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Question

Develop Module performance issues with new iMac

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
September 23, 2017
4 replies
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I have just started working on images with my new 2017 27-inch Retina 5K iMac, and I've noticed some problems that seem slower than my 2009-era iMac. Images are blurry for a bit after making most adjustments. Sometimes it is a fraction of a second, sometimes - such as "Transform > Rotate" it could take 2-4 seconds to snap back into clarity.

I did not notice these delays with my 8-year old computer, so it concerns me that my fancy new one makes things worse in some ways. Obviously nothing with the new one is of a lower spec than the old one.

I have Preferences set to render 1:1 previews at monitor (5K) size, I've tested using the Graphics Processor and Smart Previews options, etc. Even tried purging and re-generating smaller previews (2880px) just to see what happens. Nothing seems to affect it.

System specs, short version:

Newest iMac (2017) 5K Retina (5120 x 2880 px)

3.5 GHz Core i5

8GB RAM

4GB VRAM

MacOS 10.12.6

Lightroom CC 2015.12

Here are my full system specifications and other notes.

Everything is up-to-date as of today. Lightroom app, catalog, previews, cache, all on internal SSD drive. Image files are on external drives connected via USB-3.

Note: this configuration is the same as with my old computer, so performance should not be worse now that I have an 8-year newer computer. (Other things are noticeably better, thank goodness, like startup time, optimization and integrity testing, etc.)

I have tried to find answers on my own - I've searched the web in general and these forums in particular. Most of the results I find are either years old, dealing with LR versions and systems specs that aren't relevant any more, or about "blurry photos" out of the camera, and sharpening and stuff. If there is a recent and relevant forum post that I missed, my apologies.

lightroom performance

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D Fosse

Community Expert

Still - the basic fact remains: these problems, exactly as described here! began long before anyone knew what a 5K display was.

This happened, and still happens, to people with a single 1920 x 1080 screen, as much as to people with dual 2560 x 1440 screens, or lately 4K and 5K.

My own personal theory, based solely on observed behavior, is that the core problem is reading from / writing to caches. Of course, if it was that simple it would have been fixed long ago.

markd783604Author

Known Participant

https://forums.adobe.com/people/D+Fosse wrote
Still - the basic fact remains: these problems, exactly as described here! began long before anyone knew what a 5K display was.
This happened, and still happens, to people with a single 1920 x 1080 screen, as much as to people with dual 2560 x 1440 screens, or lately 4K and 5K.

Yes, I have a fellow photographer friend who is experiencing similar issues on a smaller screen - when he didn't have any ideas is when I started this thread.

tshraner: thank you for those suggestions. I'll work through them and report back - might take a day or so, though.

Steveatesh

Participating Frequently

Hi Op, not sure if I can offer any comfort but I’ve had my retina iMac since they first came out, I too have the i5 but I added an additional 8gig of RAM.

I bought LR five immediately after getting the iMac and to be honest it’s performance was very poor with lags common. LR 6 improved it a lot in the develop module but still lags from time to time.

ive learned that the best workflow for me is to crop, then basic panel, then adjustment, then colour, detail and finally lens corrections. The latter seems to have the biggest impact on speed of further adjustment, hence I do it last.

personally I think this is an Adobe thing rather than Apple thing because other programs run no problem.

I tried Corels Raw processor and it was lightning fast ( if poor in other areas!) but other newer photo editors such as ON1 RAW processor, Luminar, Afinity etc all claim to be very fast on MAC. I also tried Capture One Pro and it was ok too ( but twice the price of LR).

i suggest you can download and try some of the other editors, not with a view to replacing LR (yet!) but to check the speed of those programs and see if they lag too. If not then it’s definitly Adobe that need to get their. Finger out and bring LR up to speed with the competition.

i love LR but it’s no longer the only kid on the block, and if LR7 appears and is not much better than LR 6 I’ll personally be looking for a replacement. Hope you get it sorted, be interested in your findings if you do it.

Todd Shaner

Legend

markd783604 wrote
I've tested using the Graphics Processor and Smart Previews options, etc. Even tried purging and re-generating smaller previews (2880px) just to see what happens. Nothing seems to affect it.

I believe this is the root cause of your performance issues. There should be a difference in the Develop module performance with LR Preferences> Performance 'Use Graphics Processor' enabled and disabled, especially with a 5K display! You may have a corrupt LR Preferences file, an incompatible display profile, or LR installation issue. Try the following steps in the order shown below to see if any of these improve performance:

1) Reset LR Preferences file as outlined at the below link under 'Mac' heading steps 1-7.

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/articles-page/how-do-i-reset-lightrooms-preferences/

2) Change the monitor profile as outlined at the below link. If you use a monitor calibrator create a new display profile instead. Make sure the calibrator's software preferences are set to create an ICC Version 2 Matrix profile and NOT an ICC Version 4 LUT type profile.

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/articles-page/how-do-i-change-my-monitor-profile-to-check-whether-its-corrupted/

3) If the slowness persists try uninstalling LR and then reinstall as outlined here:

Uninstall or remove Creative Cloud apps

markd783604Author

Known Participant

trshaner wrote
Try the following steps in the order shown below to see if any of these improve performance:
1) Reset LR Preferences file as outlined at the below link under 'Mac' heading steps 1-7.
2) Change the monitor profile as outlined at the below link. If you use a monitor calibrator create a new display profile instead. Make sure the calibrator's software preferences are set to create an ICC Version 2 Matrix profile and NOT an ICC Version 4 LUT type profile.
3) If the slowness persists try uninstalling LR and then reinstall as outlined here:
Uninstall or remove Creative Cloud apps

My apologies if I am missing something obvious, but I didn't see links for your steps 1 and 2, just for step 3. I can google and find how to do them, but in the interest of reducing variables, it would probably be best if I used precisely the process you are referring to.

Todd Shaner

Legend

markd783604 wrote
My apologies if I am missing something obvious, but I didn't see links for your steps 1 and 2, just for step 3. I can google and find how to do them, but in the interest of reducing variables, it would probably be best if I used precisely the process you are referring to.

Sorry.....I've added the links in my reply #17. Let me know if you have any questions about the procedures.

B

bob frost

Inspiring

Your 5K screen has nearly 15 million pixels. My 2880x1440 screen has 4 million pixels. So your screen has 4x as many pixels as mine, and it is going to take 4x as long to write an image to your screen as mine. So, all else being equal, if mine takes 0.5 secs (not noticeable), yours will take 2 secs (quite noticeable).

Bob Frost

markd783604Author

Known Participant

Thanks guys for the thoughtful ideas on what the problem might be, I appreciate you thinking along with me!

tshraner: Making the LR window dramatically smaller does make a difference. The same 0.1 Transform > Rotate move that takes 2-4 seconds at full screen takes, very approximately, around 1/2 a second at a smaller size. So you're on to something there.

bob frost: I do understand that the 5K screen has 4x the pixels, but I naively assumed that this would have occurred to the folks at Apple and Adobe, and that they would have beefed up related hardware to support that sufficiently, especially since they have had a few years to work out the kinks. Graphic / visual people are some of their core customers - something that annoys them for 2-4 seconds on dozens of adjustments on each of hundreds of photos in a day seems like something to fix.

I also realize the 8GB of RAM is not ideal. Two points: First, I only bought the new computer because my old one really died, so spending $2400 wasn't really in the budget to begin with (not to mention a lot of other personal stuff). I knew that I could quickly and easily spend another couple hundred to upgrade it myself at some point in the future and enjoy a little boost. Everything about this computer was equal to my old computer (GB of RAM) or far superior to my old computer that it should seem blindingly fast to me for quite a while.

Secondly, as I just mentioned, 8GB - of presumably a slower memory technology? - was what my old computer had, too, which again didn't exhibit this performance issue. This shouldn't be the cause, unless like bob frost indicated, the 5K monitor overwhelms all of the other hardware advancements, which again, seems hard to swallow.

tshraner: One thing I don't understand, regarding memory, is how LR uses it. I did a System Report yesterday, and it said:

Sometimes the Real Memory Used is even less - I saw 6% of available, once - yet still using 3+ GB of virtual.

Lots of things I don't understand about that any more: 1) why doesn't LR grab more of the real, when the MacOS Activity Monitor says not all of it is being used? 2) Since I have an SSD (with 200GB free space) is Virtual Memory that...bad, any more? I know it was not optimal back when it was being written to / read from spinning disks, but now?

Usually I only have the following applications open: Firefox (which does chew up RAM sometimes!), iTunes, iMessage, LR, and sometimes Photoshop. Right now, I just looked at Activity Monitor and it indicates I have 1.75GB RAM not used at all, yet LR is using 3GB of Virtual Memory, and my Transform > Rotate test is slow.

I just did a test. I quit absolutely everything but TextEdit to make these notes and Activity Monitor to see what's happening. It says 2.82GB are being used, with nothing but these apps and whatever system / background processes that are running. (Are 279 processes and 2.82GB of RAM used normal?)

I opened LR and did my Transform > Rotate. Slow.

Here are the memory reports, first from LR and then from the MacOS:

I seem to remember a way to encourage LR and PS to grab more real RAM, but I don't see it in the preferences any more. Would this be something I should look into?

Anyhow, aside from the memory allocation not making any sense to me, it also seems to indicate that RAM isn't the cause of the performance issue I originally posted about, right?

markd783604Author

Known Participant

Wait a sec, I just did another test:

With LR taking up the full 5K screen, if I rotate a ~30MB Canon CR2 RAW file, it takes the aforementioned 2-4 seconds. If I rotate an iPhone JPG, which takes up the same number of pixels on the screen, it is blurry for only a fraction of a second!

If the issue is re-drawing pixels on the screen, as dj_paige and others have said, it shouldn't matter what the underlying file type is, right? It seems, instead, that the issue is actually processing the data in the file.

More tests: I checked the same Transform > Rotate test on multiple RAW files, and on some it takes ~1 sec (first pic below), on others ~3 seconds. Neither history is at all long, but there are some differences in their respective histories - maybe most notably, the slower one includes a Lens Profile correction.

So maybe that Lens Profile correction is causing the stumbles?

LR also seems to take a while to "Load" images, in both Loupe and Develop, sometimes, even if I've already created 1:1 Previews, etc.

So, I am not sure what else to look at:

My use of Previews, Smart Previews, etc?
Could it be a combination of factors? That my image files are on an external disk (as they always have been, remember) but now with the 5K that external disk becomes an issue? Not because of normal speed stuff, but in re-rendering the image over the USB cable? That seems far-fetched, though, since I assume (could be wrong!) that LR loads the entire file into memory to work on it and isn't constantly fetching it from the disk. And these are only ~30MB files and little XMP files, should go pretty fast over USB-3 anyhow.
The LR test indicates that my Graphics Card passes, therefore it seems it should be useful (I don't notice a difference if I turn it off or on).
Not sure what to do about what tshraner said with incompatible display profiles or graphics drivers. If that is something I should figure out, I'd appreciate somebody pointing me in the right direction.

If the answer really is "Yes, you'd think this stuff could handle a 5K monitor, but sadly no, you just have to live with being annoyed" then fine and I'll drop it, but it just seems to me this shouldn't be the case, so I want to be sure I've tried - before I resign myself to it - to see if it can be fixed.

dj_paige

Legend

Huge screen, slow processor by today's standards ... that is (part of) the problem.

markd783604Author

Known Participant

Slow processor by today's standards? A) I bought this Mac about 3 weeks ago - it's the newest generation - and I didn't get the low-end processor. B) The size of the monitor negates 8 years of progress in all of the other specs??

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