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bcormier
Participating Frequently
March 6, 2012
Answered

Experiencing performance related issues in Lightroom 4.x

  • March 6, 2012
  • 188 replies
  • 629818 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.

      188 replies

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      holdgaj
      Participant
      March 22, 2012

      On my 4.2Ghz 8 core Sandy bridge, its fine - i.e. the sliders are responsive and I have not noticed any real difference betweeen 3 & 4. 4 does seem to make better use of the cores when importing & generating previews, or maybe that's wishful thinking on my part ...

      W
      Witward83
      Participant
      March 22, 2012

      Im having the same slow problems as well. One thing that is interesting and something to note, ive just installed the photoshop cs6 beta and tried using camera raw 7.0 and it runs like butter, evrything updates instantly, no lag whatsoever except when using the adjustment bush it does slow down a little but not near as bad as LR4. Its so refreshing compared to LR4. Really hope they get lightroom up to the level camera raw 7.0 is. Not sure why there is such a difference between the two. Any ideas? Has camera raw always been faster then lightroom?

      C
      C5Z
      Participant
      March 22, 2012

      Not to diminish the issues that many are having, but given the virtually unlimited amount of hardware/primary software/apps combinations, I no longer can imagine a one size fits all version of LR or any other upgrade that "just works" straight out of the box.  If it did we would be paying much more and waiting much longer.  It is what it is, yet I have no doubts that Adobe will stabilize LR 4.

      S
      Scooby007
      Participating Frequently
      March 21, 2012

      I would only say that all of the absolutes in this thread (it's broken, it's unusable, it's not even close) need an asterisk afterwards that says "for me"

      A
      andreas603
      Participating Frequently
      March 21, 2012

      I too am giving up.  Will try to get a refund but don't know policy... I'm quite burned out on this thread and so many folks that have so much horsepower having problems.... I simply don't have time to make the tweaks that some have mentioned nor do I think I need to upgrade my hardware.  Adobe should be smart enough to know that LR4 should be as fast if not faster than LR3 on at least the majority of its clients systems....that means that at least 51% of us dont have an SSD nor have 12 cores or 32 GB or RAM but instead have a system between 1-3 years old and...here is the kicker...not need a new machine in order to get a few new features (most of which I dont use...Books, GPS, really?)  Remember how this product is positioned in the marketplace...its for professional photographers who *process a lot of images and need tools to make that process efficient*....resulting in TIME savings processing and MORE TIME TO SHOOT and make more money.  LR4 does not live up to that objective...LR3 does mostly...  Has anyone ever compared Photo Mechanic in terms of ingest and review speed..absolutely the best...no, doesn't have all the stuff that LR4 has but I'm considering switching back....

      Folks remember why you use LR-  If you're a photog and your time is valuable, I think you should consider going back to LR3 if not take a look at Mechanic....

      No more HW specs please! 

      A
      A_C_G
      Participating Frequently
      March 21, 2012

      I'm following two threads. This one and the one here:-

      http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lr4_0_reacts_extremely_slow

      Someone today has suggested talking to the Press. Do you think the Press care? Two hundred people with huge computers can't get a bit of specialist software to work. Boring....let's write about a celebrity scandal.

      When I started in digital about eleven years ago I was introduced to several pieces of software. One was Picture Window Pro and the other Qimage. Both still exist in much modified forms and both run support sites where the original writers, Jonathan Sachs and Mike Chaney, leap in as soon as soon as one (not waiting for 168) users have a problem. Picture Window Pro is still better than Photoshop and Qimage is ahead of the game when it comes to printing.

      My RAW progress has been less successful. I think I started with something called Camera Roar - or was it RAW? Then something else I have forgotten about and then Dribble (or was it Bibble). Bibble was lovely when Eric and the others were around - and then fewer seemed to be in the team and the upgrades became more sporadic. I jumped ship to Lightroom just at the time Bibble announced they were part of Corel. Before I retired I was a publisher and in my final few years we junked all the Corel software as being outmoded - so god help Bibble.

      Adobe used to be ahead of the game. We are now watching its demise.

      Both the fora I am watching are being hosted by Adobe. Anyone with an iota of Public Relations would be in here like a shot saying "Do not worry folk. We are know there are problems and we are working 24/7 to solve them"

      Not a dicky bird - as we say in England.

      So the client base will walk with its feet. Someone has just mentioned Photo Mechanic. I'd never heard of it until people started getting ratty about Lightroom.

      We will never change their mindset as Canute never stopped the waves. I read that Steve Jobs was never happy with anything any of his designers showed him. Merely out of principle. And look at the cash mountain that business is sitting on. Is there a Steve Jobs anywhere in Adobe? Or is planning the next lunch or holiday a tad more important.

      Folk. We are watching the end of a software company........

      Bye,

      From two gigs Tony. (sorry a hardware spec - foregive me Andreas!)

      A
      Anonymous
      March 21, 2012

      Hi!

      I too have experienced a slowdown on LR4. It has picked up since I stopped writing XMP data after each change. But it is still slower but usable for me anyway. The big issues for me are the LR3-LR4 catalog issues and the Print Module nonsense with templates and printer profiles. The only way I've been able to change print templates is to select the new template, quite LR and open LR and it will open in the new template. For the catalog issues, I created a new empty LR4 catalog and imported my LR3 in order to see the images in the sub folders in the parent folders. But I did get the error message "Unable to convert this catalog" or something like it at the end. However it seems to be working.

      But I haven't thrown out LR3 yet either.

      I know this is frustrating to a lot of folks, myself included, but Adobe is a big company with many staff that are in the programming support. With all of the different systems the product runs on and uses we put it through, it's not surprising to me that it is taking a bit of time to duplicate all of the issues, identify the errant code, create and test a possible solution and get it out there. (That's my only defense of Adobe as I've worked at very large companies like Adobe before and it does take time.)

      Photo Mechanic by Camerabits is a great tool for what it is designed to do. I use it regularly to rate, add keywords, and all sorts of metadata and rename files on the import from the card. It uses variable so I can move the original file name to another IPTC variable location while simultaneously renaming and making duplicates of the original file during the import process. I use this exclusively to move and document files from my cards to the PC's. It is a much smaller company than Adobe and Kirk in the support area is very responsive and easy to work with. I recommend PM anytime I can. Give it a try. It doesn't edit files or act as a DAM but it is great for captioning, keywording, and sending to different agencies as it was originally designed for the photojournalist community.

      Take care and be a bit patient, Adobe will fix the problems in LR4, just not overnight.

      Tony...

      J
      Jasonized
      Participating Frequently
      March 21, 2012

      Sadly, I think I have to give up on LR4.  I have work to get done, and don't have all day to spend on one image!

      This is not a "need new computer" problem, nor do I see it as a "2012 vs 2010" problem...  I have a Mac Pro with 8 cores, 16gig of ram and fast SCSI internal array.

      But when it takes 5 seconds to move from library to develop, and almost 5 seconds to bring up the crop tool...  Not to mention waiting for the sliders to be applied..  there is a problem here.  Oh, and don't even ask about the book module... <sigh>

      I liked the features of LR4... I just wished they would work!

      Maybe 4.1... more likely 4.3, if past experience with LR3 was any indication.

      Cheers all!

      O
      oasselin
      Participant
      March 20, 2012

      Just wanted to add my voice here... LR 4 is slow to the point where it's unuseable for me. Luckily I didn't uninstall 3.6, so I'll just keep using that until LR 4 gets a speed boost, I truly hope that happens, otherwise I'll have to look for another RAW converter....

      The increase in speed when going back to 3.6 after struggling with 4 is dramatic, just unbelievable. Hard to believe they're different versions of the same software.

      I agree with previous poster who thinks LR 4 is not ready.

        L
        Lou Dina
        Known Participant
        March 20, 2012

        Like others, I also wanted to add my voice to complaints about how slow LR4 is. I'm on a Mac Pro, 8-core, 2.26 MHz, 16 GB RAM, 256GB Solid State Drive, four fast HHDs, etc. It's a pretty fast machine, but LR4 is a DAWG! It often takes 4-5 seconds for sharpening to show up in the detail tab, another 4-5 seconds for a new image to display, etc. Sliders are herky-jerky and slow. This is NOT real time performance. I'm processing Canon 5Dmk2 files that have been imported as DNG files.

        I also created a new catalog, hoping it would help. If it did, it isn't enough. Turned off the Catalog Preference to Automatically write changes to XMP. The catalog and previews are in the same folder.

        Performance is unacceptable, which is a shame, since many nice features have been added. It needs some serious rework to speed it up. Adobe should be ashamed to release a product that is so obviously slow. It's not possible that they didn't know this before rushing it to market.

        Lou

          S
          slarti3
          Participant
          March 20, 2012

          Lee Jay has found a very neat trick that may literally quadruple slider performance in some instances:

          http://forums.adobe.com/thread/977664?tstart=0

          I checked it out myself: got lucky. Everything is smooth because I'm just under 1/4 of the original resolution and my 2nd gen i7 can hold up with that. But going full screen is a total game changer.

          A
          Anonymous
          March 20, 2012

          On 13 March (reported above) I created a new catalogue, importing around 2000 images, and this seemed to provide significant speed improvement.

          In the past 7 days I have added only 220 images to the catalogue but I am now finding the same symptoms as with the converted catalogue ... very sluggish, jerky responses, 3 or 4 seconds to swithc between modules, significant lag when zooming images in the develop module, slow exports with 100% processor usage, very slow response/high processor usage when making adjustments (especially denoise)

          Same kit as before:

          Lenovo G770 (i7-2620M, 2.7GHz

          6GB RAM

          Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

          LR4-64-bit

          D
          David J Fardon
          Participant
          March 20, 2012

          Hi all,

          I just solved my issues by doing 3 things, as suggested above:

          • Updating nvidia drivers: Win7-64bit, 2GB GTX-560 by updating to 296.10, from whatever version was out in Nov 2011.
          • Moving Catalog and ACR cache folders to SSD - not moving previews folder.
          • Excluding lightroom cache and catalog folders from MS security essentials anitvirus.

          Issues were:

          - long time switching to develop module

          - very inconsistent performance on 36MP Nikon D800 raw images

          - laggy and slow performance generally

          I think the updated drievrs helped problem 1 more than anything, but can't be sure.

          This is on a SR2 - dual hexacore /24GB RAM at 4.0Ghz.

          Hope this helps somebody.

          quenton8
          quenton8
          Inspiring
          March 20, 2012

          I am curious -- of those who have serious slowness problems with LR4 -- how many are using SSD's for the drive holding either the catalog or the photos??

          I ask this because we ran into a problem with an object database we use running on SSD's -- its lightning fast except when we do a long series of writes, the longer

          the sequence of writes goes, the slower it all gets, and attempting to run anything else while that is happening is terribly slow.

          Just a thought.

          K
          kiddid
          Participating Frequently
          March 20, 2012

          My Lightroom 4 katalog and photo is on non SSD 7200RPM different drive, Using win7 x64 ram 8Gig i7, dual monitor with ATI 5850. Lightroom 4 is unuseable to me due to very slow process. Already tried all the tricks mentioned.

          My conclusion is Lightroom 4 is not ready yet, yes some have no problem but many have expererienced the slowness problem.

          Never had problem with lightroom 3.6

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