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fotofah-c
Participating Frequently
June 15, 2022
Question

LR Classic running glacially slow

  • June 15, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 146 views

I'm running LR Classic v11.4 on an M1 MacBook Pro with 16MB RAM. 

Since a day ago, LR started running glacially slow (but not any other apps on my Mac). I think it might be in connection with my having read (and implemented) having changes immediately written to XMP in the Catalog Settings. (I'm not sure if this *needed* to be checked in the check box as my workflow is to bring in Sony photo files and convert them to DNG on import into LR.)

 

Now whether I have that box checked or not, LR is still glacially slow. (I've tried quitting out of LR, relaunching, rebooting my Mac (running macOS 12.4). None of that speeded things up.) This all happened before I (incrementally) updated LR to v11.4 to the next latest version I was running until today.

 

When I go to quit LR, I sometimes get a window saying that LR is syncing 1058 images. Do you still want to quit? (The last time the number was down to about 1040.)

 

Is the only cure to fix this to just let LR be about the only app running on my Mac and just let LR eventually sync all the remaining photos? (I'm guessing "yes.") I have lots of editing to do which I can't realistically do until LR runs its normal speed, not this very, very slow speed. (By that I mean that if I click or try to do anything I either get the spinning beach ball--or not (but it still takes forever to complete an action). This is the only app acting this way (this slow).

 

As I came to this Forum, I saw a section about going into System Prefs > Security and making sure LR has full disk access.  That had not earlier been set as it is now.

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
Community Expert
June 15, 2022

Syncing images has nothing to do with writing to XMP. It means you have synced the catalog to the cloud, and now Lightroom is syncing images to or from the cloud. That obviously takes time, although it should not seriously slow Lightroom down.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
Ian Lyons
Community Expert
Ian LyonsCommunity Expert
Community Expert
June 15, 2022

Enabling 'Automatically write changes to XMP' will result in LrC saving the settings and metatdata to each file. Therefore, if you have DNG 1000 files in your catalog, LrC will need to update those 1000. More files more CPU resource/time to update.

 

> I have lots of editing to do which I can't realistically do until LR runs its normal speed, not this very, very slow speed.

 

At top left corner of the LrC UI you'll see the 'Identity Plate'. If you click on same, one of the options is to pause auto saving to the files until your editing session is finished. Better still, turn off 'Automatically write changes to XMP' and use manual save if/when needed. 

F
fotofah-cAuthor
Participating Frequently
June 16, 2022

Ian, thanks for a very valuable reply.

While this updating was going on, I didn't see anything in the upper left (progress bar). 

What I'd done while waiting for a reply here was to simply keep Lightroom running and stay off my Mac for a while. The updating must have eventually finished as Lightroom was running at its "normal" speed for me.

 

Later I (accidentally) clicked in the upper left and saw what had been going on in the background. (That was a first for me   If there's no need for me to automatically write to XMP, I'll leave that turned off. (I'm guessing that the advice I'd read in an email from Lightroom teacher, Tim Grey, was only for those *not* converting files to DNG as I do.

 

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