Convert to DNG in 13.0.1 is very slow, CPU/Memory intensive and crashes

Report · Oct 27, 2023

I have been scanning old negatives with VueScan, converting them from Negative to Positive in LR for nearly 4 years now. The last step in my process is to convert the files to DNG in LR. Since 13.x this step has slowed to a crawl and even crashed LR (sent a bug report to Adobe when it crashed).

I select a group of photos to convert (10-20) to DNG, I then watch high utilization and memory usage jump from about 10gig to 36gig or so. Converting 10 images in the past took maybe a minute. Now it's at least a minute for 1 file. I made an attempt to convert 22 files this morning, LR crashed after about 18.

I have tested this with no other apps open, without GPU acceleration with the same results. Something has definitely changed in this version.

Has anyone experienced this issue?

The other bug I have is dual monitor zooming in Develop mode, something I use every day, now broken. This has been acknowledged in other posts here. Another bug dealing with plugins was quickly fixed in 13.0.1. Terrible update as far as I am concerned. I have made too many changes to my catalogs in 13.x to try to go back to an older version. The quality team has serious work to do.

Report · Oct 01, 2024

Hm, when I convert to DNG's it only uses a single thread of 12.

Report · Nov 22, 2023

I am converting negatives with Negative Lab Pro, the recommendation of this software is to use RAW DNG for several reasons in their instructions. I do not have an issue with this part of my process. I have been following this process for 4 years and over 20k scans, until this LR update everything worked perfect. I would prefer they fix the issue so I can continue the adventure of converting my film all to digital.

Report · Nov 22, 2023

Lossy DNG is the best way to keep more than 8bit quality in a RAW like format in the absolute smallest file size - that's what it does for you, especially when you go from RAW. TIFF is like the completely opposite, much larger even than the original RAW file.

My test 26MP/MB RAW file is 124MB as a ZIP compressed TIFF and 3MB! as lossy DNG - that's what it does for you without anyone knowing better.

Report · Feb 27, 2024

I have been exporting original camera raw files as DNG's to send to 3rd party editors for years. This has always been super fast. Since the update to LR 13, it has slowed to a crawl. In my case, it does not crash LR, nor does it seem to use a particularly high level of computer resources (I still have 50% of my RAM unused, CPU utilization is <20%, HDD usage is intermittent and minimal, GPU usage is indistinguishable from 0). And export of ~50 files that used to take about a minute now takes 5-10 minutes. No other system change on my end aside form the progression of LR to version 13. This definitely feels like a real problem.

Report · Oct 01, 2024

I'm also experiencing this. My typical workflow has slowed to a crawl and this is on a M2 Mac Studio with plenty of room.

it appears the convert to DNG process is single threaded, but even at a single thread it doesn't seem to be running properly, or gets deadlocked with the sync engine?

Adobe, can you please address this? Lightroom classic eventually crashes on exit, and I've filed all the crash reports.

Report · Mar 03, 2024

My Lightroom version 13.1 on mac uses really high cpu (~600%) is really slow (see attachted) screengrab from activity monitor.

What is the problem with this? It used to be fast and take a small percentage of my cpu.

I am only importing NEF files from a Nikon D810 and converting them to a dng.

Report · Oct 01, 2024

Hi Guys.

Was having some more "SLOW" issues and went looking for fixes.
I came across this in Reddit and I will say it has actually helped.
(Not my solution but sharing is our best way to help everyone.)
Give it a shot. See below.

Cheers Doc

"I think I may have found the solution. After doing all of the suggested things to no avail, I searched hours and hours and found a reddit thread that had a solution with someone else with a high end pc but lightroom being super slow. This worked for me. I went to: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Lightroom Classic. Then in that folder, I right clicked the lightroom.exe file and selected "Properties", I then went to "Compatibility" tab. I then clicked on the "Change high DPI Settings" button. From there I went to the bottom where it says "high DPI scaling override" and clicked checkbox for the "Override high DPI scaling behavior" and changed the dropdown to "Application". I clicked OK then Apply. I restarted lightroom and it is running normal now! Thanks for eveyones help and kuddos to the random reddit stranger that posted the solution to this."

Report · Oct 02, 2024

That's a potential fix on Windows, not Mac.