Skip to main content
J
Jonathan Lipkin
Inspiring
March 11, 2025
Question

Will Lightroom grid scrolling speed increase with a new Mac Studio

  • March 11, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 358 views

Hey everyone - I use lightroom on my 2019 Mac Pro. I have a fairly large (250k image) LR catalog that is stored on an internal SSD. I have found that scrolling in grid view, even in collections with only a few thousand images, is very slow. Even though I have 1:1 previews rendered for every photo, LR will still show gray squares for images and take a few secs to render, and the scrolling is slower than I would like

If I were to upgrade to a new Mac Studio, would this improve?

I don't think the read/write from the ssd would be faster, but are there other factors, like CPU or GPU speed that might speed things up?

2 replies

Conrad_C
Community Expert
Conrad_CCommunity Expert
Community Expert
March 11, 2025

(The question was originally posted in the Photoshop community, so I’m answering assuming you mean Lightroom Classic, not Lightroom or Photoshop.)

 

A new Mac Studio should scroll the Lightroom Classic grid somewhat more responsively than a 2019 Mac Pro, but it's hard to say how much. Scrolling the grid isn't too bad on my M1 Pro MacBook Pro, but it could be better. There is still a delay for images that don’t have previews generated.

 

On a new M3/M4 Mac Studio the overall experience of using Lightroom Classic should feel noticeably more responsive than a 2019 Mac Pro, just from the significantly faster CPU cores, having many more CPU cores, and having a relatively powerful GPU. If images don’t have previews generated, those additional faster CPU cores should help build missing previews more quickly than on an Intel Mac, but again, exactly how much faster is hard to say, and it’s also influenced by the preview generation settings.

    J
    Jonathan LipkinAuthor
    Inspiring
    March 11, 2025

    You are correct, thank you for clarifying, yes LR Classic.

     

    I have LR Preview set to never discard 1:1, standard size auto (2560) and preview quality high, though it does seem to me that LR is actively building some previews as I scroll.

    J
    jrsforums
    Inspiring
    March 11, 2025

    If you want previews updated, consider John Ellis' 'AnySource' plug-in.  This is where I found out about it....

    https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-allow-adaptive-profiles-color-mono-to-be-applied-on-import-in-lrc/idc-p/15175242#M23808

      L
      LAMY2017
      Legend
      March 11, 2025

      Jonathan, Intel CPU? Which version of LrC?

       

      As soon as I open Lr, I see the last batch of images uploaded and processed; a very small percentage of my total. No problem scrolling. I say this, because even if you have 250k of images, and as you say all 1:1 previews have been rendered, I would be surprised that they affect your scrolling through the Library module.

       

      Larry
        J
        Jonathan LipkinAuthor
        Inspiring
        March 11, 2025

        Yes, Intel 3.3ghz 12 core Intel Xenon. Most recent version of LR Classic (14.7, ACR 17)

        Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
        Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices