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

[goodlux7]

Hi Thomas -

My statements aren't an attack on the Adobe developers. I think they are

very bright and super talented. I know that software development isn't easy,

and these guy are clearly Olympic champions of software.

Even with the problems...I still think Lightroom is the only game in town,

although just using Photoshop Bridge alone (with images in folders) being a

close second. My point here is that Adobe's main competition is

Adobe...that's how far out in front they are, in my limited view of the

world. Further, I wouldn't be here wasting my time complaining if I did use

the software regularly.

That said, I do think there is a flaw in the product development

methodology, or Adobe would not consistently release LR as broken software.

I think they also bit off more than they can chew with LR, and they need to

get back to the core of what is important with the product, and reevaluate

strategy in light of new product coming on to the market.

I disagree that Lightroom is production quality. For me it is barely usable.

Yes, if everything goes right, you can import your photos tag and edit them.

Yes, once you get used to some of the quirks, you might even be able to work

at a pace required for a professional photographer. However, once you start

getting lots of images in your database, or need to start selecting groups

of images, or if you switch computers, or import your old photos, etc etc

etc. Lightroom starts to break down. And when it fails, it fails badly,

requiring force quit, ctrl-alt-deletes and going into the file system to

delete previews.

In many ways it seems to me to be an Idealist piece of software....the "this

is what a digital photographer's workshop should be software. It is not the

"these are tools to get the job done" software. Unfortunately a professional

photographer needs the latter.

Consider this:

What if canon (or nikon) released a new camera that worked the way LR did.

What if after you shot say, 30 pictures, the camera started to slow down,

eventually just choking the camera off. What if sometimes sometimes in the

middle of shooting, the camera just stopped working, with no error codes of

any sort...it just stopped. What if it required constant upgrades before it

worked...four or five versions later. Of course, you would never consider

this camera production ready.

I realize that software is software, and hardware is hardware, and that LR

faces challenges a camera would not. This comparison is apples and oranges

to some extent. But reaction from the customer should be the same...when I

buy a piece of software, it should work.

Further I've recently upgraded to a new iMac in hopes that LR would work

well on a brand new machine (my old machine was a fast PC). It does not.

I think if the hardware is the issue, Adobe should just have system

requirements on which the software will run well. I also think they should

have a "Lightroom Light" which only does import, conversion to DNG, tagging,

labeling...the database stuff. They need to address the information

overload that photographers face. Maybe they need a "catalog agent" software

that does some of the work in the background.

I think the fancy editing tools should be a separate, fully integrated

product. Maybe Lightroom Pro (or call it Photoshop!). They should all be

based on the open DNG format.

r

ps. I'd be interested in hearing from you which other asset management

software there is out there beside Lightroom and Aperture...those are the

only two that I know of.

[DavePinMinn]

The former iView Media Pro was a very good software set for doing catalog management.  It got eaten by Microsoft and became Expressions Media if I recall correctly.  I believe they've come out with a new version, but I don't think it has any massively delicious new capabilities.  It doesn't integrate as closely with Bridge and Photoshop as Lightroom, but it was fsat and had some very useful capabilities LR doesn't.

[Guest]

qoodlux7

Other asset management software I know of are Bibble 5 (which is probably less stable than Lightroom 3), Expression Media (former iViewMedia Pro, now acquired by PhaseOne), and IDImager, which is supposed to be very excellent in image management. Some professionals use Cumulus, which works also in networked environments.

Lightroom, Bibble, and Aperture are the ones, which integrate raw image editing with asset management. From these packages Lightroom is on average the most stable and best integrated one, to my experience.

I have been using iViewMedia Pro and RawShooter in my pre Lightroom time. Lightroom won me over because of its integrated approach and I switched when it became clear that RawShooter would not survive and iView got acquired by Microsoft and then nearly abandoned.

After the purchase of Expression Media by PhaseOne, we will probably see a tighter interoperability between CaptureOne and Expression Media. PhaseOne gave a statement recently that they would not integrate both programs (i.e. asset management and image editing), as Adobe did with Lightroom.

Again, I am constantly checking the more ressource hungry tools within Lightroom (brushes, spot tool etc.), but so far I can only report positive things - the operation of the tools is smooth and much better than in LR 2.x . My machine is a fairly recent i5-750 PC with 4 GB RAM and 64-bit Windows, however, the problems do not seem to correlate with hardware generation in general.

Kind regards

Thomas

[keptlight]

RAW Shooter was an excellent piece of software, so was iView Media Pro. I was very pleased that Adobe acquired RAW Shooter and incorporated many of its stgrong tools into Lightroom, then to Photoshop. In fact a good deal of Lightroom 1 was probably inspired by RAW Shooter, or directly ported from it. The notable examples are, Highlight Recovery, Vibrance, Fill Light, Clarity; and RAW Shooter was very fast. I still have RAW Shooter install files, it will be fun to install and see how much of it is still functional. For that move, I thank Adobe. Let's now ask "What would RAW Shooter do to deal with the sporadic speed degradation?"

[Mikkasa]

keptlight wrote:

"What would RAW Shooter do to deal with the sporadic speed degradation?"

I dunno, go back to supporting 3 camera bodies and slim down to a fraction of LR functionality?

iView's sell out to M$oft was a devastating blow to cutting-edge DAM and Lightroom is still, at v3, woefully short of its databasing capabilities. The perfect sellout would have been for Adobe to acquire both raw shooter and iView. Instead we got lumbered with the extremely rudimentary DB functionality of the former, AFAICS.

I'd pay double for an upgrade that let me view my library as a simple list and displayed a decent amount of metadata in the Grid module toolbar...

[Mikkasa]

Apologies to the thread police, there was an on-topic point to my last post... slowness is LR3 is largely down to increased functionality over previous versions and earlier programs. There's a payoff for all those adopted feature requests and the overhead in this release seems to have turned out bigger than the payload. Not the whole issue I'll grant you, but a big factor if you're comparing LR3 with what we all used in 2006.

You have to ask yourself: would you go back to iView and Bridge if you could? What about those two plus Dreamweaver, RIP software and some bolt-on flash slideshow?

[Guest]

Mikkasa wrote:

Apologies to the thread police, there was an on-topic point to my last post... slowness is LR3 is largely down to increased functionality over previous versions and earlier programs.

How do you know that? In my case, I can't see any of the new features slowing down the product, and existing previous showstoppers, most notably the brushes, run smoother than ever. Perspective correction, the spot tool - no delays at all. This shows, that the new features set and the new raw engine do not necessarily have an impact on performance. There are probably many people out (probably the majority), which can prove that LR3 is production ready and that LR3 is not the often cited "bloat ware". It shows that asset management and parametric image editing fit well together and is the strategy to follow.

Certainly, there are problems related to the various configurations described in this thread. But the many people here, who lash out that the developers do not have the feature set under control, that Lightroom is going to be too fat and so on, have no clue if that has anything to do with it. The many people, who do not have speed problems actually prove the opposite.

Adobe has to find the scenarios, which cause the problems and were not detected by the tests. The strange thing is that the betas did not expose the problems in many cases.

Kind regards

Thomas

[Guest]

I dunno, go back to supporting 3 camera bodies and slim down to a  fraction of LR functionality?

The point was, and still is, they would have innovated a solution as they did then with RAW Shooter when there was no product even coming close to what it did. I am including what Adobe had then, the Capture One, and other RAW conversion software available then. RS probably still lives somewhere in the right hemisphere of Lightroom.

[JayS_In_CT]

I still have RSP Pro (with added color profiles) 🙂  living on my XP machine.  It was fast, but really doesn't hold a candle to what LR does..  That said, at the time it was great...  Can't do much with it anymore (no body support), but just can't bring myself to wiping it out, ya' know?

[Guest]

JayS In CT wrote:

I still have RSP Pro (with added color profiles) 🙂  living on my XP machine.  It was fast, but really doesn't hold a candle to what LR does..  That said, at the time it was great...  Can't do much with it anymore (no body support), but just can't bring myself to wiping it out, ya' know?

Actually, we are still using RSP, it has grown into Lightroom! Simple solutions are still the best. To paraphrase Einstein "LR should be as simple as possible but not more than that." RSP achieved that, LR is losing it. LR 4 will have the proverbial kitchen sink in it! By the way, this is how Ford killed the T-Bird, it kept getting bigger and bigger .... until it no longer was a Bird. T-Rex maybe, but not T-Bird! I sure hope Lightroom does not follow on this path of adding more and more functionality until much of it does not work.

Remember the principle: "KISS!"

[JayS_In_CT]

I understand a part of your logic, but I don't know that I agree that LR is losing it.  Think about it, when LR 2.0 came out it had its issues, yet it was light years ahead of RSP in many ways.  I believe Adobe will take the right course of actions to get LR3 in line.  If I look at LR 2.7 is was everybit as fast as RSP and had TONS more functionality.  LR is not designed to be a KISS product.  If we want RAW editing only, Canon (in my case) gives one away for free.  If I wanted something a bit more "feature rich" there are other RAW processors that don't have the "import to delivery" design LR has.  In terms of bang for the buck, I'll take LR over pretty much anything out there (that is, of course, assuming Adobe does have a 3.1 already on the board...hopefully even in coding!)  🙂  All depends on what your (as a consumer) needs are.  We're all certainly free to go to some other tool out there.

Time, I think, to get off the RSP thread, or start a new "memory lane" one. 🙂  We're drifting off topic..  We all know RSP was a part of the engine, that as a standalone it ran faster, etc..  I don't see Adobe going in the other direction, e.g. a LR light... could be wrong...

Jay S.

[DavePinMinn]

I was going to say "Not to blame Adobe, but...", but I AM blaming Adobe.

I've been following this topic for the last week or so, and I keep seeing statements from people to the effect:

"I believe Adobe will take the right course of actions to get LR3 in  line."

or

"I'm confident the next update will address these performance issues"

etc., etc.....

Have ANY of you who are making these statements seen ANY OFFICIAL (or even unofficial) indication from Adobe that

a:  they're aware of the problem?

b:  they've ADMITTED this is a serious, widespread problem that requires immediate addressing?

c:  they've assigned a team/group or some SIGNIFICANT set of resources to solving the problem?

d:  they've provided some form of timeline for a correction to become available?

'cause I haven't...  And yeah, I know the mantra, "this is a user-to-user forum".  With this many angry, frustrated users

perhaps SOMEBODY that lives in a room with a door on it at Adobe MIGHT want to start paying attention...

I STILL absolutely believe that what Adobe needs is a STRONG competitor to feed them their lunch.

[Lee_Jay-ZyZk56]

davepinminn wrote:

Have ANY of you who are making these statements seen ANY OFFICIAL (or even unofficial) indication from Adobe that

a:  they're aware of the problem?

b:  they've ADMITTED this is a serious, widespread problem that requires immediate addressing?

c:  they've assigned a team/group or some SIGNIFICANT set of resources to solving the problem?

d:  they've provided some form of timeline for a correction to become available?

'cause I haven't...

Maybe you should read the threads more carefully, with specific attention on the posts from Adobe employees.

[DavePinMinn]

I think my reading comprehension is pretty good...

So, go for it..  Point me to the entry in this topic from ADOBE MANAGEMENT that officially answers the questions I asked.

And I don't think Melissa counts.  As far as I know she's a developer.  She doesn't make policy, allocate resources, or make timelines

for when we'll see a fix.

If there ARE other pertinent employees who ARE participating, point them out, especially where they've STATED that they're EMPLOYEES, and that they have something more official than individual ramblings...

I await the pointer...

[Lee_Jay-ZyZk56]

davepinminn wrote:

And I don't think Melissa counts.

You've got to be kidding.

[MelissaJ.G.]

If I'm not good enough, look for Becky and Julie in the forums too.

Granted, if I'm not good enough, no one will be. Take it as read that I have input into what happens, and know more than I can say. ( while I'm not management anymore, I am one of the leads )

-melissa

Sent from my iPhone

[DavePinMinn]

OK, then I'm wrong, and Adobe is actively involved in here, is aware of the situation, and is taking steps to fix the problems.....

[csaager]

Don't underestimate the say of developers for products like Lr. I actually

fear "official" statements, they usually indicate that they have no clue

when something will be fixed (that is for a good part the job of management)

The group might be a bit snowed with the releases of Lr3 and CS5 - there is

quite a resource conflict when you look at the credits, OTOH both product

might share a significant amout of code...

When fixing bugs you usually start on showstoppers (Action not possible,

producing wrong results, corrupting data). Performance is a "nice to have"

as long as bugs in this category exist (and by experience I know that perf

tuning is extremely time-consuming).

We might have to wait until fall to have a 3.1, perhaps even for a 3.2 until

the problems reported here will be addressed. I repeat myself, but ater the

excellent impression of the beta, I am quite disappointed with the

production version. Perhaps I got lucky in my career, but there is really

some laugh in the "it is just a small change, we don't have to test again"

that drives project managers nuts

[Wanchese West]

Amen, brudda'! The near total lack of responses from Adobe about this problem is deafening.

[DavePinMinn]

> Amen, brudda'! The near total lack of responses from Adobe about this  problem is deafening.

Nope.  Lee Jay pointed out the error of my ways........  Clearly Adobe is on it, despite not getting anything

official from management, and I'm confident we'll be getting (unofficial) word on progress any day now.  I'm

sure an updated version that'll address the performance issues encountered by the many "complainers" in

here will be shortly forthcoming.

I'd still love to know what real-world PC configurations the testers at Adobe were using.

[Lee_Jay-ZyZk56]

davepinminn wrote:

> Amen, brudda'! The near total lack of responses from Adobe about this  problem is deafening.

Nope.  Lee Jay pointed out the error of my ways........  Clearly Adobe is on it, despite not getting anything

official from management, and I'm confident we'll be getting (unofficial) word on progress any day now.

Don't count on it.  For one thing, Adobe has a pretty strict policy about pre-announcing stuff (i.e. they usually don't).  Second, Adobe is closed next week for the holiday.

[hamish niven]

goodlux7 wrote:

I strongly disagree with @hamish that 70% of LR users are quietly satisfied

and the other 30% are a vocal minority who are having issues or are clueless

or using crappy hardware. Hardly an isolated problem:

this is an apalling misquote of what I said.

You have just generalised that 30% of LR users are clueless and Adobe makes crappy software for them.

[csaager]

What is wrong being clueless?

Although used by professionals, it is also a consumer product, like MS

Office. I'd like to see the reaction if MS's support would tell the

customers: "Ah sorry, MS-office is a complicated product and we tested it

only on a handful of configurations, please recurse to some non-MS website

where a self-proclaimed experts gives you some hints to change your

OS-settings/reformat your hard-drive"

or : "you have created this file with a previous version of Word, you should

not use it with the current one".

Even real "professional only" software like the Oracle 11g RDBMS manages

better (=easier) to perform upgrades and autotunes to the environment and

usage profile (as does any decent computer game). They also come with a

documentation, so that users with extreme requirements aren't left in the

cold.

My machine runs Lr3 now correctly, as long as I don't touch the perspective

control - if this had been in the beta Adobe would have gathered feedback on

that, thus I think that the beta was just a teaser and this really annoys

me.

If I had installed the trial after the beta I wouldn't have bought it, si it

is in Adobe's best interest to fix the issues mentioned here

[Mikkasa]

davepinminn wrote:

>A lot of my positive experiences with LR3 could well be down to 'good  practice' in my workflow, wide awareness of how to optimise performance,  etc. >Without that, I can see how easy it would be to become one of the  30%.

Sounds like we've got some things to learn from you.  Can you specifically detail your "good practice" and "awareness of how to optimise performance" so that some of the 30% can take advantage of your knowledge and skills to improve their experience?

While I'd love to spell out exactly how I work with LR and why it works for me (genuinely... I'm an inveterate rant bore) I'm afraid I'd end up producing a medium-sized treatise on digital asset management. I'm sure there's a novel in me somewhere, but this definitely isn't it

I have no more idea about other people's workflow than you have of mine, but my guess is that many newcomers expect LR to fly clean out of the box, which it patently can not do. What's more, looking at rendering and access requirements for larger catalogs, I don't think it ever will. Faster hardware only ever generates hungrier software and more demanding end users... when you consider that the average user preview DB is probably ~20gb linked to a half-terabyte asset base, it's a modern miracle it's as fast as it is. And IME it IS as fast as Aperture et al when you optimise it.

Performance-wise, I've already outlined here on several occasions stuff I suspected was causing bottlenecks and r/w issues. Happily they seem to have worked for some people. These techniques are nothing new, in fact were recommendations for LR2 that happen to be even more pertinent to LR3. I suppose the one thing have learned since LR3 release – again, relevant in v2 but a bigger issue with 3 – is to approach big, global changes in smaller, more manageable chunks. The latest release clearly has memory addressing issues and the harder you push it, the sooner it will close down on you.

FWIW, here once again is the LR2-related blog post I live my LR life by: http://www.lightroomqueen.com/blog/2009/05/02/hurry-up-lightroom-the-best-speed-tips/ You need to read it before importing a single file, ideally. It's so important, why it isn't a Read Me file accompanying the installer... well, only Adobe can tell you.

Until they do tell us something, or release an update (more likely) I don't think theres anything else worth saying.

[Guest]

I am running the following hardware/software:

Intel i7-980 Extreme Edition 6-core CPU

12 GB Corsair Dominator RAM

2x 1 TB HD

1 GB VRAM ATI chipset video card

Windows 7 64-Bit OS

Lightroom 64-Bit

In the catalog I am using there are 28 photographs, that's it.

My complaint about the slowness is not about rendering, but actually working on the image. The software currently is absolutely unusable. Here is why:

1. In the Gallery view, I can zoom in and out no problem but in the Develop module it takes unusually long

2. Spot healing brush is impossible to use as it responds with 4-5 second delays and jumps around

3. Ditto for the Gradient Fill tool

4. When zoomed in in the Develop module, moving the image on the screen with the Hand tool has several seconds delay

I increased the Camera RAW Cache size from what it was set at, 1GB to 10GB which I believe should be plenty for 28 images. That made a small change in performance, but I will keep watching. Incidentally, LR3 ran better on my older 32-bit box, Windows XP, 4GB RAM. I never touched the cache size and everything was much, much better than what I am experiencing on teh 64-bit platform. Is it possible that this slowness is a 64-bit issue? Constantly watching the configuration parameters to eek out a decent performance is not very encouraging for me.