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Participating Frequently
March 11, 2026
Question

Extra Processes called in tools switching / panels collapsing-opening

  • March 11, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 51 views

Every time the user performs any of the following actions in the Develop module,
the application becomes "Not Responding" for 3–5 seconds before resuming:

  • Collapsing or expanding any panel (Basic, Tone Curve, HSL, Detail, etc.)
  • Switching between tools (Crop, Heal, Masking, Object Remove, etc.)
  • Switching from Develop to Library module and back

The freeze does NOT occur when:
  • Navigating between photos (Next / Previous)
  • Adjusting sliders within an already-open panel

This is a clear regression. The behavior was not present in LrC 14.x.
The issue was first reported by many users with LrC 15.0 and was NOT fixed in 15.1 or 15.2.

I performed detailed diagnostics with Claude Cowork; a full user-mode process dump was captured during an active "Not Responding" freeze and analyzed with WinDbg using the Microsoft public symbol server.

Root cause was identified via WinDbg analysis.

When any panel or tool transition occurs in LrC 15.x, the substrate event system spawns approximately 60 parallel Lua tasks via AgMainThreadAction_trigger. Each task pushes a request to AgTransitQueue and awaits a synchronous reply from the main thread.

The main thread, upon receiving its own ASAP task, executes a Lua script that calls updateWindow_L → NtUserUpdateWindow, triggering a synchronous WM_PAINT re-entrant callback. While the main thread processes WM_PAINT (painting all affected slider controls), it cannot drain the 60 pending AgTransitQueue items.

After WM_PAINT completes, the main thread processes all 60 queued items sequentially, consystent with new AI feature observers and event handlers (Object Remove, Masking AI, ONNX model lifecycle)
registering for panel transition events in LrC 15.0.

 

    1 reply

    Participating Frequently
    March 14, 2026

    Adobe should honestly hire you to investigate issues — because when users report bugs, lag, and slowdowns in the community, it often feels like Adobe just ignores it. The most ridiculous part is that they merge a bunch of separate threads into one, then act like the problem never happened and mark it as Solved — and claim that it is NVIDIA driver issue.

     

    I originally thought the slowdown might be because my macOS wasn’t fully up to date. But today I updated to the latest macOS v26.2, and I also updated Lightroom Classic to v15.2.

     

    In Preferences > Performance, I’ve manually enabled all Graphics Processor acceleration options (not Auto, not default — everything is turned on).

     

    And I’m running an M3 Max MacBook Pro — this machine absolutely shouldn’t be struggling with such basic operations.

     

    To make sure this wasn’t subjective, I recorded screen videos before and after the upgrade using the exact same photo set and the exact same workflow — switching images in Develop mode. The difference is obvious: in v15.2, switching photos in Develop is several times slower. This isn’t “it feels a bit slower” — it’s a real, measurable performance regression.

     

    I’ve uploaded the screen recordings to Dropbox here (feel free to review):

    https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/1q7c9a040lj6ksa5idcus/AJceeDNsuROpXI0cQWcPTao?rlkey=e85n29470d6wlaf9wfm7ale7e&dl=0

     

    For now, I’ve had to roll back again to v14.5.1, because the speed difference is simply too big. Editing and color grading a set of photos takes me around 3x longer, which is completely inefficient — and when you’re working through hundreds of images, it becomes a total disaster.