GPU problems on Lightroom with the new macOS Sonoma 14

Question

Hello, I've recently encountered a problem with GPU use in Adobe Lightroom.

Lightroom Classic has been running pretty smoothly for me up until I updated my Macbook Pro 16-inch 2019 to the new macOS Sonata 14. Now, the pictures go completely black in development mode and would only work if I turn the GPU acceleration off, making the software run much slower.

Since the Macbook is running on AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 8GB, I tried looking for driver updates for this specific GPU but found out that there is no option to install driver updates manually.

Will Adobe release an update to fix this issue or is there something I can try to make my Lightroom run on GPU?

I'm using the Macbook Pro 16-inch, 2019. 2.4GHz 8-Core Intel Core i-9 processor. AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 8GB & Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536MB. 32GB RAM 2667MHz DDR4. Running Lightroom v13.2

johnrellis · Accepted Answer

sorry, I was looking at the Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536MB part of the description; if the user has the Radeon Pro 5500M enabled, then that's less likely to be the problem, although it is 3.5 years old and probably a lot slower than the current crop of GPUs.

Adobe recommends disabling the use of the Intel GPU:

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/troubleshoot-gpu.html#solution-4

https://support.apple.com/en-in/102265

If that doesn't help:

LR is very sensitive to bugs in graphics drivers (of which there are many). Unfortunately, on Mac you have to wait for AMD to update the driver they supply to Apple and then for Apple to release a new version of Mac OS.

The AMD Radeon Pro 5500M is 4.5 years old. There have been many posts here about Mac users with older AMD processors tripping over likely bugs in the graphics drivers, and it appears that AMD and Apple don't make timely fixing of such bugs a priority. With one thread in particular, it took over five months from the first report of the problem until a new version of Mac OS fixed it (presumably with a new version of the AMD driver).

Adobe can help by alerting AMD and Apple to such bugs, but unfortunately, Adobe doesn't provide any visibility into their communications with their "partners".

In such situations, the only workaround is disable use of the graphics processor in LR.

dj_paige · Answer

While there may be a fix (I am not aware of one), you have a very old GPU that does not meet the minimum memory requirements for LrC 13.2, which is 2GB of GPU memory https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/system-requirements.html

My recommendation is that you update your GPU itself to a much newer and more powerful GPU

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