Question

Slow copy and paste edits time

Forum|Forum|5 months ago
December 4, 2025
2 replies
449 views

I have been having this issue for a while now, as I batch edit, when I go to copy and paste my edits to my other culled photos, it takes hours to do so, making it almost unusable as this is just a ridiculous amount of time. I edit off of a sandisk 2T hard drive with my catalog being stored on there as well. I have the most up to date lightroom classic version and have already upgraded my catalog as well, everything has been up to date. I have two computers I have tried with the same issue, one being 2023 Macbook pro m2 chip and the other being the mac mini (I can't remember the exact year at this moment but it's somewhere around 2021 ish). I went in and changed some preference settings as well with no help; camera raw cache size 10 gig or more, smart previews instead of originals, generate previews in parallel off, use graphic processor off, and replace embedded previews by standard previews during idle time on as I have seen this in other articles here on Adobes page. I really have no clue what else to do or where else to look to make this any better but I really need a solution as I can't keep taking weeks to edit one gallery with editing time taking many hours for a few hundred photos.

macOS

Conrad_C

Community Expert

Your Macs are all newer and faster than mine, and I don't think any of the settings you mentioned would affect copying and pasting settings. One question is, have you started using any newer features like the following, and are you copying and pasting settings like these:

Denoise

Reflection removal

Lens blur

Adaptive profiles

Large numbers of AI masks (people, sky, landscape…)

Features like these take a lot more time than the simpler, traditional features. For example, if an image has only basic edits (non-adaptive profiles, Basic panel adjustments like Exposure), those should paste almost instantly. But for example on my M1 Mac, if Denoise is applied it could take almost a minute per image and reflection removal at Best quality could take up to another minute. So if I copied and pasted both edits to 200 other images from the same shoot, it could take over 300 minutes (5 hours). Images with more megapixels would take more time.

Does that sound anything like the types of edits applied to your images?

E

Enthusiastic_Zenith1940Author

I have made sure to uncheck the denoise, lens blur, adaptive profiles, I haven't used the reflection removal at this time, when copy and pasting settings. Everything else that is checked is something I have used previously with previous updates that did not take anywhere near as long to paste.

Conrad_C

Community Expert

OK, then if I was in that situation what I would do next is: Do another big copy/paste test, but this time, also open Activity Monitor (it comes with every Mac and is in the Utilities folder). In Activity Monitor, click the CPU tab, and sort the list by %CPU. While the copy/paste is in progress, look at the list and note which processes are using the most %CPU.

Normally, during a copy/paste of settings to many images, I would expect Lightroom Classic %CPU to be at the top of the list and using well over 100%* of CPU, and I would expect no other processes to come close. (I just did a copy/paste test on my M1 MacBook Pro and it took well under than 1 minute to paste basic edits across 90 images, and most of the time Activity Monitor reported Lightroom Classic CPU usage of about 190%.)

What we are looking for is this: When doing the copy/paste, or even when not, is there any other process in the CPU list that is using close to or over 100% of CPU? If there is, that process could be buggy and is stealing CPU cycles that should normally be available to Lightroom Classic. Especially if you find that another process is at the top of the list, using more %CPU than Lightroom Classic during a settings copy/paste…that would be very unusual.

You can also watch the %GPU column in case it’s that, but that’s less likely than some other process using too much CPU.

*If you don’t already know, on macOS 100% CPU equals one full core in use, so it’s normal for a busy multi-core process to report over 100% usage. For a Mac with 10 CPU cores, the theoretical maximum usage is 1000% but you will rarely see that.)

Sameer K

Community Manager

Hey, @Enthusiastic_Zenith1940. Welcome to the Lightroom Community. I'll need more info to help you figure this out. Please share the system info from Lightroom Classic from Help > System info > Copy and paste into a text document > Upload and attach here.

Does this happen with freshly imported images, or after you've applied specific edits to the image, such as Lens Corrections, Denoise, and Masks?

As primary steps, try this:

Unplug additional displays & use only one by default.
Monitor the Task Manager > Performance Tab for any unexpected read and write operations.
Lightroom Classic > Catalog Settings > Metadata > Uncheck 'Automatically Write Changes Into XMP.'
Check this detailed response from our Expert: https://adobe.ly/4g6Cb4j

Let me know how it goes. Thanks!

Sameer K

(Type '@' and type my name to mention me when you reply)

E

Enthusiastic_Zenith1940Author

@Sameer K It happens both ways, I typically try not to copy and paste the lens corrections, denoise, etc as it does take even longer than just the basic settings. Here is the copy and paste of the information you asked for:

Lightroom Classic version: 15.0.1 [ 202511041508-dddee541 ]
License: Creative Cloud
Language setting: en-US
Operating system: Mac OS 15
Version: 15.4.1 [24E263]
Application architecture: arm64
Logical processor count: 10
Processor speed: NA
SqLite Version: 3.36.0
Adobe GSDK Version: 1.4.0.171

Power Source: Battery, 69%
Built-in memory: 16,384.0 MB
Dedicated GPU memory used by Lightroom: 166.8MB / 10,922.6MB (1%)
Real memory available to Lightroom: 16,384.0 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 1,336.8 MB (8.1%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 406,429.5 MB
Memory cache size: 423.5MB
Internal Camera Raw version: 18.0 [ 2389 ]
Maximum thread count used by Camera Raw: 5
Camera Raw SIMD optimization: SSE2
Camera Raw virtual memory: 92MB / 8191MB (1%)
Camera Raw real memory: 100MB / 16384MB (0%)

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

Cache2:
m:423.5MB, n:0.0MB

U-main: 93.0MB

Standard Preview Size: 3024 pixels
Displays: 1) 3024x1964

Graphics Processor Info:
Metal: Apple M2 Pro
Init State: GPU for Export supported by default
User Preference: Auto
Enable HDR in Library: OFF
GPU for Preview Generation: Off (S5_10)

Application folder: /Applications/Adobe Lightroom Classic
Library Path: /Volumes/Extreme SSD/lightroomclassiccatolog/lightroomclassiccatolog.lrcat
Settings Folder: /Users/lexi/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom

Installed Plugins:
1) AdobeStock
2) Aperture/iPhoto Importer Plug-in
3) Flickr

Config.lua flags:

E

Enthusiastic_Zenith1940Author

Also, that setting was already unchecked.

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