Expected Camera Raw performance in Bridge/Photoshop vs. Lightroom?

[umlautnord]

I don't use Camera Raw in Bridge/Photoshop separately too often—I typically use Lightroom (Classic, sometimes Desktop). However, I've been playing around given some of the newer AI features (Adaptive Profile and editable Enhance/Denoise, primarily).

I'm struck by CR being a bit laggy compared to Lightroom even when no AI features are enabled and I'm adjusting basic exposure/tone sliders. There's just a hair of a delay when adjusting, and sometimes even a momentary beach ball. Lightroom typically drag at this point—I need to put it under a lot more stress in terms of multiple complicated masks and brush-based edits to get to that place.

As a non-regular CR user, I'm just curious if I should just expect performance that generally isn't quite as smooth as Lightroom? Or, if there's something I could do to improve CR in particular. I'm trying CR in both Bridge and Photoshop. Bridge seems better, as the application itself takes up fewer other resources. I know my hardware isn't a powerhouse, so "this is expected" is an understandable answer!

Setup:

13" MBP M1 2020, 16GB memory. Memory pressure is in the green with Bridge in particular; PS can push it into the yellow depending on what else is open.

MacOS Sequoia v15.0.1; CRaw v17.0; LrC v14.0.1; Bridge v15.0; tried Photoshop v26.0 and v26.1 beta

[Lumigraphics]

I find Bridge/ACR slightly faster than Lightroom Classic. However, Bridge 13-15 is a total disaster. Bridge 12 was no racehorse but later versions are the speed of a dead horse. I still use Bridge 12 in production because of this, on both Intel and M1 Macs.

I'm doing fairly large volumes. I have ~350,000 files in my Lightroom catalog on an M1 mini, and work with tens of thousands of files in Bridge on an Intel MacBook Pro.

[Conrad_C]

I know my hardware isn't a powerhouse, so "this is expected" is an understandable answer!

Setup:

13" MBP M1 2020, 16GB memory. Memory pressure is in the green with Bridge in particular; PS can push it into the yellow depending on what else is open.

By @umlautnord

“This is expected” is a sort of reasonable answer for a 13" M1 MacBook Pro with 16GB unified memory, but only sort of…because what people post more often here is “why is Camera Raw so much faster than Lightroom Classic?” In other words, what’s actually odd is that you’re seeing Camera Raw slower than Lightroom Classic.

There is a chance that it’s related to playing with the new features like the Adaptive Profile and nondestructive Enhance. Both are not final (they’re labeled Beta or Tech Preview), so although I don’t technically know, it’s possible that if they are not fully performance optimized they could be slowing down ACR more because those features are not (yet) in Lightroom Classic to slow it down.

For example I remember how extremely slow Lens Blur was on my M1 Pro MacBook Pro when it was still Early Access. In the final release we have now, Lens Blur performance is more or less tolerable, though not instant.

I guess you could test that by seeing if ACR is any faster if you edit without using those features…

[umlautnord]

Interesting that it's the opposite of the common refrain! I think I had the AI stuff turned back off when playing around with a sample image, but maybe having used it in the same session was slowing things down to begin with. I'll try starting with something fresh.

Thanks for the general sense of the layout of things with ACR vs. LrC, and hardware—it's helpful. This isn't a massive issue so don't need to dig in much further here, but I was just surprised to run into it and curious for perspective. I'll play around and see what I find out.

[Conrad_C]

I forgot to add this but the other thing is, if you experiment with those beta features turned off, and Camera Raw is no faster, then maybe the cause is something else.

[umlautnord]

I think I've figured things out. The issue is using those preview/beta AI tools at all once the image has been opened in ACR. It doesn't matter if they're currently enabled or not.

So, opening a fresh DNG is speedy and lovely on the normal edits. When I switch to the adaptive profile and/or use denoise, performance degrades across the board (expected/understandable). It doesn't regain its responsiveness in that ACR session even I turn denoise off and/or switch back to a normal profile, though. Not the ideal behavior I'd ask for in a perfect world, but, it's preview tech. I also assume it needs to keep some of that in the Undo history somehow if nothing else. So no complaints.

For me in this situation, it's just good to have logical and reasonable explanations for expectation setting, and I think I've gotten there. 🙂

Thanks again for your help!