Inspiring

Answered

Lightroom Classic on M1 MacBook Air is glacial

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
November 23, 2020
16 replies
21535 views

Hi all,

I've used Lightroom for a long time, and importing thousands of files used to take maybe a few minutes at the most (on an old 2013 MacBook Pro).

I just got a new 2020 M1 MacBook Air (1 TB/16 GB RAM), loaded up Lightroom Classic 10, and tried to import 26000 files from a local folder. It took well over 30 hours. I ran a similar test, importing 500 files - it took over a half hour. I'm talking about simple jpegs from an iPhone. Default settings in the catalog and Lightroom.

I even rebooted the MBA in Safe Mode to make sure the system was as clean as possible (it's brand new, so there's almost nothing on it anyway). Still, glacial performance. Everything else on this machine is absolutely blazing fast, both network and CPU. Lightroom is clearly broken.

I've seen similar posts with no solid solutions. Is there any hope or is this the end of Lightroom for me?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Pixbug

Hi everybody, seven months after my original post, the native version of LrC has been released, and I'm very happy to report that verion 10.3 has fixed my issues with M1-based machines.

I've run a few basic tests, and here are the current results:

Importing 20 iPhone JPEGs:

Version 10.2: 150 seconds

Version 10.3: 2 seconds

Importing 29500 iPhone JPEGS:

Version 10.0: about 30 hours

Version 10.3: 13 minutes

Generating initial previews is taking much longer than the original basic input, but it's not holding up any work since you can just click on a an image and it generates the preview right away. The UI is very snappy.

This is exactly the performance I was expecting. (Also, the machine, a MacBook air is slient and barely warm after all that.)

Thank you Adobe, and I hope this version helps everybody out.

GoldingD

Legend

Oh, and do not forget,that blasted Face Recognition and to a less extant Address Look Up. PAUSE, if on, it absolutely slows everything down.

P

PixbugAuthorCorrect answer

Inspiring

Hi everybody, seven months after my original post, the native version of LrC has been released, and I'm very happy to report that verion 10.3 has fixed my issues with M1-based machines.

I've run a few basic tests, and here are the current results:

Importing 20 iPhone JPEGs:

Version 10.2: 150 seconds

Version 10.3: 2 seconds

Importing 29500 iPhone JPEGS:

Version 10.0: about 30 hours

Version 10.3: 13 minutes

Generating initial previews is taking much longer than the original basic input, but it's not holding up any work since you can just click on a an image and it generates the preview right away. The UI is very snappy.

This is exactly the performance I was expecting. (Also, the machine, a MacBook air is slient and barely warm after all that.)

Thank you Adobe, and I hope this version helps everybody out.

C

Calshotlight

Participating Frequently

Horray

Now I will go Apple Store and talk M1 iMac 24"

L

lindat28052073

Participant

Hello - with the latest Apple updates, my Print module consistently fails. It will print ONE picture (I use "print to file" as I like a nice border on my images, so have to use the print module for that) and then I try to do another and it freezes. I have to force quit Lightoom as the entire program is stuck. I am using an older version of Lightroom (5) as I really do not like the layout of the online version and I can't seem to use or make my own presets so it creates more work for me than necessary, which is why I go back to the old one.

Will this ever be fixed? The struggle is real!! seriously though.....

wrenschl94538586

Participant

Hi

I had very slow times for LRC moving between photos in develop mode.

I turned OFF graphic card accelaration in the lightroom preferences and thing definitely improved on my base mode M1 air.

also resuced memory pressure showing up in actvitiy monitor.

Hope it helps for you

A

Aram0101

Participant

I just don't understand why a WIDLEY used program such as adobe lightroom classic still has NO fix to this issue.

About to jump ship to a different editing program.

Conrad_C

Community Expert

@Aram0101 wrote:
About to jump ship to a different editing program.

Out of curiosity, which different editing program will you jump to? I’m asking because as I noted earlier, for some reason the major competitors to Lightroom Classic also do not have an Apple Silicon native version yet. But maybe there’s one I don’t know about.

F

ferrocinque

Participant

Well, I am using both LRC and Capture One, on a MacBook Intel and on a Mac Mini M1.

While C1 is running at least as fast on the M1 as on the Intel, LRC is totally unusable on the M1. I can't imagine how faster it will be on my Mac Mini when they will release the native version.

Capture One is definitely an option!

Sahil.Chawla

Adobe Employee

Hi All,

Adobe is committed to ensuring Lightroom Classic is available on all major platforms and surfaces, including running natively on Apple devices with M1 processors. However, as of now there is no official timeline set for the native M1 support. In the meantime, you can run Lightroom Classic under the Rosetta 2 Emulation mode on macOS. Please check the steps to enable the emulation mode here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211861

To know more about the Lightroom Apple Silicon compatibility please head over to this helpful article: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/macos-big-sur-compatibility.html

Hope this info helps.
Regards,
Sahil

T

TravelMichi

Participant

Yeah this is a correct answer . . . we all know that . . . thanks anyways.

We are talking about the performance on M1 system, we know about rosetta2, that's how we work with Lightroom Classic at all. But it's slow and buggy.

Thanks

T

tukane

Participant

Thank you TravelMichi! That's the point. Apple announced the M1 last summer and Adobe was not able to provide us a version of Lightroom Classic that is working with adequate speed yet. So when in 2021 will Adobe release a version of Lightroom Classic, that supports M1?

Thanks

D

darrelc31404885

Participant

Just to clarify my earlier post, my MacBook Air is running the M1 chip. Photoshop is native & Lightroom Classic is running under Rosetta. All good.

T

tukane

Participant

I have a Mac Mini M1 with 8GB RAM. I updated to Lightroom Classic coming from LR 5.7 as the import was really slow on the Mac Mini. Also browsing through the library in loupe view was terrible. It take up t0 10s until the picture was loaded in final resolution (1:1). With upgrading to the latest LR version the problems stay the same. Tried to optimize the settings with the help of the support, but without any improvements. My last option is a LR version optimnized for the M1.

D

darrelc31404885

Participant

I'm running Lightroom Classic on my 2020 MacBook Air (8Gb). Absolutely fine. I do astrophotography that involves quite a lot of importing, aligning, stacking and enhancing a few hundred photos at a time (140 Mb Tiff files). Switching between LR and Photoshop also fine. Very snappy performance. I'm happy.

T

TravelMichi

Participant

I just bought a brand new Mac Mini 16GB with 2 TB Disks, because I wanted to experience a fast and enjoyable experience.

But the same here . . . Lightroom Classic 10.1.1 is soo slow, to import it takes decades and there are not even showing any previews. This is unusable. I tried the newest version 10.2 and this don't even start, it just states cannot load your catalog, cause a unknoen error. Even I'm not able to start LRC 10.2 with a new catalog, just states unknown error with the catalog.

I just did some comapision with my 8 year old Windows box.

To import 50 iPhone JPEG it takes 30 seconds und my brand new Mac Mini it takes 10 minutes and did i mention, there are no previews visible. And I just reads the files into lightroom, the JPG sits already on the internal very fast SSD drive.

I just hope, the Silocon release of Lightroom Classic will be soon and solves my problem. Or do I really have to go back and buy a new Windows box?

KR Seals

Community Expert

comments deleted...

Ken Seals - Nikon Z 9, Z 8, 14mm-800mm. Computer Win 11 Pro, I7-14700K, 64GB, RTX3070TI. Travel machine: 2021 MacBook Pro M1 MAX 64GB. All Adobe apps.

D

Devin Lester

Participant

I've been having a similar experience with my new Macbook Air M1 8gb. Chose this after seeing comparisons with 16Gb model showing neglible performance improvements.

Another thread mentioned their 4K monitor being the issue. I changed the optimisation setting to "Built-in Retina Display" instead of the monitor itself and this does seem to have made a general improvement overall across web browsing and LR. There is much faster performance while editing in LR but it's not without the occasional lag. To be honest not the mind-blowing performance that the numerous reviews I watched promised.

I still need to test the speed of the external HDD I'm using being partially to blame.

As an aside...suddenly on the new Macbook Air (coming from a 2015 Macbook Pro) I get images not importing properly (LR has a problem reading this image) and need to re-import. Also the import process often stalls before completing and I have to re-start it?

Show more replies

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded