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Question

Lightroom export is VERY Slow

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
July 6, 2022
5 replies
31082 views

I can only export 10-12 images from LrC (11.4.1) to JPEG files/minute. This is an issue when trying to deliver 1500 images to a client soon after an event completes. It takes me over 2 hours to export these images. My catalog and images are stored on an internal 2T SSD drive, and I export JPEGS to this same SSD drive. My export speed is 10-12 images/minute; my collecgues who also shoot these same events are averaging 3X this speed. Interested in your thoughts as to how I might accelerate my exports. Tx.

My 2019 MPB w 2.4Ghz, 8-Core Intel i9 processor should have more than enough resources to run this export VERY fast. BlackMagic Design shows read and write speeds in excess of 2600 MB/s. During export: CPU runs at 60%, 25G of 64G memory is being used, with 16G additional as cache;

I have run many different tests, none of which have helped performance. Tests include: 1) exporting old NEF files to see if my Canon cRaw fles are the issue. They are not. 2) running export with my computer in Safe mode. No speed improvement. 3) Playing with graphics card settings. No improvement.

I do not know what else to do other than to purge LrC and reinstall it from scratch. I would really prefer not to do this. Appreciate any help!

macOS

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musictraining

Participating Frequently

Lightroom Export to JPG is much slower if you check "Limit File Size." Uncheck that box then choose a Quality setting and the photos will export at least twice as fast. Quality=80 produces images around 2.7MB, Quality=90 is around 4 MB.

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BogdanKas

Participating Frequently

I have the same problem with Windows and AMD CPU. Previously all was working fine. Now when exporting images only one CPU Thread is used (enabling or disabling GPU does nothing) Export is really, really slow

musictraining

Participating Frequently

Lightroom Export to JPG is much slower if you check "Limit File Size." Uncheck that box then choose a Quality setting and the photos will export at least twice as fast. Quality=80 produces images around 2.7MB, Quality=90 is around 4 MB.

DdeGannes

Community Expert

@edshanahan1@aol.com , you indicated "My catalog and images are stored on an internal 2T SSD drive, and I export JPEGS to this same SSD drive.".

How much free disk space is there available on that SSD? You need at least 20% free disk space i.e. 400 GB. More would be better. Just my thoughts.

Regards, Denis: iMac 27” mid-2015, macOS 11.7.10 Big Sur; 2TB SSD, 24 GB Ram, GPU 2 GB; LrC 12.5,; Lr 6.5, PS 24.7,; ACR 15.5,; (also Laptop Win 11, ver 24H2, LrC 15.0.1, PS 27.0; ) Camera Oly OM-D E-M1.

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Daniel2890996806mm

Participating Frequently

Internal disk, after each event we transfer everything on the disk to a SAN. The disk is always available at full capacity. We rarely go over 1.5Tb on the 4Tb disk. The catalog is on the same internal disk.

I did a test this morning, I export 1 album at the time about (200 pictures of 800k) and it's not so bad. But when I try to let say export 10 albums in the same time it take forever to do the task. The problem is we use to do that before with Lightroom allowing us to return to take pictures during that process. Now it seems that we can't do it and we have to do each single export 1 by 1. It means that I will need an extra staff to do only exportation during the event.

johnrellis

Legend

Two more troubleshooting steps to narrow down the problem:

1. Set Preferences > Performance > Use Graphics Processor to Off. Sometimes the GPU actually slows things down.

2. If you have a watermark, try exporting without it. LR has had problems recently with watermarks.

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Daniel2890996806mm

Participating Frequently

It seems that each version of LR makes it worse in export. We are sports photographers, so we basically use Photomecanics to crop and eliminate blurry photos. Then we import the day into Lightroom to export the photos divided by performance at 72 dpi 1200 wide edge (one performance = approximately 100-150 photos). The current version of Lightroom is so rotten that to export our photos (we are talking about 800k files) it takes 3-4 days to export 30000 photos, which is unacceptable. With each version of Lightroom the export slows down. On the MAterial side, we use MAc Studio M1. Central processor 20 cores, Graphics processor 48 cores, Neural Engine 32 cores, 64 GB of unified memory, 4 TB of SSD storage.

We have to find a solution and eventually leave Adobe because of these excessive slowness from version to version. If you have any recommendations I'm interested.

Ian Lyons

Community Expert

Make sure that you GPU setting is indicating 'Your system automatically supports full acceleration' as shown in attached screenshot.

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Daniel2890996806mm

Participating Frequently

Yes it's activated

johnrellis

Legend

"My export speed is 10-12 images/minute"

I have a very similar Macbook Pro (15", 2019, 2.4 GHz 8-core Intel Core i9, 32 GB) except with a Radeon Pro Vega 20 4 GB. It exports large batches of raws at about 54 photos/minute with Use GPU For Export turned off and 55 photos/minute with it turned on, a very modest 11% speed improvement. (According to Adobe, that option defaults to off when the GPU has less than 8 GB.)

Initial troubleshooting steps:

1. Restart the computer.

2. Try the exports with the option Preferences > Performance > Use Graphics Processor > Use GPU For Export both checked and then unchecked.

3. Try making a from-scratch export preset and time that. Rarely, LR has been known to "corrupt" existing presets.

(It wasn't clear from your description what the setting was for Use GPU For Export.)

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edshanahan1@aol.comAuthor

Participant

Thank you for your response johnrellis. I have done multiple restarts of my computer including in safe mode. I ran all three options with my graphics card 1) automatic - let LR and/or my computer decide 2) visual processing only 3) export assist only. I saw no difference in speed with any of these. I just tried your idea on the exports, using a LR defied export I have never used before. I am still only getting 10 images/minute speed. 😞

I am going to create a new catalog (btw i also optimized my existing catalog) and import these same images, do some global edits on them then try to export them using a new preset. Will see if that makes a difference. If it does then I will have a dilemna. I can't afford to lose the editis I have done on all those images over the years. So I guess the best I will be able to do is to begin using the new catalog for new images and the old for prior images.....

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edshanahan1@aol.comAuthor

Participant

I jjst ran another test. I created a new catalog, re-imported 1509 of the images I shot the other day (cRAW files), performed similar edits on them to those I had done previously, then exported them again as 5MB max JPEGs. It took 2 1/2 hours to export the images, so again the rate was slightly over 10 images/minute export speed. The fan was on on my MBP most of the time, but again my resource utilization was similar to what I reported initially. I can only think of two more tests I can do 1) Place my MBP on an icepack wrapped in a towel and see if this keeps the fan off and if so whether the export speed is faster. 2) Fully unstall LrC, then reinstall it and see if I gain any speed. If not, I do not know what else to try. I guess get on the phone with Adobe 🙂

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