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hao_atlarge
hao_atlarge
Inspiring
July 5, 2025
Answered

Lightroom (Desktop and Classic) performance crisis

  • July 5, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 3531 views

There has been many posts concerning Lr performance issues. But I think there is a performance crisis.

What I'm experiencing:

Lightroom Classic is generally laggy, and almost unable to import, export or do other basic operations. The Map Module is especially unresponsive, i.e. very slow to load marks, to switch between photos, etc.

Lightroom Desktop is a little better, but import/export is often unresponsive.

 

Concerning Lr Desktop export, I found, when I set the cache size from 50GB to Maximum, the export becomes normal, but after changing this setting for a while (weeks), it doesn't work. This may be a clue to the problem.

 

My environment:

M1 Macbook Air 16+512, OS always updated, 50GB free disk space.

Lr Classic catalog: over 226000 photos, many collections and smart collections.

Catalog file and all previews on an external ssd with more than 100GB free space.

 

I contacted an 'agent' from Adobe and in the remote control session he looked around and he first talkd about RAM then disk space then Cloud... and finally told me:
"whenever any of the Adobe application is downloading or exporting or saving any image, it Takes place in your computer But if we change the settings and make sure that everything related to Adobe goes to cloud space."

I think the answer is ridiculous. I believe there are true experts here, so I start this new post.

 

Thanks in advance to those who would like to share there experience, insights, and solutions!

    Correct answer hao_atlarge

    > Despite that, I still expect to improve the performance from serious slowdown to a little bit slow through software level means

     

    If you absolutely don't need to have Lightroom Desktop and the Browser Helper open at the same time as using Lightroom Classic, then I suggest closing them. This should reduce the need to swap memory to SSD as frequently as a 7GB swap file and the memory pressure is indicating.

     

    The slow downs when importing, building previews and other batch operations that take more than a few minutes are due to thermal throttling. 


    Thanks for all your suggestions!

    Here I find an interesting solution:
    https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/lightroom-classic-performance-issues/td-p/14525642


    It magically works!  All your suggestions I believe will further help with Lr performance, but I'd like to try this at the same time. It works; everything is normal for me. Now the problem is: what happens if I enable sync in the new catalog? I have over 200k smart previews in the cloud synced from Lr Classic. Will they be relinked to the original under the new catalog? Will there be duplicats? Will there be any loss?

    1 reply

    hao_atlarge
    hao_atlargeAuthor
    Inspiring
    July 5, 2025

    FYI:

    Lightroom Classic version: 14.4 [ 202506051112-5918896a ]
    License: Creative Cloud
    Language setting: en
    Operating system: Mac OS 15
    Version: 15.5.0 [24F74]
    Application architecture: arm64
    Logical processor count: 8
    Processor speed: NA
    SqLite Version: 3.36.0
    Power Source: Plugged In, 100%
    Built-in memory: 16,384.0 MB
    Dedicated GPU memory used by Lightroom: 214.9MB / 10,922.6MB (1%)
    Real memory available to Lightroom: 16,384.0 MB
    Real memory used by Lightroom: 1,620.8 MB (9.8%)
    Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 421,348.3 MB
    Memory cache size: 578.6MB
    Internal Camera Raw version: 17.4 [ 2272 ]
    Maximum thread count used by Camera Raw: 5
    Camera Raw SIMD optimization: SSE2
    Camera Raw virtual memory: 315MB / 8191MB (3%)
    Camera Raw real memory: 321MB / 16384MB (1%)

    Cache1:
    NT- RAM:0.0MB, VRAM:0.0MB, Combined:0.0MB

    Cache2:
    m:578.6MB, n:0.0MB

    U-main: 265.0MB

    Standard Preview Size: 4608 pixels
    Displays: 1) 2560x1600, 2) 4608x2592

    Graphics Processor Info:
    Metal: Apple M1
    Init State: GPU for Export supported by default
    User Preference: Auto
    Enable HDR in Library: ON

    Application folder: /Applications/Adobe Lightroom Classic
    Library Path: /Volumes/H_T5_APFS/Lightroom Classic/PhotoArchive-v13-4.lrcat
    Settings Folder: /Users/h.macintosh/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom

    Installed Plugins:
    1) Any Vision
    2) FUJIFILM Tether App
    3) jf Export Quality Tester
    4) jf Metadata Presets
    5) jf Metadata Viewer
    6) Mylio Photos
    7) Pixieset

    Config.lua flags:

     

     

    Ian Lyons
    Community Expert
    Ian LyonsCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 5, 2025

    Your issue is not Lightroom Classic or Desktop. It's physics! You're using MacBook Air M1. This computer operates without fan assistance. Therefore, it's subject to thermal throttling on tasks such as import, export, preview building and batch operations that take much longer than a few minutes. 

     

    Additionally, your System Info idicates that you also have a second display connected, and that you have the Library module previews configured for HDR. Both of these will cause a significant reduction in performance due to the limited memory and GPU resources of your MacBook Air M1.

      M
      mononoke_7
      Participant
      July 14, 2025

      The Activity Monitor screen shot does confirm that Memory Pressure (as shown in the graph) is often higher than optimal (the yellow part of the graph). That confirms that more than 16GB would be good to have in your next Mac. When there is enough Unified Memory, the graph should be green most of the time, and it’s OK if it’s occasionally yellow.

       

      However, this does not prove that memory is the sole cause of the slowdown. If it was strictly memory related, I don’t think serious slowdowns occur until Memory Pressure is high enough that the graph turns red. Another clue is the amount of Swap Used, which is 7GB. That's definitely more than if there was enough memory, but it isn’t excessively high. The SSD is not full, so low free space is not the cause either.

       

      The slowdown is probably caused by not just one thing. It’s probably a combination of slower M1 CPU cores, fewer CPU cores than newer models, maybe a little less Unified Memory than optimal for the tasks being done, and maybe some degree of thermal throttling.

       

      When watching performance reviews of new Macs, there were some Mac experts who said, for several years, that the M1 was still a great processor and used M1s were still good enough for most uses, even as the M2 and M3 were released. But in the last few months, the sentiment seems to have changed somewhat and now the M1 is seen as still good but not quite up to the demands of current graphics/video software, especially for the additional demands of newer features. AI features in particular need a GPU that is more powerful than what we had 5 years ago.


      hello! I'm using the desktop lightroom version on M4 MacBook Pro with 24 RAM and 1TB hard drive and the poor performance of lightroom is very much noticeable on a newer device too. I also have a good network, download is Mbps 628.3, upload Mbps 26.67. it's lagging a lot, feels like if i was on windows 98 and dial-in internet from the 90s 😕😕 

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