GPU acceleration Camera RAW 18.x for Windows 11 25H2+

Hi @athletic_intelligence9148,

Thanks for reaching out. You don’t need to upgrade from Windows 11 Home to Windows 11 Pro to enable Camera Raw GPU acceleration. The Windows edition doesn’t determine whether Camera Raw can use the GPU.

Since you noticed Denoise becoming significantly slower starting in early September, let’s first check what Camera Raw currently detects, rather than changing Windows or reinstalling anything.

1. Go to Edit > Preferences > Performance and post a screenshot showing the complete Use Graphics Processor / Camera Raw section, including any message shown about GPU support or acceleration.

2. Go to Help > System Info, click Copy, and paste the information into your reply. This will show us your GPU model, graphics driver version, available VRAM, Lightroom’s GPU initialization state, and the Camera Raw version Lightroom Classic is actually using.

3. Please let us know whether closing and restarting Lightroom Classic temporarily restores normal Denoise performance, or whether Denoise is already slow immediately after a fresh launch.

4. Since you noticed the change around early September, do you recall whether Windows or your graphics driver was updated around the same time?

There’s no need to change Windows editions or reinstall anything yet. Once we have the Performance screenshot and System Info, we should be able to determine whether Lightroom has disabled or limited GPU acceleration, whether this is driver-related, or whether something else is causing Denoise to fall back to slower processing.

Thanks,

Anshul Saini