com/Other/Movies/13203613_aKC5o#958477003_reRT2 As others have mentioned, at some point this program function (adjustment brush) becomes useless.

It looks like you have the adjustment brush auto mask activated. How much, if any improvement, if any, do you see when you turn it off?

J

john Nall

Known Participant

Ian,

I didn't have the auto mask function checked. Right now, other functions are slow, too. For example, applying some LR presets can take as long as 10-13 seconds. Removing them can also take that long, if not longer.

I failed to mention that I'm using a Wacom tablet and images are from a Canon 7D, so about 18 or so megapixels.

T

trevpl

Participant

My desktop suffers this slowing issue (and then blanking of thumbs, etc) but not the laptop. Desktop is Win7x64,12gb, i7.

Just reporting a symptom which I just noticed that may be shared by others, that hopefully may be of value to anyone at adbe doing research into the issue.

When the slowdown becomes apparent (just flipping through in loupe view and doing selects will cause this on my machine), a tmp file appears in the %temp% directory. (Not the raw cache directory, which i have allocated somewhere else at 30gb).

This tmp file is of the filename cr_sdk_NNNNNNNN.tmp

This tmp file either stays "contained" in size, which means a bearable slowdown. Or will suddenly ballon to like 15-20gig in size, at which point LR3 is pretty much unusable (such as not even drawing the loupe view image, blank thumbnails, etc). This has nothing to do with the adobe raw cache location, which even if cleared, does not fill to max allocated when the above tmp file starts appearing. The tmp file is deleted by LR upon exit of course.

I can see a need for working tmp files. But a 15 gig tmp file seems a little much for generic raws from 5d, 5dm2, 1dm4, d700 or d3 cameras.

wonder if anyone else with the slowness sees this large file appear as well..

J

JayS_In_CT

Participating Frequently

trevpl wrote:
..........
This tmp file is of the filename cr_sdk_NNNNNNNN.tmp
...........

wonder if anyone else with the slowness sees this large file appear as well..

Trevpl,

Hmm.. I'm on a Mac, so not sure if there is a similarly named file, but will look. Also, if you haven't already, you should get it into the Adobe system via this link.

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

No guarantees it will get picked up here..

Jay S.

MikeLeone

Participating Frequently

On 8/4/2010 11:19 AM, JayS In CT had this to say:

A

Anonymous

To the active "leaders" of this thread:

I have not submitted a post to this thread for a few weeks but I have been reading all the posts.

You may remember that I am a retired software developer and ex CEO of a software development company and I have the following observation:

A problem here is that the vast majority of visitors to this thread are having a problem with 3.0 or they wouldn't be here. What percentage of visitors to this forum do they represent?

Why don't one of you "leaders' (and you know who you are) start a survey in a new thread that addresses the experiences of all, to wit:

What is your experience with the performance of Lightroom 3.0 - pick a number:

10 - Much faster than 2.x

7 - Faster than 2.x

5 - Same as 2.x

3 - Slower than 2.x

1. - Much slower than 2.x.

0. - So slow as to be almost unusable

My experience on a high end well balanced system with best of breed components is somewhere equal to or North of a 7. Before I discovered that my CPU was overheating and throttled back to half its rated speed, it was more like a 1 or 2. That level of performance led me to this forum. I have outlined my experience several times but not lately. I have suggested several times that someone should start a thread that quantifies the configrations involved with users experiencing this problem - to no avail apparantly. Maybe this suggestion will find some traction.

This thread has focused on anecdotal experience of a subset of 3.0 users that are in trouble and not the general user. As such it does not provide a quantification of the overall experience of the general community. What is that experience? Not even the regulars in this thread can answer that question, how can you expect Adobe to answer it?

This thread has had 36,230 posts by 726 people. What does that tell Adobe about a product no doubt installed on tens of thousands of systems?

You guys should start such a survey.

Best regards,

Sherlocc

DanTull

Adobe Employee

You guys should start such a survey.

I've been voicing the same thought internally. I'd have a couple more questions, but I'd want to keep it very short to avoid any friction against participation.

DT

A

Anonymous

DanTull wrote:
You guys should start such a survey.
I've been voicing the same thought internally. I'd have a couple more questions, but I'd want to keep it very short to avoid any friction against participation.
DT

Dan's response tells me that we may be on to something.

Why would he be voicing the "same thought internally", if he didn't feel that he needed help getting Adobe management attention to the issue of this thread? Now, obviously, Dan can't admit anything along these lines, being an Adobe employee, but the point is that we can't just lambast Adobe, without recognizing the responsibilities we have as a user community.

Adobe management has to allocate resources just like any other business, if they are having trouble replicating this problem internally then all the brickbats thrown by this forum are meaningless rants. If we, as a forum, can show that a large majority of at least this community are facing a serious problem, then Adobe might just begin to really understand that they have a problem worthy of priority attention.

If this is just a problem voiced by 726 bleeding edge users out of tens of thousands, how can we expect them to place it at the same level as overt functional failures in 3.0 - or development of fixes to known problems for future releases?

Dan and Melissa need the help of this forum, and not just the un-quantified anecdotal evidence of this thread.

Best regards,

Sherlocc

dpick2

Known Participant

I have never had major issues with Adobe releases, but LR3 is troublesome. My major issue is with the delay when moving the sliders in Develope. I move a slider, then move it again thinking the image hasn't been effected much, then the first move shows up. This delay drives me nuts. I can deal with the four second delay for the image to fully render (I don't like it, but I can live with it), but the slider delay drives me nuts.

I love the new functionality--especially the noise reduction--but I truly hope the performance is improved.

Specs:

Win7 x64

6600 quad core (running @ 3.2ghz)

8 gigs ram

8800 Nvidia Vid card

24" monitor

J

JayS_In_CT

Participating Frequently

dpick2 wrote:
I have never had major issues with Adobe releases, but LR3 is troublesome. My major issue is with the delay when moving the sliders in Develope. I move a slider, then move it again thinking the image hasn't been effected much, then the first move shows up. This delay drives me nuts. I can deal with the four second delay for the image to fully render (I don't like it, but I can live with it), but the slider delay drives me nuts.
I love the new functionality--especially the noise reduction--but I truly hope the performance is improved.
Specs:
Win7 x64
6600 quad core (running @ 3.2ghz)
8 gigs ram
8800 Nvidia Vid card
24" monitor

What resolution are you running at, and have you tried to shrink the screen down some? Some folks have reported it helping.

Jay S.

dpick2

Known Participant

JayS In CT wrote:
dpick2 wrote:
I have never had major issues with Adobe releases, but LR3 is troublesome. My major issue is with the delay when moving the sliders in Develope. I move a slider, then move it again thinking the image hasn't been effected much, then the first move shows up. This delay drives me nuts. I can deal with the four second delay for the image to fully render (I don't like it, but I can live with it), but the slider delay drives me nuts.
I love the new functionality--especially the noise reduction--but I truly hope the performance is improved.
Specs:
Win7 x64
6600 quad core (running @ 3.2ghz)
8 gigs ram
8800 Nvidia Vid card
24" monitor
What resolution are you running at, and have you tried to shrink the screen down some? Some folks have reported it helping.
Jay S.

Thanks, Jay. Resolution is 1900x1200. I have made the image area smaller, and that has helped. Frustrating, though, because I have a very nice large, monitor for these increasingly older eyes...

Dan

T

TRCML

Participant

Having solved the keywording slowness I mentioned earlier and having checked whether there are any of the other problems mentioned on this thread, the answer is they're not. So I'm now working on the assumption that I have a fully working copy of LR3 (upgrade). (I think I'm right in thinking there's no software difference between LR3 and the LR3 upgrade. The only difference is price and how much profit Adobe are making out of it, which I don't begrudge because I like Adobe's products.) This could be tempting providence but this is what I've done and which may help others.

Re the keywording problem, I optimised the catalogue, backed-up and reopened the catalogue. However, doing that often was not ideal so then I split the size of the catalogue into two: instead of having over 5500 images in one catalogue, I extracted about 1000 and created a new catalogue for them. (For my use, the number is related to the image theme, not the number of images in total.)

To create the new catalogue, I selected the images and exported them as a catalog. I also exported the keywords for that second catalogue to a separate renamed keyword file. Finding with the new catalogue I was not experiencing keyword delays, I wondered whether the problem might be catalogue related, so I selected all the photos from the old catalogue (created with LR2) and exported them to a new catalogue with a different name, also the keywords, again in a new name file. I already had back-ups of the old catalogues on an external HD. Having backed up the new catalogues and saved copies on an external HD, I then deleted the old catalogue and its keyword file.

The net result is that i have two separate catalogues, one containing about 1000 images, and the other about 4500 images and everything seems to be working as it should. I have LR3 on another iMac (running on an obsolete specification with old 3GB) for another photo collection of about 8000 images so I'm expected what I've achieved on this iMac to work there as well.

iMac OSX 10.6.4

2.8 Ghz Intel Core i7

16 GB 1067 Mhz DDR3

PS - According to Scott Kelby's LR3 book, LR3's performance can get slow when you've thousands of images but my definition of thousands is many more than I have, but that may be wrong. Also, I've read elsewhere that the ideal RAM for LR3 is 4GB for itself because LR is memory-hungry. I don't understand much about the technicalities but it's one reason I got 16 GB for my iMac. In my experience, such as it it is, software can get slow for two reasons: either it's fighting for memory and losing the battle, or the OS needs a spring-clean. I use Mac Janitor regularly. When things get slow, I find starting again from scratch can be the answer which is basically what I've done here and so far it seems to have done the trick.

A

Anonymous

I'm having the problem too, ever since upgrading from v2. General editing is very slow - when painting with the adjustment brush, my changes often take a few seconds to show up. Changing sliders is also slow. Just now, I was only running Lightroom (using 2.25GB RAM), Pandora, and Activity Monitor - had lots of free RAM and only processor usage was when making adjustments (around 300%)

I am running a brand new Mac:

17" MacBook Pro 6,1

2.66 GHz Core i7

8GB RAM

7200 RPM HDD

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