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François25732520ihmw
Participating Frequently
January 18, 2026
Question

Slowdown when changing images

  • January 18, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 173 views

Hello

 

Since I update to LrC 15.x (from 14), I experience regularly lags and slowdowns in Development module, especially when changing images. It's not systematic, but it is frequent, when a click on a pucture in the film strip  at the bottom (or when I use the arrows on keyboard), the picture does not update (the former picture is always displayed but the next one is correctly selected in the film strip). It takes seconds (3 to 5!) each time to update the picture. And during this time, I cannot do anything, except ("fun" fact) select another picture in the film strip below the picture, I can do that many times, the film strip is always reacting, but the image displayed won't be updated. 

And somtimes it's instantaneous, without any lags. 

 

I did not change anything in my configuration (computer nor LrC), all my photos have previews, dynamic previews , and 1:1 previews automatically generated during importation (with exactly the same setting since... years). My catalog is the same, with the same settings. 

I use SSD's and I don't have a hard drive in standby mode that I have to wait for to restart before.

All working fine in LrC 13.x ou LrC 14.x. My computer was the same, with same configation when I was with LrC 14.x. Problems came with the LrC 15 update. 

I've tried all the usual troubleshooting steps, optimising the catalogs, regenerate previews, etc. but nothing helps. 

LrC is so slow and laggy that I have impression to work on an 10 or 12 years old computer!

 

And for the first time for years I'm using LrC, I have macOS alerts about LrC memory overconsumption (see picture attached) : LrC was opened, but doing nothing, my computer was in sleep mode, and when I wake up, the alert was displayed : Your system has run out of application memory, to avoid problems, please quit any applications you are not using, and LrC used 134 GB of memory!

 

LrC 15.x presents a significant performance problem in the Development module when scrolling through images.

 

LrC 15.1 ; macOS Sequoia 15.7.3 on a MacStudio M4 Max 16 cores ; 64 GB RAM

2 replies

NetPixel
NetPixel
Inspiring
January 20, 2026

I am extremely frustrated by the sluggish performance of Lightroom. Something is clearly broken or severely unoptimized.

My workflow is as follows: I review a set of 500+ images, zoom in to check sharpness, and then press P to flag the image. When switching to the next image, the first one or two transitions are instant, but after that I have to wait 3–6 seconds before the preview updates.

This is not a hardware issue—my PC is more than powerful enough. I am also not willing to reset preferences or experiment with workarounds, as I do not have time for debugging.

What I do know is that this issue did not exist several versions ago. I have been using Lightroom since its early versions, and this behavior is new. Therefore, the cause must be a recently introduced change that has resulted in this unintended performance regression.

    johnrellis
    johnrellis
    Legend
    January 20, 2026

    "This is not a hardware issue—my PC is more than powerful enough. I am also not willing to reset preferences or experiment with workarounds, as I do not have time for debugging."

     

    I very much agree -- it's frustrating when an expensive program doesn't perform well. But as a practical matter, you have these choices going forward:

     

    1. Wait until Adobe fixes this issue. Based on past history, this could be weeks, months, or years. Live with the slugghish performance until then.

     

    2. Call Adobe support. Expect to spend at least a couple hours or more, and the likelihood of success isn't great.

     

    3. Roll back to LR 14.  You could do that easily for your new projects, but rolling back a LR 15 catalog of existing photos to LR 14 can be tedious.

     

    4. Work through the compendium of workarounds that have helped at least a few people each.  That will likely take an hour or two.  This helped the previous poster in this thread, who was tripping over a performance bug with writing .xmp sidecars.

     

    5. Switch to another program.

     

    If you're a volume photographer, options 3 or 4 could be the least costly in terms of lost time.

     

    johnrellis
    johnrellis
    Legend
    January 18, 2026

    There are many posts about LR 15 being very sluggish moving photo to photo in Develop and sometimes Library Loupe. There may be multiple causes with similar symptoms. Here's my compendium of magic spells that have each helped at least a couple of people:

    https://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/threads/magic-spells-for-sluggish-lr-15.54013/

     

    I recommend methodically working your way through the list, restarting after each step. Even if you've tried the method before, sometimes following other people's instructions produces better results.

    F
    François25732520ihmwAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    January 19, 2026

    Thank you, I have already used many of these solutions, if not almost all of them (I haven't trashed LrC Pref nor previews files at this time, but all other items had been tested)... The only one seems to be efficient is to desactivate writing modifications in side car files (XMP/ACR). But I need this option enabled, and I always have this one activated in previous LrC versions without any slowdowns nor problems. Problems came only with LrC 15.x, nothing else.

     

    Moreover, I notice  that these slowdowns are present in Develop module when I make changes in pictures settings and then I change pictures or when I paste settings on a newly selected picture (settings take seconds (3 to 7 sometimes more) to be applied), or when I copy settings on a newly selected picture (copy settings window takes seconds to be displayed, and when I type Cmd-Maj-C severals times (because nothing appears), there are many identical copy settings windows opening in the same time after few seconds). 

     

    In fact, I don't care about the Lightroom's poorly designed features, and I don't want to use constantly different workarounds over the LrC versions in order to address Adobe's shortcoming. I just want the software I'm paying for to work properly.

    If the 'XMP side car files' feature is brocken or not well optimized, so Adobe should work on it, correct this bug and not simply say "this feature is known to be inefficient or unreliable – it's there but don't use it".

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