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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

M

MelissaJ.G.

Adobe Employee

Here I am - we're working on it.

I appreciate all the computer specs - we haven't found a good correlation between a specification and slowness yet, so I appreciate all the data I can get a hold of.

Couple more things:

In a couple threads, I've seen suggeestions that optimizing your catalog can help with ram usage. (I have no idea why, but there have been reports). If you try this, please make a backup of your catalog first - because if it works for you, I want to see your catalog!

-melissa

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arnelg

Participating Frequently

Wow, Melissa, your post is very much appreciated and I am looking forward to your solution.

Gavin Farrington

Participating Frequently

The folks posting their computer specs aren't here trying to have a platform war (for the most part) but rather trying to provide information so the people who track bugs can start to see patterns emerge. It's quite helpful for the programmers to know that the issue seems to affect Win7 x64 the most.

Since initially replying, I've been watching LR3's RAM consumption much more closely. On my 6GB system with no other major tasks running my RAM usage floats around 34%. I open LR3 and immediately open in the develop module whatever RAW file I happen to be on (this is to eliminate the RAM hit that would come from browsing around the library) and I can see LR3's RAM usage instantly snap up by well over 2GB. Use the adjustments brush a few times and I'm in the 80 percentile range of total system RAM usage. Use the clone stamp tool a few times, and my disk starts thrashing as LR takes over all possible memory and starts forcing out data typically cached by the OS. Cloning out a small dust spot takes about 30 seconds per occurrence. At this point simply opening the Windows start menu becomes a click-and-wait process. My memory meter indicates 10-20MB of free system memory. I work in this state as long as I can take it, then I exit LR which immediately cleans up the memory used by the app and leaves my machine floating around 20% RAM usage. Without re-launching LR, the OS continues to respond sluggishly for a while as it attempts to re-cache data typically used to make the interface snappy, but had been forced out by LR. Generally I re-launch LR right away to get some more work done. I can't do any serious developing of more than two images without needing to restart the app.

While the develop module is the fastest way to get LR to eat all my system memory, it's not the only way. My sorting workflow in the Library module will do it, too. Scanning through images, opening them in loupe view at 100%, scanning more, etc also brings the system to it's knees.

Win7 x64, LR3 x64

6GB RAM

i7 920

WD 2TB Black (data)

WD Raptor (system)

ATI 5870 1GB

Message was edited by: Digihotaru for clarity

H

hillrg

Known Participant

Digihotaru's post (#125) describes my experience precisely.

Win7 x64, LR3 x64

4 GB Ram on P6600 quad core

mVidia card

50,000 library, optimized

Rory

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Wanchese West

Participating Frequently

I believe I know why LR3 is so slow.

LR3 is designed to fill available CPU and RAM headroom. Memory or processor utilization to 80% in and of itself should be no problem. But the net amount available for the system and other concurrently operating processes needs to expand disproportionally in absolute terms as it shrinks in relative percentage terms. .

My system can handle 32gb of RAM. If LR3 grabbed 84% of that much RAM, that would leave about 5gb for windows and system requirements. Overall observed system performance should return to normal.

A pretty expensive guess if I am wrong......

areohbee

Legend

Lr3 operates full-speed on my 4GB machine - Lr itself typically consumes between 1GB and 1.5GB and never goes over 2GB. My system total is generally between 2/3 & 3/4 utilized ram-wise - that includes a few servers and 5-10 applications.

Lightroom version: 3.0 [677000]
Operating system: Windows 7 Ultimate Edition
Version: 6.1 [7600]
Application architecture: x64
System architecture: x64
Physical processor count: 2
Processor speed: 2.2 GHz
Built-in memory: 4095.5 MB
Real memory available to Lightroom: 4095.5 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 1310.7 MB (32.0%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 1380.7 MB
Memory cache size: 308.5 MB
System DPI setting: 96 DPI
Desktop composition enabled: Yes
Displays: 1) 1920x1200, 2) 1920x1200

I can't help but think that if you need massive amounts of RAM then you've got a problem with your system and/or its interaction with Lightroom. If more RAM fixes the symptoms, then who cares - I'm just sayin'...

Rob

Gavin Farrington

Participating Frequently

Just because it's fun pile on the bandwagon, I too see massive memory consumption in LR3 after browsing a handful of images.

Win7x64, LR3 x64

6GB Ram

Core i7 920

I have to exit the app and restart it every 30 minutes or so because it consumes so much RAM (96% according to my meter) that even the OS takes many seconds to respond to simple commands. Looks like a memory leak to me.

E

Eric_G_7D

Participant

Well, I found a major problem that was causing the almost non-existent movement - I had several corrupted JPG and CR2 files that had been imported. Once I deleted them using Windows File Explorer and re-synchronized the folder in LR3, the performance returned to a very manageable level.

What tipped me off to this is that some imported folders with more and larger images were fine, but the one folder that I kept starting with had the bad images. I was able to preview the good files using a picture viewer, but the corrupted ones were unable to render in any program. I presume LR3 was stuck on trying to deal with one or more of the corrupted files.

BSC_PHOTO

Participating Frequently

Quick Note:

Although increasing the ACR cache has sped LR up to lightning fast speeds it has not changed the issue where an adjusted image goes jagged until you zoom in and out. This is a huge bug for me as I will delete most even slightly soft images. I will say that the process of zooming in and out as well as making the adjustments has sped up so much that it is almost tollerable that I have to do that to check my images

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arnelg

Participating Frequently

Hi, Sean McCormack in another thread offered a solution, which in summary is increasing the purging the cache and increasing ACR cache. I tried it and LR3 worked really fast, both zooming in and out and exporting. So, I continued working, processing a folder of senior portraits. Then after some exports, it slowed down. I went thru the process again, same experience, fast at first then slowed down after an export of less than 40 files. I believe Sean solution is very good but there seems to be another thing that is affecting LR 3's responsiveness.

Apparently this concern of LR 3 is true with many users, across both Windows and Mac.

There are now more than 2800 views on this thread and more than 76 replies, but it seems that there is no reply yet from an Adobe engineer. Or is there?

Here is the link to a similar thread:

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/655828?tstart=30

And the link to Sean post about increasing cache of ACR

http://lightroom-blog.com/2010/04/camera-raw-cache.html

L

Lou_Gonza

Participating Frequently

Yes I saw his post too and increased my cache size. It was set to 1 gb. I now have it set to 100gb but I still don't see a performance improvement.

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Lou_Gonza

Participating Frequently

I agree with the 64 bit memory leak theory. I posted about this yesterday. See here. I have 8 gb of RAM and it ate 6.78gb while importing 264 raw files! Are you kidding me? Something is definitely wrong.

I'm gonna try loading the 32 bit version on my 64 bit PC, and see if that helps.

E

Eric_G_7D

Participant

I agree - I was one of the previous posters, and I just installed 32-bit LR3. It's considerably faster to render Library previews (even in Grid Mode with small thumbnails) and is using a lot less memory.

The issue does seem to be large CR2 (raw) files, but with my setup (fast 6-core processor and 12 GB DDR3 memory, etc.), I'd expect reasonable performance even with large files.

Adobe - can you help?

L

Lou_Gonza

Participating Frequently

Yes, I'm importing Canon 5dM2 raw files (25-30mb each!) and LR3 is choking on them. There is no doubt, they are BIG files, but I would still expect LR to be able to handle them. It is being marketed as pro software so one would expect them to have tested this.

I love Lightroom. But it always mystifies me when users right off the bat catch things like this but Adobe (or any software company for that matter) for some reason didn't see this in testing before it was released. It just blows my mind. Go figure.

BSC_PHOTO

Participating Frequently

There is a lot of arguing over samantics but the truth is LR 3 is wicked slow and has too many bugs for my tatse. Saying that you get better IQ doesn't make sense to me either. At what point is the IQ better? I found that after applying a preset or any adjustment for that matter the preview goes soft and it takes zooming in then out to get a crisp view again.

I run relatively small catalogs too, I have one for each event so I'm usually under 2000 images per catalog.

iMac 3.33ghz - 12GB RAM - snow leopard

areohbee

Legend

BSC_PHOTO wrote:
There is a lot of arguing over samantics but the truth is LR 3 is wicked slow and has too many bugs for my tatse.

- Lightroom 3.0 has plenty of bugs to be sure. But a lot of the slowness is due to the bugs. When Lightroom 3 is working properly, and for some people it is, Lightroom 3 is, in general, a little peppier than Lightroom 2 was.

BSC_PHOTO wrote:
Saying that you get better IQ doesn't make sense to me either.

- Compare to Bibble 5.1, DxO 6, CaptureOnePro5, NX2, and Aperture 3.

BSC_PHOTO wrote:
I found that after applying a preset or any adjustment for that matter the preview goes soft and it takes zooming in then out to get a crisp view again.

- Thats a bug. Adjustments are quick for me on a modest win7/64 machine.

Rob

BSC_PHOTO

Participating Frequently

"- Compare to Bibble 5.1, DxO 6, CaptureOnePro5, NX2, and Aperture 3."

Never used them. I thought "better IQ" meant better than LR2

How do some of us have bugs and other don't? I never got that.

I do find that images from my lower megapixel cameras render at normal speeds while my larger MP images used to render an "normal" speeds.

It is just frustrating.

C

calm_Light157F

Participating Frequently

Hi

I did a quick test now and if I change the Camera Calibration back to 2003 I got back almost the same response as with LR2.7 moving the exposure slider back and forth, that means it changes along with the slider. Setting it to 2010(current) I have to wait up to a second for each time I change it for the image to change.

So at the moment I will set it back to 2003 and work with that and use 2010 only if I need it.

- Terje

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camerahans

Participating Frequently

well... I think 2010 is the way to go for IQ!

E

Eric_G_7D

Participant

I just upgraded to LR3 and decided to start a new catalog from scratch. After importing less than 1000 photos, the performance is almost unusable! I have rebooted, optimized the catalog, defragged the HDD, restarted LR3, rebooted, and checked all the settings suggested by others.

In case anyone's wondering, my PC is a new Intel Core i7 running at 4 GHz, 12 GB DDR3 memory, RAID (Striped) HDD setup, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480, and dual monitors (only using one for LR3). Nothing much else is running, and most apps are lightning fast (including Photoshop).

LR3 stalls every time I go to one of the new folders that I imported pictures into, and when I try to import new photos, it takes quite some time. I can't believe it's anything but the program that is responsible for the sluggish (and that's being kind) performance. Here is a screen shot that I had plenty of time to take while the program is generating previews (there are about 200 images in this folder), so you can see I'm not kidding.

Any ideas, folks?

Thanks.

B

bokeron2008

Participant

This lightroom version is a strange beast.

I've reported my problem here :

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/659033?tstart=0

In short ... most things work fast enough for me, some of them I feel faster, others maybe slightly slower. I'd say lightroom is now ... not faster, not slower, just differently balanced.

Except the print module, that is noticeably slower when browsing SOME templates and applying them.

C

camerahans

Participating Frequently

Working with LR3.0 was slow, not working form me. Have been experimenting with it to speed it up. Loading sometimes "hangs" I noticed by accident that when I moved my cursor (wacom) down to the main screen with the windows taskbar (which I had on automatically hide) and went back up things seemed to speed up. I changed the taskbar behaviour from "automatically hide" to always on the foreground (I am using the classical windows theme) and that definitively speeded up things for me. Loading is still slow, but that might have to do with the older computer I am using, but slider response is definitively better!

Give it a try!

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