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I've seen commentary by people who appear to be expert Lightroom users, giving contradictory information about large catalogs in Lightroom Classic. Some say 100,000 images in a catgalog is totally fine, and others say that Lightroom starts slowing down when you hit 10,000.
I have LR 6.14 on a desktop PC with about 46,000 images in the catalog. The PC is running Windows 10 and has 24 GB of ram and a quad core CPU. The catalog is on an internal SSD drive. It sometimes get pathologically slow, for example taking 10 seconds to click on an image when selecting it in the Grid view. Sometimes it seems to just go out to lunch for minutes with the program winking out and reappearing, unresponsive until it settles down.
On the other hand, scrolling in Grid view is usually responsive.
I have the graphics accelerator suppor turned off becuse LR crashes more often with it on (yes, I have the latest drivers).
Video card is an AMD Radeon R9 270. Driver version 22.19.172.769 (Windows says it's the latest)
Windows updates is the wrong way to insure hardware is up to date. Windows used to try and do that, but now days that does not occur. You would need to get the driver from AMD. And your AMD supporting app is also old.
However, that GPU is what, nine years old? Turning use GPU on will probably cause more harm than good. You need to experiment with that to find out. And back on v6.14, if you do it ha
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Anyone that states 10K images is a lot and LR starts slowing down is no expert.
Disabling GPU due to its bugs that crash LR will of course slow down many, many operations depending on the OS/version of Lightroom Classic (GPU usage is a moving target from version to version).
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A catalog with 46,000 should perform as well as one with 40 files. In fact, there are customers with 1m plus files with perfectly working catalogs.
If you haven't already done so, then checkout this Adobe help document that describes some steps to improve performance https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html
I would also suggest that if you have Virus Checker running, then make sure that the Lightroom catalog, previews, etc are excluded from same the VC can cause significant performance hit.
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I hadn't viewed that particular help page, but I have followed other ones.
It appears to have a mistake, saying that you can tell whether it's running in 64-bit under Windows by looking at the title bar. It's not there, but the Lightrooom System Info says that the Applicatiopn architecture is x64.
It says to have 20% free on the catalog drive, but that shouldn't matter on an SSD since there is no disk arm movement to optimize.
I have now made a few changes including turning off auto generating XMP files, increasing the Preview file size to be the next size up from my monitor width. I increased the camera raw cache size.
Note, I have dual monitors.
Next I'll try to reclaim some space on the SSD.
There is one other thing to consider. The images are stored in a folder within Microsoft OneDrive. It shouldn't matter, though, because I'm not altering the originals -- but those XMP files might be an issue.
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> Note, I have dual monitors.
Lr performance has always been poor when using two monitors. Note that I'm being very generous when I describe it as poor. A more appropriate word would be rubbish, but then again I have a very low tolerance of anything that reduces performance from what I know is possible.
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This is it. This is very much it. You should put it on the Optimize Performance page on position one. Lightroom has been incredibly slow for me, usually utilizing only one core for pretty much any operation. On a 12 core 24 thread CPU with 48 GB of RAM, catalogue stored on an SSD that does 7.000 MB/s and even the currently edited images residing on that SSD.
Then I told Windows Defender to ignore the folder with the catalogue. Suddenly, it's MUCH faster. Excluding the space where my images are stored meant another jump in performance and CPU utilization.
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Correlation is not causation! Yes, you have 46K images and yes, the response is slow. These are correlated. However, one is not the cause of the other.
In fact, the idea that catalog size can cause slowness is generally not supported by any knowledge of how databases work and how Lightroom Classic works. In other words, these two are almost surely unconnected based on any known principle.
There are plenty of other reasons why LrC can have slow responses, as pointed out by others.
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I have LR 6.14
By @kevind47146453
There have been many performance optimizations in the seven (I think) years since Lightroom 6 was released. It is possible that some catalog-related slowdowns are the result of code that has been fixed since. The GPU is used a lot more in the current Lightroom Classic 12, but that is a separate issue from catalog database performance where I don’t think the GPU is used even today.
I’ve been using a catalog with over 100,000 items in the last few major versions, now about 144,000 images and videos, and on my MacBook Pro laptop with an Apple Silicon M1 Pro processor, I have no major complaints about performance. (It’s slower on my 2018 Intel Core i5 quad core laptop, but usable.)
Although not perfect, with every version they have addressed one performance area and then another. GPU acceleration was expanded between versions 7 and 10. Export is now much faster because it was GPU accelerated in version 11. The performance of scrolling in the Folders and Collections panels was optimized in recent versions. The formerly painfully slow Spot Healing Brush was rewritten in version 12 and is now faster and higher quality. Lightroom 6 is a great and non-subscription application, but based on performance on current hardware, I would not want to go back to it.
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Some inquires
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Video card is an AMD Radeon R9 270. Driver version 22.19.172.769 (Windows says it's the latest). I have Radion Software Version 17.7. Memory is 2048 MB GDDR5.
The internal SSD that the Catalog is on is abouit 87% full. The photos are on an internal 7200 RPM hard drive that ie less than half full. The system de-frags weekly IIRC.
The camera raw cache is on the same SSD as the Catalog. It's maximum size is 1 GB. It's not a laptop and I don't see the "power mode" setting that I have on my tablet PC.
I have now added my Lightroom Catalog folder to the Windows Security exceptions list.
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Details:
Lightroom version: 6.14 [ 1149743 ]
License: Perpetual
Language setting: en
Operating system: Windows 10 - Business Edition
Version: 10.0.19045
Application architecture: x64
System architecture: x64
Logical processor count: 8
Processor speed: 3.5 GHz
Built-in memory: 24527.1 MB
Real memory available to Lightroom: 24527.1 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 655.1 MB (2.6%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 783.9 MB
GDI objects count: 470
USER objects count: 1487
Process handles count: 3378
Memory cache size: 367.9MB / 5875.7MB (6.3%)
Maximum thread count used by Camera Raw: 5
Camera Raw SIMD optimization: SSE2,AVX,AVX2
Camera Raw virtual memory: 74MB / 12263MB (0%)
System DPI setting: 96 DPI
Desktop composition enabled: Yes
Displays: 1) 1920x1080, 2) 1920x1080
Input types: Multitouch: No, Integrated touch: No, Integrated pen: No, External touch: No, External pen: No, Keyboard: No
Graphics Processor Info:
AMD Radeon(TM) R9 270
Check OpenGL support: Passed
Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Version: 3.3.13476 Core Profile Context 22.19.172.769
Renderer: AMD Radeon(TM) R9 270
LanguageVersion: 4.50
Application folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Lightroom
Library Path: C:\Users\xxxx\Lightroom Catalog\Lightroom Catalog.lrcat
Settings Folder: C:\Users\xxxxx\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom
Installed Plugins:
1) Canon Tether Plugin
2) Facebook
3) Flickr
4) Luminar Neo
5) Nikon Tether Plugin
6) Topaz Photo AI
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Video Memory : 0
AudioDeviceIOBlockSize: 1024
AudioDeviceName: Headphones (Logi Z407 Stereo)
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Video card is an AMD Radeon R9 270. Driver version 22.19.172.769 (Windows says it's the latest)
Windows updates is the wrong way to insure hardware is up to date. Windows used to try and do that, but now days that does not occur. You would need to get the driver from AMD. And your AMD supporting app is also old.
However, that GPU is what, nine years old? Turning use GPU on will probably cause more harm than good. You need to experiment with that to find out. And back on v6.14, if you do it have 4K and beyond, turning that on will accomplish nothing.
The internal SSD that the Catalog is on is abouit 87% full.
So, less than 20% free. LrC needs that drive to be 20% free, some say 25% free. Performance degrades at that point. Just the type of poor performance you are seeing.
Make sure that you have a trust worthy backup of your catalog. This should be on a different hard drive. Then return to your current drive. Any jink on it? Perhaps older catalogs, perhaps from Lr 5, 4, 3?
By the way, we're is your backup? Should never be on the same drive as the working catalog, and it is often recommended to have at least two on separate drives (of which one gets locked up in case of theft), external drives are great for this (in a proffesonal office, a third backup on a external drive might be rotated off site in case of natural disaster). A backup on the same drive as the working catalog just begs for that drive to go kaput (karma), thereby destroying both the working catalog and the backup, have you bribed your house gremlin lately? And eats up free space where you need it.
The photos are on an internal 7200 RPM hard drive that ie less than half full
So plenty of room for the photos, and the drive would not be turned off (an issue during exports, publishing, etc). Note that the photos can be on any physical hard drive, no performance hit on slow vs fast drive for them.
The camera raw cache is on the same SSD as the Catalog. It's maximum size is 1 GB
Location good, on a Windows PC competition with the Windows paging file (by default on drive C) causes performance hits. And both the catalog and the Camera RAW CACHE can take advantage of a SSD drive.
Size very bad, trying to remember back to v6.14, that was probably the default. Current default is 5 GB, also way too small. The larger your catalog is, and especially the more humorous the number of photos you are currently working on, the larger that CACHE needs to be, think more like 20 GB as a starting point.
I don't see the "power mode" setting that I have on my tablet PC.
Much like a laptop, a tablet PC lacks the power supply, and lacks the cooling, to support that, hence not at all surprised that it is not offered.
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The camera raw cache is on the same SSD as the Catalog. It's maximum size is 1 GB
Location good, on a Windows PC competition with the Windows paging file (by default on drive C) causes performance hits. And both the catalog and the Camera RAW CACHE can take advantage of a SSD drive.
Size very bad, trying to remember back to v6.14, that was probably the default. Current default is 5 GB, also way too small. The larger your catalog is, and especially the more humorous the number of photos you are currently working on, the larger that CACHE needs to be, think more like 20 GB as a starting point.
Camera Raw cache is only used by the Develop module!!!!
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AMD software just barfs and says my product is too old. Not supportted.
I'll try to pair down the SSD to under 80%, but I can't see any reason a solid-state drive being over 80% full should be an issue.
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" but I can't see any reason a solid-state drive being over 80% full should be an issue."
See "Make sure that you have a large enough hard drive and enough free space" in:
https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html
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I did a significant cleanup on my SSD drive (including removing 9 GB of old versions of the AMD graphics driver). The pathological slowness seems to have abated (although it has had quiet periods before).
Thanks for all the other comments and tips.
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Status update:
I got a new compute. It has an M.2 1T SSD (about 15% full) with the LR catalog there. I put the images on an external USB 3.1 7200 RPM 5T drive. Windows Security is set to ignore the LR catalog and photos directory on OneDrive. GPS and face recognition are turned off (because they no longer work in LR 6). I increased the Camera Raw Cache to 50 GB.
Overall, performance is better; catalog optimization is really fast! Exports are quicker.
However, I am still experiencing the same sporadic instances of slowdown. It happens when I'm editing the whole photo collection and applying keywords. It works well and then it hangs up. Lightroom becomes unresponsive, but it is doing something becaue the second monitor winks on and off. Eventually (after a few minutes), it returns to normal. I THINK that it's generating previews. It's not as bad as it was, and I can live with it now.
Updated System Info:
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Since you're using Lr 6.14, then the performance improvements that Adobe put into the keywording and metatdata pipelines in LrC 10.x and 11.x are not present. There have also been significant improvements to how LrC enumertaes the Folder and Collection contents, filtering and even how/when LrC will build previews in background. Again, none of these enhancements are available to users of earlier versions.