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Experiencing performance related issues in Lightroom 3.x

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

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camerahans

Participating Frequently

one thing that keeps bothering me is that I see rendering in the grid, filmstrip, navigator etc. While I would like to see the difference between colour and B&W in the filmstrip I couldn't care less about real colours etc. For me it is only a navigating tool. I think it might be usefull to only render what really is needed to work with a file. Just my 2 cts.

Anonymous

While I have to say that Lr 3 is noticably slower than Lr 2.x (spot healing, cropping are the most egregious examples), I have a feeling that my issues are nowhere near those reported by most folks who have posted to this thread. Lr 3 is still quite usable for me. The IQ improvements and lens correctiion (particularly for my UWA lens) are well worth the slight degradation in speed.

For the record, I'm using a Mac Pro 1,1 running OSX 10.6.3 with 12 GB of RAM.

Anonymous

I upgraded with the download. If Lightroom 2.7 and and Photoshop CS4 are working relatively well for me with pretty well spec'd and pretty modern hardware, I would expect the LR3 upgrade to work at least as smoothly without having to do any special optimizing or buying any new hardware, barring a warning to that effect from the manufacturer. And, with all the reported problems, the manufacturer is not offering any good possible solutions. And Photoshop CS5 seems to be having major problems too for many people.

For the record, tried discarding 1:1 previews, optimizing the catalog, increasing and decreasing the ACR cache, defragging the hard drive, deleting the preference file. No go. Brief hints of fast performance, but mostly slow as molasses. Awful, horrible, useless. I am trying to earn a living with this software. Just installed a trial of Aperture 3 and it is smooth and fast.

mei_-EPZwbs

Participating Frequently

Another data point:

I left my computer running for the last 8 hours rendering standard size previews for a load of images. Before starting this it was running normally and fairly quickly. I cancelled the rendering before all the photos were done (about 10k left and I have stuff I need to do) and Lightroom was then very unresponsive, with many grey boxes where thumbnails should be and taking many seconds or minutes to move between images, often sticking at the loading message with a very pixellated picture.

I closed and restarted lightroom but it didn't help. I closed it again and it was not showing as an application or a process in the Windows Task manager, but if I look at resource monitor it's shown as still being there and taking up about 2.7gb of RAM - in normal use it never gets much about 1.5gb.

I restarted the machine and reloaded lightroom, ram usage and performance seems to have gone back to normal. But... then it bogged down again and I'm now optimizing the catalogue trying to speed it up again.

It seems Lightroom has a memory leak somewhere and/or isn;t releasing resources when it closes.

----

Windows 7 64bit, 4gb RAM.

Mikkasa

Participating Frequently

mei! wrote:
Another data point:
I left my computer running for the last 8 hours rendering standard size previews for a load of images. Before starting this it was running normally and fairly quickly. I cancelled the rendering before all the photos were done (about 10k left and I have stuff I need to do) and Lightroom was then very unresponsive, with many grey boxes where thumbnails should be and taking many seconds or minutes to move between images, often sticking at the loading message with a very pixellated picture.
I closed and restarted lightroom but it didn't help. I closed it again and it was not showing as an application or a process in the Windows Task manager, but if I look at resource monitor it's shown as still being there and taking up about 2.7gb of RAM - in normal use it never gets much about 1.5gb.
I restarted the machine and reloaded lightroom, ram usage and performance seems to have gone back to normal. But... then it bogged down again and I'm now optimizing the catalogue trying to speed it up again.
It seems Lightroom has a memory leak somewhere and/or isn;t releasing resources when it closes.
----
Windows 7 64bit, 4gb RAM.

I managed to kind of reproduce this problem on the mac (quad-core i5 iMac 4gb RAM). Normally I never see LR use more than 1.75Gb of memory, even in Develop. Yesterday I was globally editing the IPTC/copyright info for my main (35k image) catalog and everything was progressing normally until ~90% of the way through, then it slowed considerably.

After abt 1 hour of processing the progress bar more or less stopped progressing (although the drive was still chugging away) which prompted me to open Activity Monitor. CPU use was surprisingly very low at <5%, RAM OTOH was maxed out at the available 2.8GB. I quit all open apps and watched as LR soaked up the newly available RAM to a max of 3.32Gb. I went to bed and 6 hours later the progress bar had barely moved, LR was kind of hanging for the first time since upgrading, and everything system-wise was very unresponsive. As soon as I force-quit and released the RAM the system returned to normal.

After a restart I was gratified to find the updated IPTC info had been retained, but it was an interesting event... hope it's of some use.

emmapal

Participant

LR 3 is almost unusable for me on my laptop (admittedly slow and small) and my desktop PC. I am running Windows 7 32-bit on the laptop and and the desktop. LR 3 is being shipped to me while I use the 64-bit trial version. Is there a 32-bit trial download? Is that my issue? I can't run other applications at the same time, even Photoshop has to be closed (and reopened every time I want to take an image in for further editing)

The adjustment brushes take several seconds to update a stroke, the sliders take several seconds to update each little change, it's maddening. What other information do you need from me to help identify how I can get it usable again? I am a real estate (wide angle) photographer and the lens distortion ability is vital for me, the reason I bought LR 3, but it's so bad I'm almost willing to do without that feature and go back to LR 2.

I have a catalog for a year with personal and client photos, 100,000 or so in one catalog. I regularly go in and delete photos that didn't make the client viewing cut. Should I create smaller catalogs for each sub category of photos? My machines are well maintained, as free of viruses and spyware as we can, optimized, etc. The laptop is a new little Acer netbook, and the desktop had Windows reinstalled recently and mostly new hardware (video card, motherboard, hard drives) about a year ago.

Thanks for any advice.

goodlux7

Participating Frequently

I'm having the same problem as the original poster, I'm using a new iMac, Quad Core, 4GB RAM. Here's what lightroom looks like on my computer. This is a catalog that I've upgraded after installing LR3.

I thought I would just "let lightroom run" like I often do. Nothing seemed to change over the period of 24 hours.

Restarting makes some (about a page) of thumbnails show up. I have optimized, and it didn't do anything. Not sure how to fix this.

The really frustrating thing here is that there is no indication to the user that anything is happening. No spinner, no status info, nothing. What does a user do? Wait for Adobe! I really wish the LR team would include more status information, like photoshop bridge has.

camerahans

Participating Frequently

trash the previews and generate them again in 3.0

hamish niven

Inspiring

Thanks for this suggestion. This has been suggested many times by Victoria B, myself and others and it works. It does speed things up.

hamish NIVEN photography on the move

ocabj

Participant

I'm having the same 'slow' performance with the retail copy of LR3. Doing basic stuff like clone/heal and skin softening is very laggy. I was not having these issues with LR3 Beta 1 or Beta 2. My work flow hasn't changed between Beta 2 and Final Release so I can only imagine it's a LR software issue.

vtihomir

Participant

I noticed that LR3 is much slower than LR 2.6 for me. I want to see picture at 1:1 magnification LR 3 spins Loading... message at least 10-12 seconds. Version 2.6 generates the same preview at 3-4 sec the most. Computer is 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo with 2 GB RAM, ATI video card and 7200 RPM WD Scorpio Black HDD. OS is Windows Vista and freshly installed Windows 7.

I tried every advice posted here but speed is about the same. Interesting thing is that LR 3 in my case renders each 1:1 preview in Library module twice - first it renders it, then image gets a bit blurred and it renders it again. In develop module it renders image only once therefore it's about twice as fast.

LittleJu-qMSLMD

Participant

Hi,

here my feedback, hoping this can contribute solving the issue.

My problem:
very slow (compared to LR2.7) in library mode, in Import, and probably in Dev module, due to background rendering of the standard previews.
I can see the LEDs of my external hard drive bliking a while (reading of raw file), then no light during a while (LR rendering this picture), and again, all very slow, until it somehow freezes.

Improvements achieved through:

- very clear improvement of Import task (from SD card) if I perform a "minimal" import (thumbnails only instead of "standard" previews renderings), and saving the pictures onto the local disk, then rendering standard previews manually, then moving the folder to the external drive.

- good improvement by deleting the whole LR previews folder, and then render manualy the standard previews

(library module->library->previews->render standard previews)

by bunches of 800 pictures maxi, selected by folders (the rendering task seems to freeze if I pass this quantity) (I'll try to reproduce this to double check)

being careful at the same time never to select a picture that is not yet "standard" rendered, in any module (otherwise this picture will stuck on loading, and at the same time freeze the rendering task of the other pictures)

and never to select a folder (or to select "all photographs") that isn't yet "standard" or "thumbnails" rendered (otherwise the building of the thumbnails for the Grid View or the Strip view for this folder will freeze the rendering taks of the other pictures)

- maybe improvement each time after I purged the cache (which is 35GB max, but never exceed 20GB through rendering tasks)

- maybe improvement after I upgraded all pictures to the new process. (library module -> library -> find previous process photos)

- maybe improvement if optimize catalog (library module -> file -> optimize catalog) after each batch of "standard previews" rendering.

- simply building the thumbnails allready takes quite a while, as each file needs to be read from the external hardrive,
(I don't know if LR uses the embedded thumbnails from the raw files, of build up new ones from scrap) (for example by selecting "all photographs" in Grid view, and scrolling down to show the next grey thumbnails, the thumbnails turn from grey to pictures as they are created. ) It would be nice to have some function in LR to control the building of the thumbnails (when to start, automantic or manual, which folders to treat, etc.)

My (obsolete!) system:
laptop 1GB RAM, 1.8 GHz, 2 cores, windows xp, deeply optimized (most xp service desactivated, disk defragmented, all xp eye candies desactivated, antivirus excluding LR folders and cr2 files, windows disk indexing desactivated, etc).

My catalog:
29.000 pictures, many cr2 of 14MB each,

catalog and previews on the local disk, but not on the same partition as Windows and the LR software.
pictures on external Hard Drive connected through USB port.
Upgraded catalog from LR2.7 to LR3

LittleJu-qMSLMD

Participant

Summary:
for some pictures, but not for all, When building thumbnail or standard preview, LR3 takes over full CPU and RAM, then pagefile which is very slow. especially as reading raw file from external USB hard drive.
then doesn't free the ressource anymore when done, even if restart LR. You need to restart Windows.
Pictures making problems seems to be the one with specific development adjustement in old process, or some JPEG from specific cameras.
Well, maybe...

Details:

First, build up on the fly the thumbnails of a folder with many pictures. Task takes some time, but normal on my slow machine.

Then start "standard preview" rendering of ONE picture of the folder (IMG_3922.CR2, from a canon eos 450D camera).
Computer gets very slow. CPU usage is actually stuck at 100%, even after the task is cancelled.
CPU usage goes back down to normal if close LR.
CPU usage goes back to 100% if restart LR, without running any task (see screenshot 1).
http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/6364/lr3cpu100screenshot1.jpg
(but LR is still accessing my external hard drive, which contains the RAW files!)
CPU usage goes back again to normal if close LR again.

If I stop windows, plug external hard drive out, and starts LR, CPU usage is normal, LR is working smoothly again.
If then I connect my external harddrive (still not touching anything on the LR interface), Hard drive is accessed during a few minutes, and CPU usage rockets up again for a while, then goes down.
(screenshot 2)
http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/8530/lr3cpu100screenshot2.jpg

I start then the standard rendering of ONE other picture (DSC00072.JPG from a sony DSC-W200 compact camera), CPU usage goes to 100% during 45 seconds then goes down, then everything is normal again.

The strange thing is that sometimes my LR3 has been able to performs the standard rendering in just 1 to 3 seconds per picture, so why so slow on this folder?

I select IMG_3932.CR2, and move to Develop view. CPU goes to 100%, during many minutes, with a lot of hard drive access, pagefile slowly increase from 600MB to 700MB, CPU usage goes down when I switch of antivirus and unplug network cable, maybe not related. Image is ready now, CPU is down to normal, but pagefile stays by 700MB.
I close LR.
Pagefile is down to 600MB
I start LR again, LR loads the picture in dev module from the cach, cpu goes very shortly to 100%, and pagefile to 646MB. All normally behaving. screenshot 7.
http://img576.imageshack.us/img576/1703/lr3cpu100screenshot7.jpg

One specificity of this pictures compared to others: it had some development settings, and the picture has been upgraded to new process.

camerahans

Participating Frequently

for windows... should hd indexing be on or off?

MelissaJ.G.

Adobe Employee

About the slowness-

I wish I had a good answer, a magic bullet that would fix it for everyone. I don't. I think we're running into 3 or 4 different bugs, all rather uncommon.

One clue we've had is that in some cases its related to disk contention. The faster your disk, the less likely you are to run into that. It does NOT seem related to memory size, or core number. (In fact, faster machines MAY run into it more than slower machines, but that is just a guess)

I have heard of 3 pallatives -

1) optimize your catalog. (I don't know why this works. If it works for you, please send me your original catalog so we can see if there are any clues in it - use a file transfer service like YouSendIt - and email me at mgaul at adobe dot com.

2) Throw out and rebuilt your previews. (Ick. sorry.)

3) Reduce the size of your Camera Raw Cache. This is only if you're slow in Develop.

We're trying to fix this, but we are hampered by a lack of truly reproduceable cases in house. (We have a couple machines that reproduce parts of it)

I guarentee that we are reading, and trying to find a common thread in all of this.

frank0239

Participating Frequently

I'm intrigued by the throw out and rebuild previews solution. I installed LR3 on my portable over LR1.x and imported and optimised the catalogue etc. I opened LR and had the usual delays opening library folders - loads of grey previews as LR built up the previews as required. I had 1-200 previews rendered when I opted to 'render all previews'. LR then did its usual survey of the previews and then opted to render all of my files including the ones already rendered. I had suspected this when I rendered previews on my desktop, but I failed to keep a watch on the numbers and file names.

Does this mean that the previews rendered as required are discarded when LR is closed or after a few days. If so, then anybody not 'rendering all previews' is always going to take a performance hit when opening a folder in a catalogue that has been converted from an earlier LR (except of course for files newly imported and rendered on import).

Frank

kwdaves-WfiRTh

Participating Frequently

Certainly deleting the standard previews and re-generating them from scratch followed by optimizing the catalog worked for me, but the way I upgraded may have been what caused me problems. I converted a LR2 catalog to LR3 and let it generate standard (2048 pixel) previews. Immediatley after the conversion was completed, I selected all the images in my library, changed to the 2010 process version, and re-generated the standard previews. After all of this LR3 was what I described as "slower than a dying snail". When I scrolled through my library in grid view, I saw blank thumbnails, thumbnails with no labels or badges displayed, or thumbnails with only the top label displayed. It would take up to five minutes for the update to finish (alll the labels and badges appear, the develop settings are applied, and the "..." go away) for the 180 thumbnails I had on screen. With the thumbnails in this condition scrolling in Loupe view was also very sluggish, while it took a very long time for the left and right browser to populate when I opened the program after it had been closed overnight or some similar period, while the program would first jump to the first images in the folder I had open and then jump to the image that was active when I closed the program last. The new previews seem to have fixed this, although I haven't been entirely satisified with the time it takes for the program to be ready for use after being closed overnight.

All of this leads me to wonder about any changes to thumbnail generation in LR3. My experience with LR2 was that it was necessary to go through my entire library and scroll the thumbnails on screen until the "..." to go away in order to get scrolling in Library Loupe or Grid view up to acceptable speeds. My initial impression of LR3 is that this isn't necessary.

My specs:

Windows 7 64 bit, Core2 Quad 2.83GHZ, 8GB DDR2 RAM, NVidia GeForce 8500GT with 512MB DDR2 RAM, Three SATA 300 (SATA II) 7200RPM drives with two of the drives dedicated storage drives for images and video.

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