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Peakoverload
Known Participant
June 12, 2018
Question

Is 16GB RAM Sufficient?

  • June 12, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 4433 views

On my old iMac I had something like 32GB of RAM and Lightroom was absolutely fine, no problems at all. Last year I replaced it with a new iMac, it has a much faster quad CPU (compared to the old dual core CPU) but it only has 8GB of RAM and certain tasks in LR are incredibly slow and painful such as creating panoramas.

I understand that Adobe say that LR can run with 8GB but recommend 12GB. I'd love to replace all my RAM and whack in 32GB again but at nearly £400 that's just way out of my price range at the moment. For £77 I can buy another 2x 4GB DIMMS giving me 16GB in total (in 4 banks). I possibly could buy 2x 8GB DIMMS but that £177 which is a bit more than i can afford at the moment but would mean I could add more 8GB DIMMS later if need be.

Is anyone running LR on a Mac with 16GB RAM? How do you find it, is it enough or do you wish you had more RAM?

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1 reply

dj_paige
dj_paige
Legend
June 12, 2018

RAM will affect speed of panoramas. 16GB ought to be fine for most purposes, but of course that depends on how many original images are being selected for your panoramas, and how big those original images are.

RAM is not the only thing that affects speed, depending on what tasks you are performing.

and certain tasks in LR are incredibly slow and painful such as creating panoramas

What other tasks are incredibly slow? The answer to that will determine if RAM increase by itself will speed up Lightroom. In particular, the new iMacs tend to come with 4K or 5K monitors, and these require lots of CPU power (and GPU power).

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    PeakoverloadAuthor
    Known Participant
    June 12, 2018

    Thanks for the reply. Panoramas are really, really slow. Most of mine tend to only be 4 images at most but they take several minutes to stitch together.

    Playing slideshows or more specifically, generating slideshows is slower than it used to be especially as I find that since upgrading my camera to a full frame Canon 5D MKIII I have to set the quality to High in slideshows as otherwise the image quality is poor.

    Generating the initial previews of newly imported photos is not slow as such but slower than it was on my old Mac.

    Using tools like the Adjustment Brush is fine but if you want to view the overlay (O) it can take several seconds or longer to display it. Sometimes it doesn't display it at all and then you are in a cycle of pressing O and wondering if you've now just turned it off or on again.

    I'm not in front of my iMac it at the moment but from memory I think it's a 3.2GHz Quad i5 27" and is definitely either 4K or 5K

    dj_paige
    dj_paige
    Legend
    June 12, 2018

    More pixels in the monitor means that the CPU has to work longer and harder to do these things. Larger photos with the 5D Mark III means that the CPU has to work longer and harder to do these things. I'm not sure what 3.2GHz Quad i5 means, but that doesn't really sound like a fast processor. I know Apple wants everyone to think that its new iMac computers have a very fast processor, but I am skeptical, it might be fast for lots of purposes but it doesn't sound fast for Lightroom purposes.

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