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Experiencing performance related issues in Lightroom 3.x

Forum|Forum|15 years ago
June 9, 2010
102 replies
323778 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

A

Anonymous

Even with a Core i7 - 975 with 12 GB RAM and 4 TB Raid 0 for my database, I also have experienced performance issues with LR 3.

For what it is worth, I submit the following:

The process:

1. I have tried everything this forum recommends with some improvement observed, but still sluggish in certain areas.

                   I even have an SSD on order for LR 3 cache storage..
                   Clearly an absurd situation on a system as powerful as mine.
        2. Slowdown with delays in the adjustment brush, exporting to Photoshop, and moving picture to picture in the Develop module..
        3. For example, the 8 threads in the core i7-975, would be at 100% CPU when preparing RAW files for transfer to Photoshop CS5.
        4. I discovered that the i7-975 CPU temps would be extreme during these activities, using a utility called "Speedfan".
        4. I replaced the stock Intel heat sync with a high quality device and cut my CPU temps in half.
        5. My preliminary observation is that I now appear to have no LR 3 performance issues with my Core i7-975 system.
                   No delays with the adjustment brush.
                   The cpu threads are not at 100% when preparing RAW files for Photoshop CS5 anymore.

Picture to picture in the develop module has gone from 5 sec to 2 sec.

Back to normal ecporting to Photoshop CS5.
Everything seems great - as I would expect with a core i7-975 cpu.

Conclusion:

        1. I believe that the motherboard throttles down the CPU when it detects high temps.
        2. A core I7-975 system should not be this sluggish with LR 3 - the motherboard must be throttling the CPU speed down due to the heat.
        2. As a result, I am convinced that LR3 probably will not run well on older systems with lower performance CPU chips.
        3. All the suggestions in this forum result in reduced CPU activity which has to at least help, but is not enough in most cases.

Trying to run LR 3 on anything near Adobe's minimum recommended configuration with any volume of work will, no doubt lead to much frustration.

I am not trying to say that all of you should check for extreme CPU temps. But my experience with a throttled back CPU and everything else optimized tells me that slower CPUs are probably the core of the problem with LR 3. Adobe needs to monitor CPU bottlenecks in their code and see where they are doing something excessive.

This is a preliminary observation, I will post if I discover more or change my mind.

Any observations from Adobe about LR 3.0 CPU utilization vis-a-vis LR 2.7 for example?

J

JayS_In_CT

Participating Frequently

sherlocc wrote:

Even with a Core i7 - 975 with 12 GB RAM and 4 TB Raid 0 for my database, I also have experienced performance issues with LR 3.
For what it is worth, I submit the following:
   The process:
        1. I have tried everything this forum recommends with some improvement observed, but still sluggish in certain areas.
                   I even have an SSD on order for LR 3 cache storage..
                   Clearly an absurd situation on a system as powerful as mine.
        2. Slowdown with delays in the adjustment brush, exporting to Photoshop, and moving picture to picture in the Develop module..
        3. For example, the 8 threads in the core i7-975, would be at 100% CPU when preparing RAW files for transfer to Photoshop CS5.
        4. I discovered that the i7-975 CPU temps would be extreme during these activities, using a utility called "Speedfan".
        4. I replaced the stock Intel heat sync with a high quality device and cut my CPU temps in half.
        5. My preliminary observation is that I now appear to have no LR 3 performance issues with my Core i7-975 system.
                   No delays with the adjustment brush.
                   The cpu threads are not at 100% when preparing RAW files for Photoshop CS5 anymore.
                   Picture to picture in the develop module has gone from 5 sec to 2 sec.
                   Back to normal ecporting to Photoshop CS5.
                   Everything seems great - as I would expect with a core i7-975 cpu.
   Conclusion:
        1. I believe that the motherboard throttles down the CPU when it detects high temps.
        2. A core I7-975 system should not be this sluggish with LR 3 - the motherboard must be throttling the CPU speed down due to the heat.
        2. As a result, I am convinced that LR3 probably will not run well on older systems with lower performance CPU chips.
        3. All the suggestions in this forum result in reduced CPU activity which has to at least help, but is not enough in most cases.
   Trying to run LR 3 on anything near Adobe's minimum recommended configuration with any volume of work will, no doubt lead to much frustration.
    I am not trying to say that all of you should check for extreme CPU temps. But my experience with a throttled back CPU and everything else optimized tells me that slower CPUs are probably the core of the problem with LR 3. Adobe needs to monitor CPU bottlenecks in their code and see where they are doing something excessive.
   This is a preliminary observation, I will post if I discover more or change my mind.
   Any observations from Adobe about LR 3.0 CPU utilization vis-a-vis LR 2.7 for example?

I'm having what I consider to be an opposite experience (knock wood). I'm on a Macbook Pro 2.1, which a 2.33 Core 2 Duo, with 3GB memory and an upgraded internal hard drive to 7200 RPM. I am seeing some of the issues associated with the graphics aspects, but even those are infrequent. In Develop mode, things aren't much different than the beta. I'm seeing some lag with "some" tools, but not all. In develop load time for 7D images are proportionally the same (given file size) as 40D images. From the time I switch to an image to the time it is fully loaded is about 8 seconds, but I am not locked out while it is loading. I can, for example, go to crop mode, use the straighten tool, etc. As I said, the brush tools, like gradient, are "twitchy".

Exports are taking longer, but again, I have to attribute some of that to the file size of the 7D images + edits. I am noticing one thing. While in Develop mode, in terms of real memory used, LR 3 is hitting about 600 to 800MB.. When not in use it settles back. I have been doing exports today, and real memory peaked up to about 1.45GB, but is not releasing and staying there.

Images and cache (60GB) are on eSATA attached 7200 Cavier Black drive (via Expresscard 34 eSATA card). Edits when using the sharpening tools are immediate as are profile changes or Tone sliders, etc.

I do only have Lightroom running so not trying to multi-task, but I have had Firefox up in the background and noticed nothing in the way of any additional stress. I haven't tried adding some xonxurrent iMovie work in there, which I was doing with LR2.. so that remains to be seen. :-)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that performance is 100% of what I had with 2.7, but thank the appropriate diety that I am not amongst those who are pretty dead in the water. I am at a loss as to why it works well or good on one machine yet others suffer on other seemingly more powerful configs.

Jay S.

Meant to mention also running dual display with LR3 on 24" Dell Ultrasharp at 1920 x 1200

A

Anonymous

Jay:

I disagree - You are experiencing the same slow down that I did, as is everyone else. Many things can exacerbate it so that everyone's experience differs in degree or magmitude, but it is there for all but the fastest systems.

1. You say - 'having what I consider to be an opposite experience (knock wood).". - I disagree.

2. For example, you say: " From the time I switch to an image to the time it is fully loaded is about 8 seconds".

My experience was 5+ seconds and now it is 2.

No matter that you can get into an edit capability while it happens, it should not take 8 seconds.

3. You say - "As I said, the brush tools, like gradient, are "twitchy"."

Another indication of the slow down I expieneced, but don't anymore with my i7-975 at full speed.

I maintain that these "symptoms", are indicative of LR 3.0 not performing up to performance expectations, and that were one to try and focus on the core issue, my experience discussed in the prior email would indicate that CPU power is it. The rest of the "adjustments" made by posters in this forum ultimately effect CPU usage and thus can improve performance - but cannot overcome the prime point and that is that LR 3.0 appears to be a CPU hog at times. The slower the CPU, the worse it should get, although as I said, there are other factors at play as well.

C

calm_Light157F

Participating Frequently

Hi,

I observed today that when editing my older Canon 50D images (2178x3267) LR3 seems to be fast. Edititing my Canon 7D (3456x5184) it is very slow. Both is raw format.

What type of files and sizes on the images are you using when slow/fast?

Yesterday I reduced monitor resolution and LR3 became much faster, 7D images too.

So in my case it is large images and monitor resolution (1920x1200) and images size. Reduce size of one of these factors it speeds up, which of course is natural. But it was fast in beta, so what happened?

- Terje

L

Larry Loos

Participant

Has anyone considered CODEC? I have installed a codec pack from FastPictureViewer (http://www.fastpictureviewer.com/codecs/) on my WIN7 64-bit PC and aren't having many of the issues discussed here and I am wondering if that is the reason why. What do you think? Someone should try it out and see if it changes things.

I also have Shark007's Free codec pack (http://shark007.net/) installed, although I believe it's mainly for video.

Anyways... just a thought.

C

calm_Light157F

Participating Frequently

Hi,

I can get the full speed back by lowering my screen resolution from 1920x1200 to 1280x800 but I guess that is already known stuff.

I have Nvidia GTX 275, Q6600@3.2GHz, 4GB memory.

- Terje

G

goodlux7

Participating Frequently

Have you tried putting your screen physically below the CPU?

Having exhausted all other hope for speeding up LR, I just tried this

with my iMac...and it seems to speed up the previews slightly.

Of course because of the oh so clever construction iMac, to put the

processor above the screen you simply tilt the computer over, placing

it sceen down. An added shake seems further improve the experience.

Only Adobe knows for sure, but I think the speed improvements I'm

seeing are caused by the electrons and pixels falling back out of the

CPU (or GPU...not sure) back into the lightroom catalouge.

The only problem is that I can no longer see photos, or do any work.

Has anyone tried this? Ideas?

C

Cary W

Participating Frequently

I just got here and see that this discussion has been going on for a while, so I'll just weigh in in the hope that the sheer number of complaining voices will bring some results.

My setup: iMac 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM. Haven't tried it yet on my MacBook Pro with identical configuration.

For me the problem is overall sluggishness and the occasional dreaded beachball. But the worst comes with the local adjustment brush where there is an annoying lag time between performing an action and seeing its result. This makes it almost impossible to do detailed masking. Everything seems to have gotten worse the longer I've used LR 3.

Anyway, I haven't yet tried trashing plists, prefs or reinstalling, so I guess that's next.

areohbee

Legend

+.02 - Just so the newcomers understand: Lightroom is slow to radically different degrees and in different ways for different people - no doubt due to a multitude of bugs that may or may not bite... Those for whom some aspect is a little bit slow may find some solace in small-hammer work-arounds that noticably improve performance, however if your brush strokes are lagging by a few to several seconds (as mine usually-but-not-always do), there is small comfort in solutions that shave off a quarter of a second...

Rob

A

Anonymous

areohbee wrote:
... however if your brush strokes are lagging by a few to several seconds (as mine usually-but-not-always do), there is small comfort in solutions that shave off a quarter of a second...
Rob

When I first reported the healing brush being extremely slow, I meant the movement of the brush without even clicking to heal anything. If the brush does not follow the mouse movement before some delay, it becomes impossible to use it since placing it on a blemish with some level of accuracy requires 20-30 second effort with many small jumps. Then the wait starts for it to work. This is happening on a loaded computer, probably as fast as one can get today. Needed: bug crushing, then a review of the functional architecture of the software. Issues like the cache size and clearing the cache, or turning off some functions are too arcane for many users, or not very reasonable to expect from them. How would you like if your TV picture quality got better as you lowered the volume? Mute it and perfect picture! Not very usable, is it?

I am a reasonably seasoned (read as old) computer user, I have seen them all, from TRS-DOS to CPM, to .... In this day and age, software users should not be required to constantly tweak it to get the best performance from it. Transparency of complexity is an operative concept here. Complexity should be several levels removed from the user. That is the mark of great software and hardware of any kind. I am sure anyone can find many examples of these. For example, an analog wristwatch represents a very transparent technology: look, know time. Simple, efficient, highly effective.

areohbee

Legend

acekin wrote:
When I first reported the healing brush being extremely slow, I meant the movement of the brush without even clicking to heal anything. If the brush does not follow the mouse movement before some delay, it becomes impossible to use it since placing it on a blemish with some level of accuracy requires 20-30 second effort with many small jumps

This is totally different than what I experience - for me, the brush moves instantaneously, its the effect that lags (and I'm talking about the local adjustment brush, not the Dust Spot Removal tool, although the DSR tool behaves similarly for me).

Anyway, I also have a relative adjustment plugin (DevAdjust) that for some people is fast when accessed in the Library module, but slow when accessed in the Develop module, and other people say just the opposite is true for them! (and some say its fast in both modules, some say slow in both modules).

So, I rest my case about performance symptoms being radically different for different people.

PS - I'm sure Adobe also wants it to work well regardless if your facing North or South...

Rob

J

JayS_In_CT

Participating Frequently

All,

I mentioned this earlier (maybe in this thread or another) and it was a suggestion to me from another member.

If you're working with a group of images, all the same ISO, e.g. staged theater performance, where the amout of NR/Sharpening is likely to be the same, try turning detail off while you do your other editing and see if that helps performance. It is a simple matter of selecting all the images when done, turn on Auto Sync and turn Detail back on before export. With especially large RAW file like from the 7D, I've found this very helpful.. Just offering a workflow tip while Adobe looks at these issues.

Jay S.

Ian Lyons

Community Expert

If you're working with a group of images, all the same ISO, e.g. staged theater performance, where the amout of NR/Sharpening is likely to be the same, try turning detail off while you do your other editing and see if that helps performance. It is a simple matter of selecting all the images when done, turn on Auto Sync and turn Detail back on before export. With especially large RAW file like from the 7D, I've found this very helpful.. Just offering a workflow tip while Adobe looks at these issues.

It has always been the case that the default setting for colour noise reduction imposes a performance penalty on processing previews, updating same after adjusting a develop slider or applying a brush in local adjustments. With the new noise algorithms the amount of processor grunt required has increased significantly. There is also an issue (bug) associated with higher screen resolutions that seems to have slipped into the performance mix. So, yes, turning colour noise in particular to off will help, but turning off the detail panel in it's entirety seems like overkill. However, be warned that it's likely that either will cause other problems because many of the adjustments in Detail panel will have an impact on saturation and to lesser extent hue. Therefore, if everything is off and you tweak an image to your liking then switch Detail on there's good chance that some of the earlier edits will no longer be optimal.

J

JayS_In_CT

Participating Frequently

Ian,

No disagreement. I'm primarily talking about major repetitive work and that without Detail on, you can expedite. Yes, it is signficantly more of an impact with the new NR processing. For places where you need to make sure subtle adjustments are the way you want them, Detail should be on. Thanks.

Jay S.

A

Anonymous

I am one of the ones who has been having serious trouble with the LR3 upgrade. Tried discarding 1:1 previews, trashing the preference file, repairing disk permissions, defragging the HD, recalibrating the monitor, based on the suggestions of various recognized and self-appointed experts. None of this worked. Finally gave up and increased the RAM from 4 to 8 GB and that seems to have worked so far (knock on wood). Don't know if I would have bought the upgrade at this point if I'd known that I would have to spend another $400 on more RAM. Yes, the additional RAM is welcome but it is not something I absolutely need right now. However, when I got a glimps of the possibilities of LR3, I got sucked in. Maybe that was Adobe's plan? As suggested, I could have tried the trial first, but the upgrade wasn't that expensive and it got some very good reports from some people I respect who put it to hard real-world commercial use.

I also think that Adobe needs competition to keep them on their toes. Looks like Photoshop CS5 has been having its share of problems too. If it is really just a matter of having adequate system resources, fine. Just tell us what we really need. I simply cannot conceive of Lightroom 3 working at all with the 2GB of RAM which Adobe recommends for a minimum. Hell, 2GB of RAM is not even enough for LR2 in my experience.

24" Imac, 2.66gh Core2 Duo processor, 8GB RAM. OS 10.5.7.

While I am at it, I will report something else which has started to occur since upgrading to LR3: other programs are freezing on me and after I force quite them I cannot reopen them (I get Mac error message -600). When I try to restart the computer it won't shut down and I have to manually press the power button to get it to shut down. Anyone have any similar experiences or suggestions where I might get some authoritative advice on this (assuming Adobe people aren't going to try to field this themselves). I am inclined now to remove Lightroom 3 from my computer entirely.

M

Mikkasa

Participating Frequently

2010DME wrote:
If it is really just a matter of having adequate system resources, fine. Just tell us what we really need. I simply cannot conceive of Lightroom 3 working at all with the 2GB of RAM which Adobe recommends for a minimum. Hell, 2GB of RAM is not even enough for LR2 in my experience.

That should be 2Gb of RAM for LR alone, I think. One of the issues I have with memory is er, it's because of erm... no, sorry, it's gone...

Oh yes: the way I generally read it, if a min spec is quoted as (among other things) '2Gb RAM' you're supposed to have 2Gb installed, not 2Gb freely available at any given time. LR3 clearly needs between 1 and 2Gb at any given time, leaving little headroom for anything else. The min spec should therefore be 3Gb, possibly 4...

other programs are freezing on me and after I force quite them I cannot reopen them (I get Mac error message -600). When I try to restart the computer it won't shut down and I have to manually press the power button to get it to shut down. Anyone have any similar experiences or suggestions where I might get some authoritative advice on this (assuming Adobe people aren't going to try to field this themselves). I am inclined now to remove Lightroom 3 from my computer entirely.

Right now have LR3 open and it's using 1 Gb idle; a browser, Mail and three other smaller apps, along with the system itself takes my current usage up to 2.45Gb. If I task LR it will typically leave me with less than 300Mb free, which might be an eyebrow-raiser but its generally not a problem. However (I noted this upthread but as you mentioned something similar I'll repeat it) if I do something to a lot of images simultaneously (multi-selected or whatever) this can start to get out of hand, and when I was updating metadata for the whole catalogue led to the exact situation you describe. With nothing else open, at this point LR will hang while hogging ~3.2 of my 4Gb total memory and the system gets extremely sluggish, even after I force-quit LR. A restart fixed everything. However I get the impression if I had 8Gb of RAM and asked enough of it, it would hog most of that too and still end up hanging...

Maybe you weren't doing anything quite so 'heavy' at the time, but the results sound the same. My LR workflow is absolutely fine, zippy even, if I keep to 'normal' small, local changes. Apart from 'make sure you've read that blog post' I'm afraid that's all I can suggest, but hopefully it will make LR usable for you in the short term.

Mine's a 2.66 quad-core iMac 27" BTW.

A

Aaron Gilpin

Participant

Just wanted to give you my two cents worth, I downloaded the trail version and found it super slow ie. waiting upto 5 seconds to apply any changes with adjustment brush etc. Im using a basic imac with with 1GB ram and 2.4 ghz intel core 2 duo. My first thought was to upgrade the ram so i added another 1GB and now I have no problems at all its as fast as I need it to be.

A

Anonymous

Where you running in 64 bit or 32 bit (it loads in 64 bit by default).

I have 3G ram on the same setup - and it crashed the mac when running in 64 bit - just about ran in 32 bit.

I have had to do a clean reinstall of 10.5.8 and am ordering extra ram - when I get LR up again, I shall let you know how I get on.

p.s. When I tried running LR2 in 64 bit it also crashed the mac.

J

JayS_In_CT

Participating Frequently

For me, the biggest difference in overall speed comes with turning off the "detail". Everything seems almost 2.7 like (at least while editing). Of course, part of the whole thing with LR3 is the great Noise Reduction feature (sorry if this is a duplicate post from within this thread.. starting to get too long to keep up!) :-)

Jay S.

J

Jim Stamates

Participating Frequently

And there's the problem, it wasn't supposed to be LR2.7 like, it was supposed to be much faster. Built from the ground up for speed.

J

JayS_In_CT

Participating Frequently

Jim,

Can't argue that, just trying to give a pointer to help with the current situation. There are other places where there is a rerendering going on that I'm not sure is necessary as well. Example, I've updated my 7D images in LR3 with an NR preset I built for ISO 3200. I pretty much autosync or sync the whole batch shot at that ISO for a given shoot. When I go back to now work on Recovery, for example. I'm seeing a "lesser" version displayed when I'm making the adjustment and then the image "redrawn" again back to the level of NR I had established. I don't see this behavior in 2.7. Seems like excess cycles to first lower the resolution and then redraw it? This only happens in "fit" mode, not fill or 1:1.... Maddening.

I think it will get there..but agree, we're a far cry from where I hope the end result will be. I do like the analogy someone made about a camera manufacturer releasing a camera that took 3 or 4 firmware upgrade to get to what was promised to be there on day 1 launch. "Sorry we're not quite at 8 FPS yet, in the next firmware release". :-)

I'm really not trying to make light.. It is hard to work in diminshed speeds when pushing hundreds of images through.

Jay S.

N

Nick Walker

Known Participant

Lightroom V3 has great potential but is slower than V2.7 using certain tools. Multiple use of the spot removal tool slows the system down to the spinning beech ball - V2.7 didn't with 8 meg RAM - since installing LIghtroom V3, 14GB RAM installed.

V3 seems snappy enough on my system, until certain tools are in operation.

Mac Pro 2 x 2.8 GHz - quad-core Intel

Mac OS X 10.6.4

14 GB RAM

Plenty of hard drives and space.

Lightroom V3 - one catalogue only - 1.08 GB (optimised).

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