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

[Mvox]

Yes they do seem a bit uninvolved Rob, that's really what prompted my post initially. This whole thing highlights a different principle and that's the thing that is bothering me the most, the assumption that we will help out. I'm not averse to that, I offered my suggestions when LR1 came out, new release, bit rickety, fair enough, but there comes a time, ( and I suspect this is the way it will go some more given the economic climate), when the principle of the purchaser of a product helping to make that product work after it has been introduced to the marketplace is a contradiction and really it's employing the purchaser, at no cost to the vendor to help solve problems that should have been sorted before release. This is version 3 after all, not some early roll-out. I mean if you bought a car, or a toaster, you wouldn't expect to be liasing with the manufacturer to help make the brakes work or get a nice crust on your toast.

I didn't know you could get a refund goodlux and while that is tempting and I think in any other situation I would have taken it already and been gone from here, unfortunately I like using Lightroom and I'm actually a commited user, despite appearances. In fact I have an example of a version that works perfectly, 2.7, which makes this all the more frustrating. (11/2 seconds to load and render from thumbnail, v2.7 , 7 seconds plus in v3.0 and don't mention the sliders, or changing modules...). So like some others here I'll have to sit and wait until the problems are solved. Although having said that, if all the users who have problems were to suddenly request refunds, instead of being patient or trying to institute workarounds, that would wake Adobe up a bit more. A financial incentive is always effective with corporations like this, but that won't happen. If it were a car or a toaster it would though..

For reasons of history and evolution this type of product doesn't seem to have the same kind of attitude given it by its users like you would find with a more physical item. There's a lot of leeway handed out just because it's software and the companies take avantage of that as if we are all on the same team, a hangover from the days when the techies ran the show, (and I emember in the early days they were even reluctant to build a functional GUI into their software, so that non-techies could actually use those programs), but this is a product, sold by a company in business to sell products, as simple as that...how is it we fit in? Is it trading on some vicarious ego boost so one can say "yea, I helped the developers...I worked on that product.." or cultivating this strange loyalty one often finds nowadays, to a company when one is not even employed by them. It's worth mentioning that in all the years Adobe has been selling software, this is the first product where they have actually consulted the end user, now what was the real motivation there? To please the customer or save a bit of money?

I noticed someone made an appeal not to have a go at the programmers, far from it, I'm not having a go at anybody, including people in this thread or indeed Adobe, to me they're just another company that generally make good, usable software looking for their profit.

I'm just saying it like I see it and I don't flatter myself that I may be absolutely right, but if I'm expected to "help out" then I also have a right to express an opinion. But really, the days when something like this is accepted should be long gone.

I'm sure it's all very complicated and that they're working hard to solve this and so the programmers have my greatest sympathy, after all they are the ones under pressure to produce and ship product as soon as they can and sometimes, as it appears in this case, before it's ready.

Anyway, I've gone on way too long and as someone said, the people who actually matter will never read this, so I'm just wittering on into the ether about something no-one really gives a toss about when it comes down to it. I imagine sometime around version 3.5 this will all be forgotten and we can get on with processing our images, (at a reasonable speed...).

M.

[JayS_In_CT]

Mvox,

The only aspect I'm going to differ with your good post is just not to sit back until a 3.5 comes around.  Just my opinion, but if folks don't actively try to get their problems into the Adobe reporting system with the symptoms and as much info as they can... well it's somewhat complaining about the person in a political but you didn't vote in the election. 

It's a lot easier to assume Adobe is reading all these posts, but despite the best efforts of a few employees, this can't be the only source of data for them (Adobe).  If folks want to see it get better before 3.5, then at least try to write up what the issues are you are experiencing.  I know I'm harping on this point, but as a former sofrware developer, nothing irked us more than complaints about why something wasn't fixed when the person asking never called in the issue.  We just can't assume Adobe has all the info, or all the issues identified.  I'm not meaning to pick on your post, as I've made this comment before, so no disrespect intended.

Jay S.

[getho]

Also having been invloved in software development I know that bug elimination is about removing the variables:

It would be very useful if the adobe engineers could tell us what they need to know

Is the issue ubiquitous?

Does it only occur with certain combinations of hardware/OS environment?

Could we please get figures from optimised systems from adobe?  What is a usual preview creation time for a 15MP DNG etc etc - that way we know whether our systems have problems or whether it is a "feature"

And it would be usefull to find out how widespread the problem is.

I imagine for every particpant here there are 5 more that aren't and another 5 that have downloaded the trial and rejected the software as too slow.

I want to say again that LR3 is awesome. I think the engineers have done a great job. I hope they see us participants as a resource, not a big pain in the arse.

[goodlux7]

I don't think it should be up to the end users to report problems,

especially when they are so blatantly obvious. That's what beta-testers are

for. They had plenty of warning while the product was still in beta to know

that it wasn't up to snuff.

This is a perfect opportunity to vote with your dollars. If the software

isn't working, get a refund, and wait until they fix it before you pay for

it again.

[Agnus1]

goodlux7,

I don't think that the testers of Lightroom 3 beta had the problems that folks are experiencing with the released 3.0. At least I didn't hear about them. I was so excited that 3.0 was finally out of beta and available for purchase that I bought it the first day it was available for purchase. The beta testers for the most part were singing high praises for everything Lightroom 3.0.

I am one of those folks with a newer computer with high specs and problems with Lightroom 3.0. I've filed my bug report to Adobe. I wonder if I'll hear anything from them?

[dpick2]

Agnus1 wrote:

goodlux7,

I don't think that the testers of Lightroom 3 beta had the problems that folks are experiencing with the released 3.0. At least I didn't hear about them. I was so excited that 3.0 was finally out of beta and available for purchase that I bought it the first day it was available for purchase. The beta testers for the most part were singing high praises for everything Lightroom 3.0.

I beta tested, and in the beta forum there were many people saying the app had performance issues.  Most thought, optimistically in hindsight, that it would be optimized by final release.  Personally, I saw the same issues with the beta that I experience now, and I wrote as much in the forums.  No way did I believe it would be released without improvement.  I was mistaken.

All in all, however, I would not go back to LR2.*  I shoot with available light/fill flash as much as possible.  The improvements in noise reduction are extremely useful and appreciated enough to outweigh the issues.

[Gary_Rowe]

I'm pretty sure that the decision-makers in Adobe don't read these forums, but what *will* be passed back up to them in regular status reports is the number of outstanfing issues with the product, and the priorities attached to them. Therefore, it is *critical* that the problems found with LR3 are formally reported to Adobe and so entered into their bug-tracking system, so that the official status of the LR3 product development accurately reflects the level of problems being experienced.

We are a user<>user forum, lucky to get comments from insiders, but that's all. Unless our problems are in their system officially, they don't really exist, and even if this thread reaches 2000 posts that's still of no relevance to the nitty-gritty managing of resources to address the official problems, and getting the official issue-log cleared.

So - send full details of your Issue (and system info) to Adobe at

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

so that the stats back up our feelings

Gary

[JayS_In_CT]

Gary=Rowe wrote:

I'm pretty sure that the decision-makers in Adobe don't read these forums, but what *will* be passed back up to them in regular status reports is the number of outstanfing issues with the product, and the priorities attached to them. Therefore, it is *critical* that the problems found with LR3 are formally reported to Adobe and so entered into their bug-tracking system, so that the official status of the LR3 product development accurately reflects the level of problems being experienced.

We are a user<>user forum, lucky to get comments from insiders, but that's all. Unless our problems are in their system officially, they don't really exist, and even if this thread reaches 2000 posts that's still of no relevance to the nitty-gritty managing of resources to address the official problems, and getting the official issue-log cleared.

So - send full details of your Issue (and system info) to Adobe at

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

so that the stats back up our feelings

Gary

+1 to Gary for this post, and that's about the 10th time the reporting link has been posted in this thread.    Also, someone asked about what should be in the content.  When Dan Tull was on vacation, I copied a request he made and posted it in this thread.

http://forums.adobe.com/message/2979752#2979752

Outlines some of the issues he has been able to extract as well as what to report.

Jay S.

[Lee_Jay-ZyZk56]

Gary=Rowe wrote:

I'm pretty sure that the decision-makers in Adobe don't read these forums,...

Melissa said above, "Not to mention every post on this thread comes into the email box of at least 3 of us."

Getting this information to her (and Dan Tull, and whoever else on the team she was referring to) means it's getting where it needs to get.  The problem is getting the right information to them.  They have a very hard time fixing stuff they can't replicate in-house, and it's not easy figuring out just exactly what are the crucial elements to a particular unfriendly behavior from the application.

[JayS_In_CT]

Lee Jay wrote:

Gary=Rowe wrote:

I'm pretty sure that the decision-makers in Adobe don't read these forums,...

Melissa said above, "Not to mention every post on this thread comes into the email box of at least 3 of us."

Getting this information to her (and Dan Tull, and whoever else on the team she was referring to) means it's getting where it needs to get.  The problem is getting the right information to them.  They have a very hard time fixing stuff they can't replicate in-house, and it's not easy figuring out just exactly what are the crucial elements to a particular unfriendly behavior from the application.

Agreed Lee Jay..  the problem with that route is the amount of data coming to them and the ability to sort it all out.  Going the support link route formalizes it more than what Melissa and Dan (despite all their efforts) can do.  I don't know that reading these forums is their full time job, maybe, but still a huge volume coming to them.. and you're also right about getting the "right" information in, regardless of which avenue you choose.

Jay S.

[goodlux7]

Done. Thanks for the link.

[JayS_In_CT]

goodlux7 wrote:

I don't think it should be up to the end users to report problems,

especially when they are so blatantly obvious. That's what beta-testers are

for. They had plenty of warning while the product was still in beta to know

that it wasn't up to snuff.

This is a perfect opportunity to vote with your dollars. If the software

isn't working, get a refund, and wait until they fix it before you pay for

it again.

Goodlux7,

I'm not about letting Adobe off for some of the errors that seem to be in LR3, that said, bug reporting is a pretty standard practice in the software industry, from end user applications to middle tier servers to high end mainframes.  The level of errors being reported is inherently proportional to the complexity of what the application is providing.  If end users did not report issues, problems that they encounter in their particular environment (whatever the root cause) would never surface.  It's also true for errors that appear to be so superficial that you would think it would be caught by a day one programmer.  The reality is it happens.  Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, etc., etc., etc. do not have the resources to have all the combinations of hardware and software that we all do.  In that mix, things break.. and in the end, if you want your configuration to be one that gets noticed, then the only recourse is to at least make sure it is on the radar screen.  You can certainly take your alternative method, but it won't make the software vendor find or solve your problem any faster.

Jay S.

[goodlux7]

You can get a refund. Just call in and tell them what is going on

[PhotoGAP]

Mvox - your rant pretty much sums it up for me too. I haven't posted anything about my slow issues with LR3, until now, mainly because everyone else has pretty much covered the issue. I'm running a new Dell win7 64 i7 12GB system that's not out of line with what others have already reported. For the moment, I've pretty much tabled LR3 and the various projects I've been working on. Unlike others, I'm lucky I don't have to make any deliveries to paying clients, so I can afford to be patient.

[Guest]

I'm having the problem too, ever since upgrading from v2.  General editing is very slow - when painting with the adjustment brush, my changes often take a few seconds to show up.  Changing sliders is also slow.  Just now, I was only running Lightroom (using 2.25GB RAM), Pandora, and Activity Monitor - had lots of free RAM and only processor usage was when making adjustments (around 300%)

I am running a brand new Mac:

17" MacBook Pro 6,1

2.66 GHz Core i7

8GB RAM

7200 RPM HDD

[TRCML]

Having solved the keywording slowness I mentioned earlier and having checked whether there are any of the other problems mentioned on this thread, the answer is they're not. So I'm now working on the assumption that I have a fully working copy of LR3 (upgrade). (I think I'm right in thinking there's no software difference between LR3 and the LR3 upgrade. The only difference is price and how much profit Adobe are making out of it, which I don't begrudge because I like Adobe's products.) This could be tempting providence but this is what I've done and which may help others.

Re the keywording problem, I optimised the catalogue, backed-up and reopened the catalogue. However, doing that often was not ideal so then I split the size of the catalogue into two: instead of having over 5500 images in one catalogue, I extracted about 1000 and created a new catalogue for them. (For my use, the number is related to the image theme, not the number of images in total.)

To create the new catalogue, I selected the images and exported them as a catalog. I also exported the keywords for that second catalogue to a separate renamed keyword file. Finding with the new catalogue I was not experiencing keyword delays, I wondered whether the problem might be catalogue related, so I selected all the photos from the old catalogue (created with LR2) and exported them to a new catalogue with a different name, also the keywords, again in a new name file. I already had back-ups of the old catalogues on an external HD. Having backed up the new catalogues and saved copies on an external HD, I then deleted the old catalogue and its keyword file.

The net result is that i have two separate catalogues, one containing about 1000 images, and the other about 4500 images and everything seems to be working as it should. I have LR3 on another iMac (running on an obsolete specification with old 3GB) for another photo collection of about 8000 images so I'm expected what I've achieved on this iMac to work there as well.

iMac OSX 10.6.4

2.8 Ghz Intel Core i7

16 GB 1067 Mhz DDR3

PS - According to Scott Kelby's LR3 book, LR3's performance can get slow when you've thousands of images but my definition of thousands is many more than I have, but that may be wrong. Also, I've read elsewhere that the ideal RAM for LR3 is 4GB for itself because LR is memory-hungry. I don't understand much about the technicalities but it's one reason I got 16 GB for my iMac. In my experience, such as it it is, software can get slow for two reasons: either it's fighting for memory and losing the battle, or the OS needs a spring-clean. I use Mac Janitor regularly. When things get slow, I find starting again from scratch can be the answer which is basically what I've done here and so far it seems to have done the trick.

[dpick2]

I have never had major issues with Adobe releases, but LR3 is troublesome.  My major issue is with the delay when moving the sliders in Develope.  I move a slider, then move it again thinking the image hasn't been effected much, then the first move shows up.  This delay drives me nuts.  I can deal with the four second delay for the image to fully render (I don't like it, but I can live with it), but the slider delay drives me nuts.

I love the new functionality--especially the noise reduction--but I truly hope the performance is improved.

Specs:

Win7 x64

6600 quad core (running @ 3.2ghz)

8 gigs ram

8800 Nvidia Vid card

24" monitor

[JayS_In_CT]

dpick2 wrote:

I have never had major issues with Adobe releases, but LR3 is troublesome.  My major issue is with the delay when moving the sliders in Develope.  I move a slider, then move it again thinking the image hasn't been effected much, then the first move shows up.  This delay drives me nuts.  I can deal with the four second delay for the image to fully render (I don't like it, but I can live with it), but the slider delay drives me nuts.

I love the new functionality--especially the noise reduction--but I truly hope the performance is improved.

Specs:

Win7 x64

6600 quad core (running @ 3.2ghz)

8 gigs ram

8800 Nvidia Vid card

24" monitor

What resolution are you running at, and have you tried to shrink the screen down some?  Some folks have reported it helping.

Jay S.

[dpick2]

JayS In CT wrote:

dpick2 wrote:

I have never had major issues with Adobe releases, but LR3 is troublesome.  My major issue is with the delay when moving the sliders in Develope.  I move a slider, then move it again thinking the image hasn't been effected much, then the first move shows up.  This delay drives me nuts.  I can deal with the four second delay for the image to fully render (I don't like it, but I can live with it), but the slider delay drives me nuts.

I love the new functionality--especially the noise reduction--but I truly hope the performance is improved.

Specs:

Win7 x64

6600 quad core (running @ 3.2ghz)

8 gigs ram

8800 Nvidia Vid card

24" monitor

What resolution are you running at, and have you tried to shrink the screen down some?  Some folks have reported it helping.

Jay S.

Thanks, Jay.  Resolution is 1900x1200.  I have made the image area smaller, and that has helped.   Frustrating, though, because I have a very nice large, monitor for these increasingly older eyes...

Dan

[JayS_In_CT]

dpick2 wrote:

JayS In CT wrote:

dpick2 wrote:

I have never had major issues with Adobe releases, but LR3 is troublesome.  My major issue is with the delay when moving the sliders in Develope.  I move a slider, then move it again thinking the image hasn't been effected much, then the first move shows up.  This delay drives me nuts.  I can deal with the four second delay for the image to fully render (I don't like it, but I can live with it), but the slider delay drives me nuts.

I love the new functionality--especially the noise reduction--but I truly hope the performance is improved.

Specs:

Win7 x64

6600 quad core (running @ 3.2ghz)

8 gigs ram

8800 Nvidia Vid card

24" monitor

What resolution are you running at, and have you tried to shrink the screen down some?  Some folks have reported it helping.

Jay S.

Thanks, Jay.  Resolution is 1900x1200.  I have made the image area smaller, and that has helped.   Frustrating, though, because I have a very nice large, monitor for these increasingly older eyes...

Dan

Dan,

Look at my last entry in the LR3 Slow Rendering thread, or just hide the left and top panels in develop, and go back to full screen with LR3.  See if that works.  I have a 24" Dell hooked up to my Macbook Pro, and amazingly last night, putting those two panels into hide mode allowed me to go back to full size on the image windows in fit mode and not have the rendering issues.  Makes no sense to me, but it is working here.  Having the left and top panels in hide mode makes a nice viewing are (landscape) in fill mode as well.

Jay S.

[Guest]

To the active "leaders" of this thread:

    I have not submitted a post to this thread for a few weeks but I have been reading all the posts.

    You may remember that I am a retired software developer and ex CEO of a software development company and I have the following observation:

    A problem here is that the vast majority of visitors to this thread are having a problem with 3.0 or they wouldn't be here.  What percentage of visitors to this forum do they represent?

    Why don't one of you "leaders' (and you know who you are) start a survey in a new thread that addresses the experiences of all, to wit:

  What is your experience with the performance of Lightroom 3.0 - pick a number:

         10 - Much faster than 2.x 

           7 - Faster than 2.x

           5 - Same as 2.x

           3 - Slower than 2.x

           1. - Much slower than 2.x.

           0. - So slow as to be almost unusable

   My experience on a high end well balanced system with best of breed components is somewhere equal to or North of a 7.  Before I discovered that my CPU was overheating and throttled back to half its rated speed, it was more like a 1 or 2. That level of performance led me to this forum.  I have outlined my experience several times but not lately.  I have suggested several times that someone should start a thread that quantifies the configrations involved with users experiencing this problem - to no avail apparantly.  Maybe this suggestion will find some traction.

   This thread has focused on anecdotal experience of a subset of 3.0 users that are in trouble and not the general user. As such it does not provide a quantification of the overall experience of the general community.  What is that experience?  Not even the regulars in this thread can answer that question, how can you expect Adobe to answer it?

    This thread has had 36,230 posts by 726 people.  What does that tell Adobe about a product no doubt installed on tens of thousands of systems?

    You guys should start such a survey.

Best regards,

Sherlocc

[DanTull]

You guys should start such a survey.

I've been voicing the same thought internally. I'd have a couple more questions, but I'd want to keep it very short to avoid any friction against participation.

DT

[Guest]

DanTull wrote:

You guys should start such a survey.

I've been voicing the same thought internally. I'd have a couple more questions, but I'd want to keep it very short to avoid any friction against participation.

DT

  Dan's response tells me that we may be on to something. 

   Why would he be voicing the "same thought internally", if he didn't feel that he needed help getting Adobe management attention to the issue of this thread?   Now, obviously, Dan can't admit anything along these lines, being an Adobe employee, but the point is that we can't just lambast Adobe, without recognizing the responsibilities we have as a user community.

    Adobe management has to allocate resources just like any other business, if they are having trouble replicating this problem internally then all the brickbats thrown by this forum are meaningless rants. If we, as a forum, can show that a large majority of at least this community are facing a serious problem, then Adobe might just begin to really understand that they have a problem worthy of priority attention.

    If this is just a problem voiced by 726 bleeding edge users out of tens of thousands, how can we expect them to place it at the same level as overt functional failures in 3.0 - or development of fixes to known problems for future releases?

    Dan and Melissa need the help of this forum, and not just the un-quantified anecdotal evidence of this thread.

Best regards,

Sherlocc

[DanTull]

I want the data as much as anything for my own prioritization and understanding. To understand with a better empirical basis how big these issue are across the user base, how it correlates with (very roughly) machine configuration and area of the app, etc.

This thread has provided a lot of clues, a bit of data, and a lot of chatter (speculation, rants, forum feature help, etc). What it is very short on is a more solid statistical sense of the breadth and specificity of the problem. Even a survey is going to suffer from a great deal of participation bias, but it should be one step more structured and thus informative in direct proportion to how effectively the survey manages to reach a representative sample of Lightroom 3 users as a whole.

That is, don't read in too much, I'm just a scientific sort, so I want to make sure we're looking at things right.

DT

[Guest]

Dan, please don't take this the wrong way, cuz I'm just asking.....If Adobe really wanted to get as broad a response as possible, why couldn't a survey be sent out to all registered users....surely that would hit more than those who are just on this forum, and would give you a chance to get a response from users who aren't having any issues and collect data on what systems they are using - perhaps knowing what IS working would be as much help as just hearing from those of us who are having problems....

just my .02...