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わさびと4092174
Participant
Sep 15, 2026 4:50 PM UTC
Question

Slow and freezing (320,000) Images in the cloud

I am writing this to express my extreme frustration with the terrible performance of Lightroom (Cloud-based CC).

Currently, I have about 320,000 photos stored entirely in the Adobe Cloud. My PC is equipped with 32GB of RAM, which should be more than enough to handle heavy photo editing tasks. However, the app is incredibly slow, freezes constantly, and has become completely unusable for my daily workflow.

Every time I try to scroll through my grid view or open a single image for editing, the app lags heavily. It seems like the app's database and syncing algorithm are completely broken and cannot handle large-scale catalogs, despite Adobe marketing this as a professional cloud-native solution.

I am paying for a premium subscription and additional cloud storage. It is unacceptable that paying customers are left with a broken, unoptimized app that ruins their productivity.

Don't tell me to "upgrade my PC" or "clear the cache." My hardware is not the problem; Adobe's lack of optimization for high-capacity cloud users is the problem.

Adobe, please fix the cloud indexing and sync performance for power users immediately. If the cloud version cannot handle 300k+ images, you should not be advertising it as an enterprise or professional solution.

Is anyone else experiencing this same issue with large cloud catalogs? Any official response from Adobe engineers would be highly appreciated.

    3 replies

    Michal235827356jdf
    Inspiring
    Oct 9, 2026 8:03 PM UTC

    Hi I am just experiencing this issue and created new post here. Did you fixed it. I found temporary fix by myself, I have open ticket with support. In my opinion its 2026 thumbnail system in cloud files. If you install 2025 version of any app it will work.

     

    Copy of my answer to ticket and in my post:

    As it appears this is a wider server-side issue and not an isolated local problem. Another user from the community forums has just reached out to me reporting the exact same behavior.

    To recap what points to a backend/server-side bug:

    The Trigger: It typically happens after working with heavy files containing complex effects or lots of elements (such as heavy raster effects in Illustrator saved to the cloud).

    The Symptom / Loop: The issue persists even on web interfaces and even mobile/different computer), causing severe lagging, which strongly suggests a server-side failure during thumbnail generation or caching in the 2026 versions. (Looks like memory leak - file have huge thumbnail - database tries to make thumbnail - doesnt have enough memory - tries again - and again and its looped and frozen. 2025 versions and CC app itself is okay.

    Deleting local files or doing local troubleshooting does not resolve it. Deleting cloud files that cause that does not resolve it.

    Temporary fix: If anyone experiencing this you need to install 2025 versions of apps - it seems that there is different thumbnail management system, that doesnt do this! (Illustrator 29.x, Photoshop (26.x) or open your cloud files through creative cloud app itself. These use old thumbnail management system.

     

     

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    Sameer K
    Community Manager
    Sameer KCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    Oct 12, 2026 3:14 PM UTC

    Thanks for bring this up, we understand how frustrating it must be.

    Generally, a library of 320,000 images in the cloud is above what most users have, which is common, and at that scale the app has to work much harder to keep everything in sync.


    Here are some things that should help:

    1 - If you're sticking to just Desktop, you can increase your local cache size: Go to Preferences > Local Storage and set your cache as large as your disk allows. A small cache means Lightroom has to re-download thumbnails and previews constantly, which is a big cause of lag and freezing. If you have the disk space, setting it to 100 GB or more can make a noticeable difference.


    2 - Stick to organized Albums instead of the All Photos view for the time beng.

    3 - Keep Sync paused in the background when you edit, and resume Sync at the end of your editing session.


    4 - As a quick test, create an album, right click on Album name & select 'Store Locally' and check if editing from the album appears better.


    Thanks!
    Sameer K
    (Type '@' and type my name to mention me when you reply)

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    Victoria Bampton LR Queen
    Community Expert
    Victoria Bampton LR QueenCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    Sep 19, 2026 4:47 PM UTC

    It sounds like every time you scroll through the Grid view or try to edit a photo, it then has to download the photos from the cloud, which is obviously slower than opening a file locally and also depends on the speed of your internet connection. That would suggest there’s not enough space to cache those locally for faster access, so what is your cache set to in Preferences > Cache? 

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    Victoria - The Lightroom Queen
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