Experiencing performance related issues in Lightroom 3.x

[laurencec]

Hi

I just upgraded from lightroom 2.7 to lightroom 3. I then proceeded to import my old catalog. this all went fine but lightroom is so slow, the thumbnail previews take forever to load if I manage to have the patience to wait  for them.

is there a quick solution?? How can it be sped up?

thanks

Laurence

Message title was edited by: Brett N

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

Lou Gonza wrote:

Yes, I'm importing Canon 5dM2 raw files (25-30mb each!) and LR3 is choking on them. There is no doubt, they are BIG files, but I would still expect LR to be able to handle them. It is being marketed as pro software so one would expect them to have tested this.

I process for other pro photographers, so I'm dealing with loads of different cameras, and I've run something like 70k photos through LR3 in the last few months.  5d Mk2 files are amongst those I've been processing, and I haven't seen LR choke yet, so it appears there's something else going on here.

This thread has got ridiculously long now, and I've lost track of all of the things suggested, but it would be worth those who are having problems trying a couple of obvious possibilities.  Move or trash the preferences file (with the presets on Windows or with the user preferences for Mac) and try a new catalog with photos without settings, to see if they exhibit the same problem.

[Lou_Gonza]

Victoria,

Thanks so much for chiming in. I should rephrase my above comments. The 5Dm2 files do import, but then when I go through them, that's when things get bad. I scroll using my arrow keys and it's horribly slow (both in library and develop). And it gets worse the more I move through my images until it eventually spins and spins and my machine is held hostage. My ram and CPU are pegged and my machine is basically frozen. As mentioned I upped my cache to 50gb, started a fresh LR3 catalog and it took me all night to import and view about 1000 files. It was so painfully slow that I had to stop using it. That's when I came here for help. Now that I've installed 32bit LR3, I'm hopeful that that will be better.

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

At default settings?  Or with local adjustments and lens corrections etc?

[Lou_Gonza]

They were RAW files with no adjustments. I offloaded the cards to my PC. Then imported them into LR from my local drive. I have a preset that I apply on import. It just auto tones and applies some preset values for clarity, NR etc.

[BSC_PHOTO]

Quick Note:

Although increasing the ACR cache has sped LR up to lightning fast speeds it has not changed the issue where an adjusted image goes jagged until you zoom in and out. This is a huge bug for me as I will delete most even slightly soft images. I will say that the process of zooming in and out as well as making the adjustments has sped up so much that it is almost tollerable that I have to do that to check my images

[arnelg]

Hi, Sean McCormack in another thread offered a solution, which in summary is increasing the purging the cache and increasing ACR cache. I tried it and LR3 worked really fast, both zooming in and out and exporting. So, I continued working, processing a folder of senior portraits.  Then after some exports, it slowed down. I went thru the process again, same experience, fast at first then slowed down after an export of less than 40 files. I believe Sean solution is very good but there seems to be another thing that is affecting LR 3's responsiveness.

Apparently  this concern of LR 3 is true with many users, across both Windows and Mac.

There are now more than 2800 views on this thread and more than 76 replies, but it seems that there is no  reply yet from an Adobe engineer. Or is there?

Here is the link to a similar thread:

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/655828?tstart=30

And the link to Sean post about increasing cache of ACR

http://lightroom-blog.com/2010/04/camera-raw-cache.html

[Lou_Gonza]

Yes I saw his post too and increased my cache size. It was set to 1 gb. I now have it set to 100gb but I still don't see a performance improvement.

[BSC_PHOTO]

I read that the max is 50GB so that might be the issue. Try reducing it to 50 and see if that changes anything.

Also. Changes do not take effect till after you have restarted the program.

[Lou_Gonza]

Yeah I did that (reduced it to 50gb) but didn't have time to test. I also installed 32 bit to see how that works. I'll report back.

Interestingly, both 32 bit and 64 bit are working on my machine currently. For some reason I thought 32 bit would overwrite it but it didn't.

[bokeron2008]

Hi, BSC_PHOTO.

Is this the same bug you've wrote about :

http://forums.adobe.com/message/2894587

[BSC_PHOTO]

Not exactly. I'm seeing the jagged lines and soft images after making an adjustment in "Develop" If I zoom in and out the image is then rendered correctly. As I said this process has been soothed by the speed increase.

[Eric_G_7D]

Well, I found a major problem that was causing the almost non-existent movement - I had several corrupted JPG and CR2 files that had been imported. Once I deleted them using Windows File Explorer and re-synchronized the folder in LR3, the performance returned to a very manageable level.

What tipped me off to this is that some imported folders with more and larger images were fine, but the one folder that I kept starting with had the bad images. I was able to preview the good files using a picture viewer, but the corrupted ones were unable to render in any program. I presume LR3 was stuck on trying to deal with one or more of the corrupted files.

[Gavin Farrington]

Just because it's fun pile on the bandwagon, I too see massive memory consumption in LR3 after browsing a handful of images.

Win7x64, LR3 x64

6GB Ram

Core i7 920

I have to exit the app and restart it every 30 minutes or so because it consumes so much RAM (96% according to my meter) that even the OS takes many seconds to respond to simple commands.  Looks like a memory leak to me.

[Wanchese_West]

I believe I know why LR3 is so slow.

LR3 is designed to fill available CPU and RAM headroom. Memory or processor utilization to 80% in and of itself should be no problem. But the net amount available for the system and other concurrently operating processes needs to expand disproportionally in absolute terms as it shrinks in relative percentage terms. .

My system can handle 32gb of RAM. If LR3 grabbed 84% of that much RAM, that would leave about 5gb for windows and system requirements. Overall observed system performance should return to normal.

A pretty expensive guess if I am wrong......

[areohbee]

Lr3 operates full-speed on my 4GB machine - Lr itself typically consumes between 1GB and 1.5GB and never goes over 2GB. My system total is generally between 2/3 & 3/4 utilized ram-wise - that includes a few servers and 5-10 applications.

Lightroom version: 3.0 [677000]
Operating system: Windows 7 Ultimate Edition
Version: 6.1 [7600]
Application architecture: x64
System architecture: x64
Physical processor count: 2
Processor speed: 2.2 GHz
Built-in memory: 4095.5 MB
Real memory available to Lightroom: 4095.5 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 1310.7 MB (32.0%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 1380.7 MB
Memory cache size: 308.5 MB
System DPI setting: 96 DPI
Desktop composition enabled: Yes
Displays: 1) 1920x1200, 2) 1920x1200

I can't help but think that if you need massive amounts of RAM then you've got a problem with your system and/or its interaction with Lightroom. If more RAM fixes the symptoms, then who cares - I'm just sayin'...

Rob

[FeatherLightStudios]

I'm tired of this tread - the answer has nothing to do with PC vs Mac, this processor vs that one, 80% of usage this, and that...

Simple - Adobe LR3 has a serious bug, its their product and its in their best interest to fix it ASAP.

Play with LR3, but do actual production work in 2.7 -

Thanks all, I'm off this thread!

-David

[areohbee]

FeatherLightStudios wrote:

Simple - Adobe LR3 has a serious bug, its their product and its in their best interest to fix it ASAP.

I agree. And, I bet Adobe wouldn't argue either if you got them alone.

FeatherLightStudios wrote:

Play with LR3, but do actual production work in 2.7 -

I would think that would depend on whether you are one of the lucky ones or not.

Rob

[BSC_PHOTO]

I agree with feather Light.  I read the responces by everyone because I'm waititng for an answer but all I see is equipment lists.

Lets keep this thread to possible solutions and additional support.

[Butch_M]

BSC_PHOTO wrote:

Lets keep this thread to possible solutions and additional support.

Naturally that's the goal ... but don't you think the more data that the engineers have can help lead to those solutions and support.

The problems many of you are experiencing seem to be hit and miss and not across the board ... I really think that the comparison of the failures with the successes can help lead to the final fix many are in desperate need of.

[Gavin Farrington]

The folks posting their computer specs aren't here trying to have a platform war (for the most part) but rather trying to provide information so the people who track bugs can start to see patterns emerge.  It's quite helpful for the programmers to know that the issue seems to affect Win7 x64 the most.

Since initially replying, I've been watching LR3's RAM consumption much more closely.  On my 6GB system with no other major tasks running my RAM usage floats around 34%.  I open LR3 and immediately open in the develop module whatever RAW file I happen to be on (this is to eliminate the RAM hit that would come from browsing around the library) and I can see LR3's RAM usage instantly snap up by well over 2GB.  Use the adjustments brush a few times and I'm in the 80 percentile range of total system RAM usage.  Use the clone stamp tool a few times, and my disk starts thrashing as LR takes over all possible memory and starts forcing out data typically cached by the OS.  Cloning out a small dust spot takes about 30 seconds per occurrence.  At this point simply opening the Windows start menu becomes a click-and-wait process.  My memory meter indicates 10-20MB of free system memory.  I work in this state as long as I can take it, then I exit LR which immediately cleans up the memory used by the app and leaves my machine floating around 20% RAM usage.  Without re-launching LR, the OS continues to respond sluggishly for a while as it attempts to re-cache data typically used to make the interface snappy, but had been forced out by LR.  Generally I re-launch LR right away to get some more work done.  I can't do any serious developing of more than two images without needing to restart the app.

While the develop module is the fastest way to get LR to eat all my system memory, it's not the only way.  My sorting workflow in the Library module will do it, too.  Scanning through images, opening them in loupe view at 100%, scanning more, etc also brings the system to it's knees.

Win7 x64, LR3 x64

6GB RAM

i7 920

WD 2TB Black (data)

WD Raptor (system)

ATI 5870 1GB

Message was edited by: Digihotaru for clarity

[hillrg]

Digihotaru's post (#125) describes my experience precisely.

Win7 x64, LR3 x64

4 GB Ram on  P6600 quad core

mVidia card

50,000 library, optimized

Rory

[MelissaJ.G.]

Here I am - we're working on it.

I appreciate all the computer specs - we haven't found a good correlation between a specification and slowness yet, so I appreciate all the data I can get a hold of.

Couple more things:

In a couple threads, I've seen suggeestions that optimizing your catalog can help with ram usage. (I have no idea why, but there have been reports). If you try this, please make a backup of your catalog first - because if it works for you, I want to see your catalog!

-melissa

[arnelg]

Wow, Melissa, your post is very much appreciated and I am looking forward to your solution.

[Eric_G_7D]

Melissa - I had a major issue with some corrupted JPG and CR2 files that pretty much rendered LR3 unusable on a very fast machine. You may want to incorporate "fault tolerance" into the next revision so LR3 ignores corrupted files. Once I deleted them, the program became very responsive.

[csaager]

The really interesting question is why the beta2 worked simply fine and as soon as you shell out money you get a completely unusable piece of "bit-garbage". No matter if I get this running properly, probably the last buy from Adobe.