P: LR4 is slow to move photos from one folder to another compared to LR3

[lrl117]

I am using LR4 on a Mac with 8 gb ram, I7 processor and OSX.
I have been using LR since LR1. LR4 is terribly slow. Trying to move photos from one folder to another takes about 20-30 seconds per folder on file sizes of about 6 to 12 mb. Is Adobe aware of this? If they are, I'll be patient. If not, it will force me to consider changing programs.

[lrl117]

to correct my post: I meant to say 20-30 sec per picture.

[Bec Sowada]

Hi Lance,

I don't see a slowdown in moving photos from one folder to another, at least not compared to Lightroom 3. It takes my Mac 2-3 seconds to move a 20 MB photo. Are you trying to move photos to a different drive, or to a different folder on the same drive? Does the drive you're moving them to have a lot of free disk space?

As a test, try moving the same photo to the same location directly in Mac Finder, and see how long that takes compared to Lightroom. (I'm not suggesting this as a solution, just as a troubleshooting/comparison step.)

Thanks,
Becky

[lrl117]

NOT SURE IF ADOBE IS STILL LISTENING AS I HAVE NOT HEARD BACK FROM THEM. ALSO NOT SURE IF THEY ARE LOOKING AT ALL MY POSTS AS I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO RELAY MY EXPERIENCES.

ANOTHER INTERESTING THING IS THAT I JUST DID A TEST ON MY MACBOOK AIR WHICH HAS A I7 PROCESSOR AND 4 GB OF RAM. EVERYTHING WORKED FINE AND FAST. WHY SHOULD IT BE WORKING ON MY MACBOOK AIR AND NOT ON MY IMMAC?

ADOBE - PLEASE TELL US THAT YOU ARE STILL WORKING ON THIS. IT IS REALLY A VERY SERIOUS PROBLEM.

REMEMBER WHEN TOYOTA IGNORED THE PROBLEM. IT COST THEM BILLIONS IN LOST REVENUE, REPUTATION AND LOST CLIENTS. THE LESSON LEARNED IS EVEN IF YOU CAN'T FIGURE OUT THE PROBLEM, COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR LOYAL CUSTOMERS. TELL THEM WHAT YOU ARE DOING. OVER COMMUNICATING IS BETTER THAN UNDER.

NOT ROCKET SCIENCE STUFF.

The computer which I am experiencing this problem is an IMMAC, 27", I7 processor, running IOS X Lion 10.7.3. This computer worked fine with LR3.

I also tried running LR4 on my MacBook Air, 13", mid 2011 model, 1.8 processor core I7, 4gb ram 1333 MHZ DDR3, Graphics Intel HD Graphics 3000 384 MB. I did not experience the slowness in moving pictures from one folder to another.

Conclusion (so far) is that LR4 is having trouble on my IMMAC and is ok on my MacBook Air. Please advise what is taking place.

Thanks.

Lance

From: Lance
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2012 20:47:34 -0600
To: Photoshop Family
Subject: Re: New reply: LR4 is horribly slow compared to previous versions

Becky,

I've been continuing to work with LR. It has now slowed down again.

From: Lance
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2012 20:00:05 -0600
To: Photoshop Family
Subject: Re: New reply: LR4 is horribly slow compared to previous versions

Hi Becky,

I followed your instructions and this is what I found:

1. My computer had been on all day and when I got home I opened Lightroom and moved 16 pictures from one folder on my internal drive to another folder on the same drive. The picture files were from 83kb to 1.3mb. The move took 15 minutes.
2. I went to the finder and moved the same 16 pictures back to the original folder. The move, using the finder, took 3 seconds.
3. I tried to synch the folder and the synch took 13 seconds.
4. I imported the pictures after the synch dialog and it took 2 seconds.
5. I ejected an external drive that is used for back up. I tried to move the 16 pictures again into another folder (on the same internal drive) and the move took about 16 minutes.
6. I restarted lightroom and the external drive reconnected. I moved the 16 pictures into another folder. The move took 3 seconds.

At the moment, the moves are now performing ok. I have no confidence that this will remain. Something is wrong. Does this give you any clues?

Regards,

Lance

From: Photoshop Family
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2012 13:16:49 -0700
To: Photoshop Family
Subject: New reply: LR4 is horribly slow compared to previous versions

Becky Sowada, an employee of Photoshop Family, replied to LR4 is horribly slow compared to previous versions, a question about Photoshop Family.

Hi Lance,

I don't see a slowdown in moving photos from one folder to another, at least not compared to Lightroom 3. It takes my Mac 2-3 seconds to move a 20 MB photo. Are you trying to move photos to a different drive, or to a different folder on the same drive? Does the drive you're moving them to have a lot of free disk space?

As a test, try moving the same photo to the same location directly in Mac Finder, and see how long that takes compared to Lightroom. (I'm not suggesting this as a solution, just as a troubleshooting/comparison step.)

Thanks,
Becky

[Bec Sowada]

Hi Lance,

Thanks for the additional information. I haven't been able to see the same slowdown here, but we are working on emulating your system as best we can. It may take a few days - please be patient, and I'll post back if we need more information or uncover any workarounds for you to try.

Becky

[Bec Sowada]

The public RC build of Lightroom 4.1 was just posted on http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/li.... Please install and give it a try. There were some catalog bugs fixed in this release, and I'm curious to see if those fixes helped at all with this problem. More information about the public RC of Lightroom 4.1 is available at http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/.

[lrl117]

Anything happening towards a solution to the slowness in moving pictures from folder to folder?

[J453]

Did Lightroom 4.1 not help with this issue?

[lrl117]

Absolutely not!! The strange thing is that with 4.0, I could restart my computer and LR would work faster in transferring files for a short period of time. Then it would slow down terribly. One of the triggers for the slowdown was when I went into the develop module and tried to do something.

With LR 4.1, file transfers from folder to folder is very slow and stays that way, even when I restart the computer. Let me know if I can provide any additional details.

[Bec Sowada]

Hi Lance,

The team was able to reproduce the problem, and a bug has been logged. We found a workaround to speed things up, and I'm curious if the same makes things faster for you.

After dragging the photos to the new folder, while the files are copying, click on a different folder in the Folders panel in Library, one that is neither the source nor the destination for the photos being copied.

Hope that helps,
Becky

[lrl117]

Hi Becky,

Sorry to report that this suggested workaround made no difference to the slowness of moving files to a different folder. As I have previously mentioned, this problem only exists on my IMAC. LR4.1 on my Macbook Air works very fast. Since my IMAC is my main computer for Lightroom, I am hoping that you can get this fixed pretty soon. Thanks.

[Benjamin Warde]

Hi Lance,

I'd like to ask a couple additional questions as well.

1. Have you tried optimizing your catalog, and does that make any difference? (Go to the File menu and choose "Optimize Catalog...")
2. You say that the problem occurs on your iMac and not on your MacBook Air. Are you using exactly the same catalog and set of photos on each of these machines, or are they different catalogs and different collections of photos?
3. In your specific example above, you mention that it took 15 minutes to move 16 photos. How many photos were in the source folder that you were moving from? And how many photos were in the destination folder that you were moving to?
4. How many photos in total are in your catalog?

Thanks,
Ben

[lrl117]

Ben, I replied to your email by hitting reply. Not sure if it got to you. I'll duplicate what I had said:

1. I have optimized the catalog many times.
2. I have different catalogs on my Imac and my Macbook Air. They also have a different collection of photos.
3. I had 16 photos total in a folder on my Imac. I moved all of them to a folder that had 0 photos.
4. I have 62,000 photos on my Imac and about 1,000 photos on my Macbook Air. I did not have any slowness problems with LR 3.6.

Hope this helps. Let me know if I can provide more information.

[Benjamin Warde]

Thanks Lance, I'll let you know when I have more info or if I need more info.

-Ben

P.S. When someone replies to a post that you've made on the forum, you receive an automated email, but replying to that email does nothing (you'll notice that it has "noreply" in the address). You need to actually post on the forum for anyone else to be able to see it. So, thanks for posting!

[Benjamin Warde]

Hi Lance,

Would it be possible for me to get a copy of the Lightroom catalog from your iMac? I only need the catalog file, not the photos, and the catalog can be zipped to make it fairly small. Then you can upload it to Dropbox or YouSendIt and post a link here, or I can contact you privately with instructions on how to FTP it to me directly at Adobe.

Thanks,
Ben

[lrl117]

Ben,

I think that the file is about 800mb. I will be home in about an hour and can take care of that. Can you send me instructions how I should do this? If you need to send me something privately, you can send it to my email address (which I think you have). Thanks.

[lrl117]

Ben,

I compressed the catalog file down to around 82mb. Please send me instructions how to get it to you. Thanks.

[lrl117]

Ben,

I set up a shared folder in dropbox. I put the LR catalog file in it. I just need your email address so I can send you the link.

[Benjamin Warde]

Thanks Lance, I've emailed you privately.

-Ben

[Benjamin Warde]

Hi Lance,

Our database engineer has been looking at your catalog, and believes that he has figured out the problem. You have a couple of smart collections that take a _very_ long time to run. The query that builds these collections runs every time file paths are changed, added, or removed. This is why moving photos between folders is so slow for you.

We are working on a real fix for this, and I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, as a short-term work-around, try this:

1. Close your Collections panel (click the header of the Collections panel to collapse it).
2. Quit Lightroom.
3. Relaunch Lightroom.
4. Do not open the Collections panel! As soon as you do, you're pretty much hosed until the next time you quit and relaunch.
5. Try your file move again.

My expectation is that it will still be slower than it should be (this is a separate, known issue that we are also working on) but it should be _way_ faster than what you're seeing now. Let me know how that works out.

Thanks,
Ben

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Ben, why is it not sufficient to just close the Collections panel for the filters to become inactive?

I consider the fact that one has to relaunch Lightroom to deactivate the smart collections to be a bug.

Please consider fixing this issue.

How well LR performs seems to vary for me. Sometimes it seems OKish (LR3.6, Win7), sometimes it is really slow. I've tried closing the Collections panel in the past as a way of speeding up LR but obviously expected to see an impact immediately.

I have all non-essential panels closed (i.e., navigator preview, histogram, film-strip when not needed, etc.). I hope that all the processes behind those panels are deactivated when the respective panel is closed (i.e., there should be no histogram calculations when no histogram is being shown).

I'm using a DELL E6520, Core i5 2.5 GHz, 4 GB Ram, nVidia video card, and adjusting images is anything but fluid. If I turn off the details and tone curve panels, performance increases significantly. However, I feel that this hardware should be sufficient to provide fluid image adjustments without switching off essential image adjustment panels.

N.B., I'm running LR on a secondary 1920x1200 screen. I used the nVidia control panel to configure the card to "optimize for single display performance" (or similar). Some suggested for older LR versions that it is even beneficial to uninstall the whole nVidia control panel. Not sure that this is still required.

FYI, I run no other programs in the background and have even tried to deactivate non-essential services, accessories, etc. I believe I've got better performance from LR in the past and wonder where it is gone. I'll try to do the "close & relaunch" for the Collection panel, but I'm pretty sure that won't fix my adjustment speed issues.

[Benjamin Warde]

Hi Lance,

This issue is improved in the second Lightroom 4.1 public Release Candidate, available for download here:

http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/light...

Note that it is still slow, it's not yet as fast as it should be, and we're working on that. But it is much faster than it was before.

Thanks,
Ben

[lrl117]

Hi Ben,

Thanks for the information. Do I still have to close the Collections to have the files transfer at a reasonable speed or is that not necessary anymore?

Regards,

Lance

[Benjamin Warde]

Hi Lance,

Even with the Collections panel open you should find it to be much faster than it was before. As I said, it's still not fast, and we're working on that, but it's nowhere near as slow as it was.

Thanks,
Ben

[lrl117]

Ben,

I installed the RC2. On my Imac, I found that the moving of pictures from one folder to another was much better with the collection panel open. I tried it a few times and it seemed to be a fairly consistent moving time of about 2-3 seconds per file (jpegs). When I closed the collection panel and restarted lightroom, the files took less than a second each to move.

I tried a few things in the development mode and did not see any issues. For me, on my Imac, this looks like an improvement,.

My Macbook Air continues to work well with all versions.

Hope you guys are starting to get this figured out.

Thanks.

Lance

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I noticed the same problem; taking about 20 seconds to move a file from one folder to another on the same drive. Solution for me was to delete preview folder via Lightroom (Library>Previews), shut down LR4 and then go to the catolog folder via Finder (on a Mac) and drag preview file to trash. Start up LR 4 again and it creates a new preview file. I then re-rendered 1:1 previews, optimized catalog two times (not sure if that was necessary but WTH), shut down LR once more and reopended and VOILA!!!! Files moved to new folders VERY FAST (just as fast as LR3). Also 1:1 Previews seem to be rendering faster too.

I think what's going on is the previews file that you created in LR3 must have issues in LR4. Kind of a pain to have to rebuild my 1:1 previews again considering my library is currently 93,999 files (half of which are RAW 35meg) but that's what overnight-time is for :)

Hope this helps peeps cause the thought of living with such sluggishness was a real deal-breaker. I have to wonder why Adobe doesn't give a heads-up on this??