Cropping and masks severly slow when using Smart Previews

Lightroom Classic version: 14.0.1 [ 202410161356-30922cfc ]

Operating system: Windows 11 - Business Edition

Version: 11.0.22631

Internal Camera Raw version: 17.0 [ 2043 ]

Hardware: Dell Latitude 5330

CPU: Intel Core i5-1245U

RAM: 16GB

HDD: SSD 512GB

Graphic Processor: Intel Iris Xe Graphics (31.0.101.5333)

 

Use Graphic Processer: Auto

User Smart Previews instead of Originals for image editing: Enabled

Camera Raw Cache location: Local disk (C:)

Catalog location: Local disk (C:)

RAW file location: SMB share (1 Gbit/s, Synology NAS DS220+, located in same subnet)

 

Steps to reproduce:

1. Set "Use Smart Previews instead of Originals for image editing" to "Enabled"

2. Set "Use Graphic Processer" to "Auto"

3. Import RAW files located at SMB share into catalog

4. Create Smart Preview for at least 1 image

5. Try cropping or rotating the image with Smart Preview

6. Try creating and adjusting a radial gradiant mask with Smart Preview

 

The overlay to crop an image can be smoothly dragged by mouse across the image without noteworthy lag. Also the image can be rotated without significant delay. Masks such as radial gradiant can be created, moved and resized without noteworthy delay. Lightroom responds in an acceptable amount of time.

 

Cropping or rotating an image with Smart Preview suffers significant lag. When slowly dragging the crop overlay across the image it jumps from one size to the other with noticeable delay. Same happens when rotating the image and also creating or readjusting a mask such as radial gradiant. These functions become unusable as precise adjustments to the image in acceptable timely manner appear impossible.

 

When trying to crop or rotate an image or moving or resizing a mask any adjustment, meaning every mouse movement done (changing the angle of the image, dragging the crop overly across the image, resizing a mask) seems to cause an interaction with the SMB share as the Synology NAS indicates network activity as soon as any adjustment is done. This is proven by capturing network traffic between the notebook and the NAS as indicated in attached screenshot "smbactivity01.jpg". In this screenshot several calls (IP .51 is the notebook, .11 the NAS) for the related RAW file are visible. In fact hundrets of those have been recorded while only shortly trying to adjust cropping and rotation. This seems to contradict the enabled Lightroom function to only work on Smart Previews instead of originals.

 

1. Moving a RAW file to local disc and retry Smart Previews to exclude NAS as problem cause:

After moving a RAW file to local disk and trying again to work with a Smart Preview the problem still persists and shows no difference. The issue seems not necessarily NAS/SMB share related.

 

2. Leave RAW file on SMB share and disconnect share after creating Smart Previews:

After creating a Smart Preview the share has been disconnected by turning off the notebook's network connection. Lightroom could no longer access the RAW file. Now working on the Smart Preview no longer showed any lags or delays.

 

3. Working directly on RAW files without Smart Previews:

Cropping or rotating an image without a Smart Preview works fine (apart form expectable constrains when working on RAW files via SMB). Also creating or adjusting masks such as radial gradiant does not suffer significant performance issues.

 

3. Set "Use Graphic Processer" to "Off":

Setting this option to "Off" seems to resolve the issue for the functions cropping and rotation. Those functions appear responsive again without the described delays. Also no excessive network activity with the SMB share is recorded. HOWEVER this does not apply for the masking function. There the delays and the network activity still persist.

 

4. Increase Camera RAW cache from 5GB to 10GB:

No effect on the symptoms.

 

5. Empty Camera RAW cache:

No effect on the symptoms.

 

6. Exporting the catalog to a new one:

The catalog has been exported without any previews included. A Smart Preview then has been created and retried still indicating the same symptoms.

 

There seems to be a bug how Lightroom behaves with Smart Previews. Turning of graphic acceleration only seems to solve part of the issue. The issue seems also only to persist when the RAW file is accessible for Lightroom.

Currently I can't profit from Smart Previews eventhough I wanted to make use of their performance advantage.

 

Please let me know if there is any futher information I can deliver to fix this. Any help to fix this is also appreciated.

 

Thanks!