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Chrisjhood
Known Participant
August 26, 2023
Question

choppy/laggy performance on a Mac with 2 screens

  • August 26, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 1082 views

Lightroom classic 12.5

Mac OS 13.5.1

 

This has been an issue since the 2019 Mac Pro came out and I have tested now on a brand new Mac Studio M2 Ultra as well.

 

The issue is when youre in the develop module on your main screen and in the seconday screen youre in the Loupe Normal mode the sliders dont move fluidly like they do when ever else and the edit when applied to the image on both screens is super choppy and delayed.  I have called in many times about this issue and this last time the tech I was talking to could not replicate this issue on his PC with dual screens so it leads me to believe it is a mac only issue.  I thought for the longest time it was an issue with the 2019 Mac Pro only but after buying a new M2 Mac stuido and testing that I expented the issue to be gone but it wasnt.   

 

If you have grid selected on the seconday display while in develop on the main it works as it should and there is no issue. Its only when you have Loupe Normal mode on the seconday display. 

 

Please take a look at this and see if you can fix it. 

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    1 reply

    J
    Community Expert
    Jao vdLCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 26, 2023

    This is fairly normal and happens on all platforms - not just Macs, It is happening because the secondary display is rendered from a preview image and not a live display like in Develop on the main display. The extra calculation of a preview makes it not as smooth. It is just fine (but noticeable less smooth) than with a single display on my M1 Max machine. It should still be usable quite well though but less smooth. To be honest I don't think the secondary display in Lightroom Classic is all that useful anyway and Adobe should really rethink how this is used.

    R
    Roving.Photographer
    Participant
    October 18, 2023

    @Jao vdL your comment is confusing. I'm with you 100%, @Chrisjhood: I just jumped back into a test of the latest updated Lightroom Classic, as this bug was enough to force me to switch to Capture One over a year ago. Capture One is developed by a crew with way smaller resources than Adobe, and yet it uses two monitors perfectly well. You loupe/preview on the second in Capture One for the details, and edit the exact same RAWs on the first, with silky smooth, lightning quick performance. It's unacceptable for Lightroom, and it really does makes it unusable. One can only asssume it's a serious - and truly inexplicable - performance bug that Adobe really should have fixed ages ago. FYI I have read every way to optimise the LR catalogue and performance settings (with Captrue One, it just works perfectly out the box). Until then, I have no choice but to stick with Capture One (at least I have the perpetual license version in the meantime). 

      J
      Community Expert
      Jao vdLCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      October 18, 2023

      I actually agree. Was just trying to explain why it is so slow and why I stopped using it. The secondary display is not well done in Lightroom Classic (there is not even an option in Cloudy). It is rendered from jpeg previews and therefore is very slow to update. In the main screen there is a direct pipeline to the raw data instead which is much faster than having to render a new preview every time. I would guess that fixing this would need a significant rework of the code behind the secondary display as it would need a completely different rendering pipeline that is much closer to the one used in the develop display instead of what is now used, basically the pipeline for Library display. Not excusing it though. I wish this performed better. On my M1 Max machine it is by far not as bad as you make it sound but it is still not instantaneous and as smooth as the main display by far.

      I think you would probably be surprised at how small a team is actually actively working on Lightroom. Adobe is a big company but Lightroom is only a small part of it. They definitely have to prioritize what they spend time on.

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