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Experiencing performance related issues in Lightroom 4.x

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
March 6, 2012
188 replies
629128 views

Anyone else notice that lightroom 4 is slow? Ligtroom 3 always ran fast on my system but Lightroom 4 seemlingly lags quite a bit.

My system is:

2.10 ghz Intel Core i3 Sandy Bridge

8 GB Ram

640 GB Hard Drive

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit

Message title was edited by: Brett N

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Victoria Bampton LR Queen

It's now impossible to see the wood for the trees in this whopping 43-page long thread. Many of the original 4.0-4.2 performance issues have since been resolved, and it's impossible to figure out who is still having problems, and what they can try.

I've started a nice clean thread to continue this discussion for 4.3 and later. http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1117506 Thanks to Bob_Peters for the suggestion. I'm locking this one, otherwise it'll continue to get increasingly unweidly, but please feel free to continue existing discussions on the new thread.

Show previous replies

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joeghacker

Participant

Slow/sometimes VERY sluggish for me also. Have a Summer 2011 iMac i7 with 16GB RAM. AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2048 MB Graphics card. Single monitor (27").

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Eaglerapids

Participating Frequently

Here is an interesting video that may help.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKlLjrDgAhc&feature=player_embedded#!

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hedphoto

Participant

I'm feeling sold down the river by Adobe with LR4. I don't remember reading anything before purchasing saying that I'd need a top of the line machine to run this upgrade. I do have the top of the line iMac27 with more RAM and memory than I need and it still runs slowly. My Older IMac24 that had absolutely no problems running LR3, with over 200,000 imports run's like a lame dog with LR4. I get the spinning wheel of doom trying to adjust exposure or try and crop something. I have no performance issues with any other program. Please fix it Adobe

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Ravenlost123

Participant

About 6, 7 months I bought LR3.... and then LR4 came up. A good upgrade I thought.... I hate it! My biggest disappointment is that I converted all my LR3 catalogs to LR4 and cannot roll back now! It is a killer in processing time! Also thought to myself "perhaps time for a HW upgrade..." but then again, seeing all the high end computers out there with the same slowness problems... I ain't touching anything for now

Lightroom version: 4.1 [829322]

Operating system: Windows 7 Ultimate Edition

Physical processor count: 4 (Intel icore3)

Processor speed: 1.1 GHz

Built-in memory: 3765.8 MB

areohbee

Legend

Ravenlost123 wrote:
but then again, seeing all the high end computers out there with the same slowness problems...

There are also high-end computers without abnormal performance problems.

Lr4/PV2012 is an awesome upgrade, in my opinion. Why? Because I get better quality results. Does it take more CPU? - yes, *but* if it's a lot slower, then you've got an abnormal performance problem which needs to be resolved, either by jockeying your system/files around or by the next dot release from Adobe.

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Ravenlost123

Participant

"needs to be resolved, either by jockeying your system/files around " and you think messing around my system files is an appropriate solution!? Sorry, but it is not acceptable. The other option is to "wait" on Adobe to come out with yet, another patch... but when!?

You know what really annoys me is Adobe stating that "oh this only happens for a handful a people..." Geez!! Google it up a bit more will you Adobe! The problem seems more like a "normal" performance problem if you ask me! And what really, really annoys me is... why the heck didn't any of the product reviewers pick this slowness problem up in the first end, when there was the trial period last spring or so!? No, instead they all went on bragging how great LR4 was, allowing the brush in custom WB, etc. etc. Like yeah I'll believe NONE experienced slowness problems. Oh yeah... probably paid by Adobe for their reviews right. Or some big guy in Adobe said "no, no matter what, it comes out!".

And to say that I had listen to all thew reviews I could find before purchasing it.... Lesson learned!

K

kazcoul

Participant

For all of those experiencing sluggishness with Lightroom 4 (yes I am another one) please go to this thread and add yourself as a +1 to the people who are experiencing the problem. Adobe might start taking notice the larger this number grows.

http://gsfn.us/t/2xo2w

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Cinobite

Participating Frequently

Really, we need to stop the discussion and actually get a fix.

I'm running LR 4.1 on Win7 64bit, 2.4ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM. Ok it's not hugely powerful - but the slowness isn't evident anywhere else. I can work on a 5gig PSD and have no problems. The issue is COMPLETELY related to Lightroom. Switching modes, rendering photos, exporting. In fact the more I use it and when I export an image the worse it gets and I notice lag in other areas of my PC which says to me it's a memory leak of some kind. I've tested and replaced all my RAM, no difference. Something in the code is causing the problem.

I've been through all of the threads, pages and sites, trying all of the fixes. Nothing works. In developer mode, I'm looking at 10-20 seconds PER IMAGE just to load on the screen, let alone zoom or apply fixes. Exporting 400 photos at 850x300 takes 30 minutes. This is beyond a joke.

I'm getting so sick of software developers adding more and more bloatware to applications and making them harder and harder to use (ref BF3 for example).

All I want is a fix so that I can do my job.

Victoria Bampton LR Queen

Community Expert

Please try the 4.2 RC released this morning: http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2012/08/lightroom-4-2-release-candidate-now-available-on-adobe-labs.html It doesn't specify performance updates in this RC (things could change further before the 4.2 final) but some people are seeing improvements.

Victoria - The Lightroom Queen

M

Marcos Issa

Participating Frequently

As a LR 1 (and the first Beta) user I am so sad to say:LR4 is unuseable SLOW. My system is

Mac OS 10.7.4

Mac Book Pro, 2.7 GHz / i7 / 8GB Ram

Please, help us, Adobe!!

Argosfoto

areohbee

Legend

Is it any faster with lossy dngs, or same as raw?

What about tiff, or jpeg files - also same as raw?

J

joerivera

Known Participant

I've also been shocked by the sluggish performance of LR4. Disappointing, to say the least. However, I do have a couple of tips that helped me resolve some of the sluggish rendering while reviewing photos in Loupe mode:

1.) Be sure in Catalog Settings/File Handling you have the Standard Preview Size set high enough. This is sort of counter-intuitive (or was to me), as it seems a higher-res preview would take longer to create. However, it appears that if you render at a preview size that is smaller than your loupe view area — Lightroom re-renders the preview to scale it up on the fly. This causes a "Loading..." pause for each photo as you click through. I set mine to 2048, since my view area is in the neighborhood of 1500px.

2.) If you can live with a Medium or Low preview quality (again, in Catalog Settings), it does speed things up significantly. I'm driven crazy by the jpeg noise, so it isn't a real option except when I'm doing a first pass review.

3.) I created a development preset which only contains the Process Version and Calibration options for my camera. Setting this to be applied during import seems to trigger a Standard Preview rendering, which makes the photos available sooner.

4.) If you are going to be working on a group of images and going and back and forth between Grid/Loupe/Develop — try selecting all of them, going to Library/Previews and rendering BOTH standard previews and 1:1 previews before you start. Having them both done up front takes time, but it's better than being interrupted as you try and work.

Note: I haven't scientifically tested any of the above. Performance increases may be specific to my computer or just in my own mind.

-- Joe

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LynneHarty

Known Participant

Joe,

Can you tell me how to create a preset for a specific camera? I'm not sure what you mean by it "contains the Process Version and Calibration options for my camera". Thanks.
Lynne

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andreas603

Participating Frequently

Must I use PV2012 upon importing new Canon 5D MIII RAW images? This cam is only compat with ACR 6.6, the newest ACR.... I dont see a workaround to save it to PV2010....? thanks

areohbee

Legend

I dunno if you can have legacy PV as default, but you can apply a develop preset after importing with preferred PV.

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Bach 59

Participating Frequently

Again, most of the people in this forum are working professionals that have experience with computers and have done all they can to optimize their respective systems. If you don't think that we have all tried a restart.... really?

With a catalgue of 4-5 hundred images open all at once this is the slowest, most unproductive program out there. Culling and tagging are LIGHTING fast in Photo Mechanic!

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bob frost

Inspiring

From: "Bach 59

With a catalogue of 4-5 hundred images open all at once this is the
slowest, most unproductive program out there. Culling and tagging are
LIGHTING fast in Photo Mechanic!

I have 65,000 images in my catalog without any problems currently. The only

lag is going into Develop for the first time the program is used. Culling

and tagging in Library is fast. Some other people have 500,000 to 800,000

images in their catalog.

They may have 'optimized' their systems, but still haven't found what is

causing the problem. The 'restart' mentioned by someone, is simply part of

LR's curing an improper shutdown. If LR is cut off before it has closed down

properly, by a OS or other program crash, then some temp files may still be

present which have to be removed by a restart.

Bob Frost

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SavagePhoto-lItHqa

Participating Frequently

Asus system

i7 2630Q 2.0GHz

16GB ram

2 x 750GB 7200 drives

C = OS

D = only LR Cache + Catalog + only the current Raw files

This testing catalog (and D drive) only has

9322 Raw files 7186 left to work on

(I just checked my main catalog and it has over 400,000 photos)

I have uninstalled all Adobe Products and re installed LR 4.1

built a brand new catalog

I have tried multiple video card adjustments.

I have swapped out my HD for faster bigger drives.

built 1.1 previews

not using sidecar files

created a new user and built a new catalog under that account....

Fully Defragmented.....Catalog optimized

still very sluggish even with my affinity adjustment.

What is Sluggish

I hit spot remover - it is a full 4 seconds before LR decides where to sample

Pull down a gradient (with no adjustments) it is one second before the line catches up to where I stoped (bottom of photo)

The brush adjustments follow behind the mouse until it stops following - 15 sec later it catches up and adjusts where my mouse went while it was thinking. Often this is over areas I did not want it.

None of the sliders respond real time but rather just behind.

Switching between modules is acceptable only about 7 seconds going from grid to develop with 1.1 previews already made

Processing JPG and Tif speed is not comparable for me since I do most of this while I am sleeping.

If I have the affinity set to defaults (currently using my 3 core workaround) than these times are X 1.5 longer

can anyone really say that I haven't tried everything reasonable to try or that the slowness is acceptable or that somehow this isn't an adobe issue? I am open to suggestions as to what else to try.

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Maldenite

Inspiring

I want to chime in on this problem with LR4 slow and totally unresponsive when editing in Photoshop CS6. I have been using LR since version 1 and now I am reverting to my version 3 because 4 will not allow me to edit in CS6. I have jumped through all of the hoops, such as, uninstall, delete preferences, etc. Changed the settings in my edit preferences and to no avail. I updated to 4.1 and still I get the spinning beach ball as it processes and CS6 is not responding when I have to force quite CS6. I was very happy when LR4 upgrade was available and it worked fine when I first upgraded. Beautiful program and the new upgrade has killed it. Is there any way to download version 4.0?

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Amdir

Participant

My Lightroom 4 is very slow. The last update helped a little but it's still not acceptable. I have a very strong system and run Lightroom 4 etc. on an SSD. This program should not be slow, but it still is unacceptably slow in the develop module. I can't work as I used to and I really need Lightroom for work. I hope you fix this Adobe because this was the best program for photography out there. Not too sure anymore. Now I understand why LR4 is cheaper than LR3.

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LynneHarty

Known Participant

I have found that the update helped basic functions move along almost tolerably, but things such as exporting batches of files and creating web galleries takes forever - way longer than with version 3. I can't just go back to it though as my new camera, the Nikon D4, won't work with LR3. I still can't get it to tether with LR4 and the Nikon D4...

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Anonymous

I am very happy to say that Lightroom 4.1 has been released. I have installed this on my computer that has been experiencing troubles and in my quick testing everything looks like it has been corrected!!!

Please install this new version and let us know if you still experience any issues!

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=5393

Geoff