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

[Guest]

TK2142 wrote:

tgutgu wrote:

I think with LR 3 we are scratching the current limits for the possibilities of parametric editing, given current hardware setups.

I don't think so. With the way things are implemented in LR3 we might be scratching the current limits, but in no way does that define an upper limit in general. You indicated that you work in the software industry yourself, so you should know that there is no reason as to why an increasing number of edits should have an impact on the interactiveness of using the tools (as long as one stays at the same resolution).

Have you had a look at Bibble 5? It supports localised edits of all image manipulation parameters (not just a subset as LR does) with regions being brushable but also definable by polygons. There is way better support for patching/cloning. Bibble 5 takes parametric editing a few steps further than LR and is not slow at all.

tgutgu wrote:

Also the slight progressive degradation in performance when using multiple instances of localized edits indicates the same.

Initial renderings and resolution changes will take longer for sure, but please explain why you think that the progressive performance degradation in tool interactiveness cannot be avoided.

tgutgu wrote:

It can be argued that if you need to define 40+ brushes to tweak an image and 50 spot tools of small to large sizes to heal and clone something, a parametric editor is currently not the right tool for it and that such edits are better placed within Photoshop or any other pixel editor.

In which case it could be argued that there is little justification for LR. Why not use Faststone if more than trivial editing is the job of a pixel editor anyhow? I'd think it would be a poor positioning of LR if it were meant to allow some light editing but not too much please. As if you had to switch your mailer whenever you wanted to write a longer than usual email.

One cannot expect a heavily edited image to load as fast as an unedited one, but I don't think anyone expects that. It is too early, AFAIC, to say LR has hit the limits of the possible.

Localized edits are differently handled and implemented in Bibble and Lightroom. In Lightroom the editing effect is visible as you paint, whereas in Bibble the editing effect appears after you finished painting or drawing the region - with a delay (around 0.3 to 0.5 seconds). There are also delays when adding nodes to polygons, nothing too nasty, but they exist. Bibble certainly has the lead in localized edits, providing more methods to define an edited region. The two methods are hardly to compare and have to deal with two very different raw engines. The Lightroom spot tool searches intelligently for the best area to clone from (which may take time to process), whereas Bibble always go to 45 degrees. In Bibble clone objects are limited up to 11 polygons and 30 circles (reason?). Brushes in Lightroom are combined with an automask feature (takes time to process?), which Bibble does not have. Anyway, both programs show delays, which could indicate limits.

In general, I think that Bibble took a better approach to local edits by transferring a layer concepts to a parametric editor (actually LightZone invented this), but that is for another topic.

Thomas

[TK2142]

tgutgu wrote:

Localized edits are differently handled and implemented in Bibble and Lightroom. [...] In Bibble clone objects are limited up to 11 polygons and 30 circles (reason?). [...] Anyway, both programs show delays, which could indicate limits.

Thomas, I appreciate a lot of the points you made and largely agree. Bibble probably puts a limit on the edits in order to put a cap on rendering delays. I understand speed is their selling point so by enforcing a limit they are ensuring a minimum high renderings speed. Not the approach that I prefer. I'd rather wait for LR to finish rendering. If I went crazy with edits, I asked for it, didn't I?

I'm not sure which Bibble editing delays you are referring to that could indicate limits but in any event I'm unconvinced that a limit has been reached.

tgutgu wrote:

In general, I think that Bibble took a better approach to local edits by transferring a layer concepts to a parametric editor (actually LightZone invented this), but that is for another topic.

I like that Bibble's localised edit tools are just mask creation tools and don't limit what effects they may have. I'm not sure I agree with you on the layer's concept. LR's approach which could be called "implicit layers" is quite clever, I think. The pins are basically representatives for layers but you never really have to explicitly deal with layers. LR's approach shows that you actually don't really need an explicit layer concept unless you wanted to group a number of masks so that they share a common set of adjustments. Sometimes that can be handy but that need doesn't pop up too often, right? An approach that would let you get away with creating layers implicitly (not even seeing them) and using them if you needed them would be ideal. The way Bibble forces you to create a layer before you can make an edit is silly. It should just create the first layer automatically whenever the user attempts to apply an edit.

[JayS_In_CT]

Lee Jay wrote:

ChBr02 wrote:

Also exporting is still way slower than LR 2.7.

It's going to be.  That's the price for improved sharpening and NR.

ChBr02,

You should report you export timings and issues.  I've opened a ticket with Adobe and they are looking at it.  Lee Jay is correct that some amount can be attributed to the 2010 Process and to Lens Correction, if used.  In my case, I found that export was excessively longer than 2.7 and that Lens Correction was adding the bigger time slice.  I've also captured the data that was provided earlier (last page or page before) from a forum user using a medium format camera and provided that to Adobe.

So while there will be an increase, it isn't supposed to be excessive I'm being told.

Jay S.

[Guest]

ChBr02 wrote:

@bob frost

"Isn't this a graphics card problem? I suspect a lot of so-called LR problems are really problems with graphics cards and drivers."

This sounds somewhat reasonable, and in some cases may be possible.  However, there are two sets of users with no changes between upgrades that tend to discount that is always the problem:

1) LR 2.7 had acceptable performance  -  LR 3.0 Beta was as fast or faster  -  LR 3.0 was seriously slower  -  LR 3.0RC1 was still slow

2) LR 2.7 had acceptable performance  -  LR 3.0 Beta was as fast or faster  -  LR 3.0 was seriously slower  -  LR 3.0RC1 was faster than LR 3.0

3) LR 2.7 had good performance - LR 3.0 beta had similar performance - LR 3.0 was faster than the beta - LR 3.0 RC1 is faster than LR 3.0 (all subjective impressions)

ChBr02 wrote:

I understand that the combinatorial possibilities of different environments makes diagnoses & anticipation of problems very difficult.  However, that is why you don't make significant changes to a beta build that has been thoroughly tested when you release a production build.

You imply something for the beta, what the beta probably never was. Adobe has stated mainly that the first beta was to get feedback on the new raw processing engine and some comments on the features in general. Additionally, it was to lock existing customers into version 3, therefore the quality of the betas was so good that, although not feature complete, many people used the betas already for production work. The second beta was out to show the video features. I would doubt that it was ever planned to use this as part of the internal release process. These public betas have - apart from feedback, and issue reporting - also a lot of marketing aspects. Adobe - while the competition was already out - wanted to show, that they are working on it, and what major stuff will be coming (the new raw engine). Other stuff, such as lens corrections, was hold back from the public for business competition reasons, and to create the always required hype for the release date. That is normal and the issues here not gonna change that.

Thomas

[JayS_In_CT]

bob frost wrote:

JayS In CT wrote:

One thing I notice about Thomas' system is that he is running at a lower screen resolution than where some known problems exist.  Many have noticed that making LR a smaller window enhances performance anyway, but in particular, there are some rendering issues on some systems running at 1920x1200 and above.

It is simple enough to try..  Make the LR window smaller by either resizing the entire LR application or by making the side panels larger, etc.  Anything that will shrink down the space in which the image is drawn.

Jay S.

.................................

Isn't this a graphics card problem? I suspect a lot of so-called LR problems are really problems with graphics cards and drivers.

Bob F.

Bob,

In some cases yes, but I don't think that the issues we're seeing regarding higher res. screens, e,g, LR3 Slow Rendering thread  ..  where the image just gets stuck in a quasi-rendered mode  (Adobe has been able to reproduce in house) are representative of those kinds of issues.  Aside from that, the intergrated graphics in my Macbook Pro has been fine for just about every Adobe product, so again, this seems to be more of a bug than an incompatibility.   I (and lots of others) have always been able to run LR at 1920x1200 without any problems.  In fact I still can, as long as I did try to use Fit mode in a "certain" size window.  If you read through that thread, you'll see some of the pecularities around this one, and why some folks are making the window smaller.

Jay S.

[Guest]

ChBr02 wrote:

@Thomas

Wow!  Your system doesn't look all that hot, and 3.0 is still faster than 2.7?  What attracted you to this particular forum?

You said that sliders were responsive enough.  Specifically, do sliders, adjustment brushes, etc. work faster than 2.7?  LR 2.7 sliders worked just about instantaneous for me, so I would be happy to get at least as good performance in 3.0.

I follow this thread regularly, because it is not only worth to report problems but also to confirm configurations, where LR 3 actually works as advertised. The problem with comparing to an older version is, that you can't compare side by side, because you don't have the older version installed. So all my statements are based on memory not by measurements.

So I do feel that rendering and switching between modules has actually improved and that the slider work about instantaneously in my case.

The fact that everything goes well could be, that I made a clean install after switching to Windows 7 64-bit, that I used the drivers which were installed on my system by the manufacturer (no nVidia drivers), that my images are stored on a fast eSATA harddrive, that I have the catalog on a different local drive - I don't know.

What I know is that I did not convert an existing LR2 catalog to LR3. I reorganized my image storage from the scatch with a heavy renaming scheme (all done with ImageIngester Pro) and imported everything into a fresh catalog. Metadata and edits were preserved due to the existing xmp sidecar files.

Kind regards

Thomas

[Guest]

See these two links:

Application support for multiple CPU cores:

http://macperformanceguide.com/Optimizing-Grades.html

Optimizing Adobe Lightroom:

http://macperformanceguide.com/Optimizing-Lightroom.html

The article points out certain things you can do to increase Lightroom's CPU utilization and therefore increase performance.

The point is that even the latest versions, Lightroom 3 and Lightroom 3.2 RC1, don't make the best use of a multi-core processor. The issue lies in the software codes. We could all collectively ask Adobe to better optimize the code for multi-core processors.

I am however happy to see that Adobe has partially fixed the memory leak (?) issues. Lightroom no longer hogs every ounce of my system's RAM.

Here are some suggestions while you wait for Lightroom to work:

listen to music

watch youtube videos

get out of chair, walk around and stretch

cook up a snack

BTW I am running my Lightroom Catalog from RAID 1 external hard drives via eSATA and FW800.

If you happen to have a iMac 27" this eSATA upgrade/hack may help you:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/turnkey/iMac_2010_27

[ChBr02]

@LRbeta91

Thanks for the info, but I have Windows systems.  My catalogs are on an internal Raid 1 with WD Raptors (10K).  I have external eSATA and FW800 drives as well.

It is a little disturbing to me that LR 3.0 doesn't use multi-core very well.  I wonder what % of LR users are still using single core systems???

[Odin1]

Hi I have a Dell workstation with two 2.83 quad core xeons now with 8 gb of ram and is OK not superfast but remember LR is designed to access raw files and jpegs may have an effect.

What you need to do is tell LR to render all photographs with standard previews - mine is sent to medium - and then select all photographs and run through the complete file the first time you convert from one version to another and then LR will know where all of the data is then it will run a lot faster.

With 16000 separate files thats a lot of data to access and it may seem slow but even if you have sata 2 thats lots of files to find if the sequences are not already in cache on your hd.

Hope this helps!

[ChBr02]

@odin1

"What you need to do is tell LR to render all photographs with standard previews - mine is sent to medium - and then select all photographs and run through the complete file the first time you convert from one version to another and then LR will know where all of the data is then it will run a lot faster."

I have done that to no avail.  Was this problem prevalent as well in converting from 2.6 to 2.7?

[Odin1]

No, I must confess that I have not experienced any issues with slow running but

maybe I never expected it to be quicker than it is.

[ChBr02]

Am I the only one?  My head is spinning with all this discussion about opening TIFF's, DNGs, RAWs, JPEGs, 16bit, 8bit, etc. in Photoshop, AND trying to relate how this has anything to do with resolving why Lightroom 3.0 & Lightroom 3.2RC1 is slower than Lightroom 2.7 in an apples to apples comparison.

It is obvious that Adobe falsely advertised that LR 3.0 was faster than previous versions.  Some on here have given hints as to how we can overcome the slowness of LR 3.0 / LR 3.2RC1.  Some of these hints have helped me personally even though they didn't totally resolve the issue. 

Shouldn't all this stuff about how to open & which file types to use in Photoshop CS3/CS4/CS5 be on another forum, or I am just too dense to understand how all this esoteric (to me) discussion will help me regain the speed I had in LR 2.7?

[JayS_In_CT]

ChBr02 wrote:

Am I the only one?  My head is spinning with all this discussion about opening TIFF's, DNGs, RAWs, JPEGs, 16bit, 8bit, etc. in Photoshop, AND trying to relate how this has anything to do with resolving why Lightroom 3.0 & Lightroom 3.2RC1 is slower than Lightroom 2.7 in an apples to apples comparison.

It is obvious that Adobe falsely advertised that LR 3.0 was faster than previous versions.  Some on here have given hints as to how we can overcome the slowness of LR 3.0 / LR 3.2RC1.  Some of these hints have helped me personally even though they didn't totally resolve the issue. 

Shouldn't all this stuff about how to open & which file types to use in Photoshop CS3/CS4/CS5 be on another forum, or I am just too dense to understand how all this esoteric (to me) discussion will help me regain the speed I had in LR 2.7?

ChBr02,

This recent discussion about different formats does have a bearing on working quicker and is related to a problem I reported to Adobe formally.  In my case, I need to get my export times down on large groupings of files.  It turns out that DNG (if you are going on to work Photoshop) works a lot faster and smoother than exporting to JPEG or TIFF out of LR.  There are also direct linkages between LR and CS3 - CS5, so there is relavence.  All that said, like a lot of folks, I feel some of the same sting you do about parts of LR not fixed yet, or in some cases things feel a bit in limbo.  We may have drifted off topic about about how much each format retains of the original RAW, but for some, even that is useful in figuring out which format they want LR to export to and for what reason...  Again though, it's hard not to hit frustration points on some things I 110% agree.

Jay S.

[Guest]

While I do think that the thread has deviated a little recently (although speed issues were discussed as well), I suggest that we leave the discussion wheather Adobe has obviously advertised something falsely as well.

Because probably for many LR 3 is faster.

Today, I tested with a small catalog (1000 images) on a Dell Latitude Notbeook with the following specs:

Intel Core Duo 2 (T7250), 2 GHz

2 GB RAM

Internal Graphic Chip

Windows XP Professional 32 bit

Lightroom 3.2 RC

Lumix G RW2 raw files (12 mpx)

Screen resolution: 1920 x 1200 !!

So not a very fast machine.

I can't see anything significantly slow so far.

Switch from grid to loupe: about immediately.

switch to 1:1 about 3 sec.

switch to develop: about immediately, with about 3 to 4 seconds to load data, slider controls available immediately

sliders are responsive, no delays

brush works quick with no delays

spot tool works quick with no delays

So unless the catalog size has a big influence on all this, LR 3 delivers even here.

Is it faster than LR 2.x? Subjectively yes, measured: no idea, because I do not have both versions installed.

Therefore 3.2 RC leaves a very good impression and the slowness, which users experience is probably much dependant on some configuration patterns, which we all try to identify via the exchange and discussions in this thread. Even the positive reports, such as mine, hopefully contribute to this.

Kind regards

Thomas

ChBr02 wrote:

Am I the only one?  My head is spinning with all this discussion about opening TIFF's, DNGs, RAWs, JPEGs, 16bit, 8bit, etc. in Photoshop, AND trying to relate how this has anything to do with resolving why Lightroom 3.0 & Lightroom 3.2RC1 is slower than Lightroom 2.7 in an apples to apples comparison.

It is obvious that Adobe falsely advertised that LR 3.0 was faster than previous versions.  Some on here have given hints as to how we can overcome the slowness of LR 3.0 / LR 3.2RC1.  Some of these hints have helped me personally even though they didn't totally resolve the issue. 

Shouldn't all this stuff about how to open & which file types to use in Photoshop CS3/CS4/CS5 be on another forum, or I am just too dense to understand how all this esoteric (to me) discussion will help me regain the speed I had in LR 2.7?

[ChBr02]

"I suggest that we leave the discussion wheather Adobe has obviously advertised something falsely as well.

Because probably for many LR 3 is faster."

Thomas, Are you really serious?  So far I have heard of one person other than you on this forum--where there are over 980 posts--entitled Why is Lightroom 3 so slow?? that say they have no problems with the speed of LR3.0.

I still have LR 2.7 installed, so I can compare.  There are some features of LR 3.0 that I like over 2.7, but they basically are not valuable due to the slowness.  Who was it that suggested listening to music while we waited on LR 3.0 to render?  I'm getting a little tired of listening to "Slow Boat to China".  Yes, I'm old enough to remember when it 1st came out.

Having said all of that, I am really interested in how people have been able to make some progress in speeding up LR 3.0 or LR 3.2RC1.  I am desperate at this point.  I have no option until I finish the project that I am currently working on to go back to LR 2.7.  But before I go back (after I finish this project), I will explore some of the catalog options I've seen on here.

BTW, I do have professional photographer friends--they don't have time to be on any forums--that have told me how foolish I was to even try LR 3.0 until it had been on the market for over a year.

[JayS_In_CT]

ChBr02 wrote:

"I suggest that we leave the discussion wheather Adobe has obviously advertised something falsely as well.

Because probably for many LR 3 is faster."

Thomas, Are you really serious?  So far I have heard of one person other than you on this forum--where there are over 980 posts--entitled Why is Lightroom 3 so slow?? that say they have no problems with the speed of LR3.0.

I still have LR 2.7 installed, so I can compare.  There are some features of LR 3.0 that I like over 2.7, but they basically are not valuable due to the slowness.  Who was it that suggested listening to music while we waited on LR 3.0 to render?  I'm getting a little tired of listening to "Slow Boat to China".  Yes, I'm old enough to remember when it 1st came out.

Having said all of that, I am really interested in how people have been able to make some progress in speeding up LR 3.0 or LR 3.2RC1.  I am desperate at this point.  I have no option until I finish the project that I am currently working on to go back to LR 2.7.  But before I go back (after I finish this project), I will explore some of the catalog options I've seen on here.

BTW, I do have professional photographer friends--they don't have time to be on any forums--that have told me how foolish I was to even try LR 3.0 until it had been on the market for over a year.

Yeah, but think of how far ahead of your friends you'll be when they finally come around to a LR 3.x .  You'll be an expert, sought the world over simply based on the scars.   I know you've hit them various times, but specifically what areas again are bogging you down.  Different things seem to help in different ways, e.g. making LR smaller on the screen depending on resolution, etc.

Jay S.

[Keith Reeder]

ChBr02 wrote:

Thomas, Are you really serious?  So far I have heard of one person other than you on this forum--where there are over 980 posts--entitled Why is Lightroom 3 so slow?? that say they have no problems with the speed of LR3.0.

That'll be because most folk are at their most vociferous when they're unhappy about something - and it's not as if everyone who has downloaded and used Lr 3 will have contributed an opinion to this forum: for all we know there may be tens or even hundreds of thousands of very happy users out there who have no intention of visiting this site.

Internet forums are never a representative sample of what's happening in the real world.

And we have to assume that Adobe's own testing of Lr 3 before release ticked the "faster than previous versions" box too.

[JayS_In_CT]

Keith_Reeder wrote:

ChBr02 wrote:

Thomas, Are you really serious?  So far I have heard of one person other than you on this forum--where there are over 980 posts--entitled Why is Lightroom 3 so slow?? that say they have no problems with the speed of LR3.0.

That'll be because most folk are at their most vociferous when they're unhappy about something - and it's not as if everyone who has downloaded and used Lr 3 will have contributed an opinion to this forum: for all we know there may be tens or even hundreds of thousands of very happy users out there who have no intention of visiting this site.

Internet forums are never a representative sample of what's happening in the real world.

And we have to assume that Adobe's own testing of Lr 3 before release ticked the "faster than previous versions" box too.

Keith,

I'm not 100% which side of the coin the forum users represent any more..  I'm tending to start to think that the folks here are pushing the envelope a bit more than the average user who may not even know the forum exists!  IF that's the case, they may be fine with what they're seeing, but it doesn't mean that even their machines and installations don't have the issues.  They may just not be aware of it..  For them, a 15 second export may be just fine if they're doing 2 images.

I'd like to think the folks here are the knowledgeable crowd and that's why they're may be a higher than average propensity for issues.

Just a thought..

Jay S.

[thewhitedog]

@Keith_Reeder: I doubt this forum thread would be so long if Lightroom 3 actually performed as promised. Certainly people who are happy with LR3's performance have no reason to post to this thread, but I dare say most Lightroom users have not yet even upgraded - so they wouldn't know about the problems unless the early adopters raise a stink. Which is exactly what we are doing. I think we can safely assume, too, that Adobe is cognizant of the "halo" effect this dissatisfaction may have on potential sales and is working as hard as they can to resolve the issues raised here, even if they cannot tell us exactly what they are working on.

While I expected Lightroom 3 to perform better, I didn't realize that Lightroom 2 was also a 64 bit app. So my expectations on that account were unrealistic. Given that, I find Lightroom 3 runs about the same rendering images and effects on files where I haven't updated the process to 2010. With the new process, using some noise reduction, an enhanced feature in LR3, in conjunction with some sharpening slows things down noticeably. And, unfortunately, that is to be expected. Considering that we all have different priorities and techniques, it's natural that our results should reflect these differences.

Personally, I find the enhanced feature set of Lightroom 3 attractive enough that I am not even considering reverting to Lightroom 2. LR2 had its own performance issues in my experience; it was hardly optimized as much as it could have been. Now that Apple's Aperture is cheaper than Lightroom by $100, Adobe has all that much more incentive to get the kinks out of LR3. Not that Aperture is a bug free, halcyon experience, either. But that's s subject for another forum altogether.

[Keith Reeder]

thewhitedog wrote:

@Keith_Reeder: I doubt this forum thread would be so long if Lightroom 3 actually performed as promised.

Well, I've seen similar happening time and time again - an example being the protracted furuore on numerous forums about the image quality of the Canon 7D, despite the fact(?) that the vast majority of 7D owners were and are as happy as a clam with the results the camera produces: that a very small number of pixel peepers had spotted something that they didn't like about the camera's files and made a huge fuss about it, didn't mean that the camera did not live up to its advertising as far as the majority were concerned.

A squeaky wheel gets the most grease...

Now then, Lr: I've owned Lr since v.1 and have hated the conversions it produces. Hated them, to the extent that I simply refused to use the application until Lr 3.

But I never, ever posted anything about my deep dissatisfaction with it, on this forum. I just used something else instead, and put Lr 1 and Lr 2 down to experience.

Now, with Lr 3, I'm a very happy camper, and for my uses it is as fast and as responsive as I could possibly wish it to be, and the IQ is everything I could hope for too.

The point being, you simply cannot gauge what the rest of the world thinks about any camera or any software, from the rumblings you read on internet forums: when I was unhappy with Lr, I said nothing here - but I was still very unhappy with it.

The fact remains that the actual number of individuals who have posted about their dissatisfaction with the product must be a vanishingly small subset of the group that is using Lr 3 right now - and it's actually quite a small subset of the number of people who have posted on this thread.

There's just no way to tell from here how big the problem is.

[Guest]

OChBr02 wrote:

"I suggest that we leave the discussion wheather Adobe has obviously advertised something falsely as well.

Because probably for many LR 3 is faster."

Thomas, Are you really serious?  So far I have heard of one person other than you on this forum--where there are over 980 posts--entitled Why is Lightroom 3 so slow?? that say they have no problems with the speed of LR3.0.

I still have LR 2.7 installed, so I can compare.  There are some features of LR 3.0 that I like over 2.7, but they basically are not valuable due to the slowness.  Who was it that suggested listening to music while we waited on LR 3.0 to render?  I'm getting a little tired of listening to "Slow Boat to China".  Yes, I'm old enough to remember when it 1st came out.

Having said all of that, I am really interested in how people have been able to make some progress in speeding up LR 3.0 or LR 3.2RC1.  I am desperate at this point.  I have no option until I finish the project that I am currently working on to go back to LR 2.7.  But before I go back (after I finish this project), I will explore some of the catalog options I've seen on here.

BTW, I do have professional photographer friends--they don't have time to be on any forums--that have told me how foolish I was to even try LR 3.0 until it had been on the market for over a year.

Of course, I am serious, because I do compare as well. Currently, I would not recommend anybody to upgrade to Lightroom 3 without testing it for a while, but it has always been like that. In this thread (and in the forum in general) of course most people, who post, have problems, therefore, you can't expect to get any representative figure from it. On the other hand, I have not witnessed any other person in my environment, who claims that LR 3 is slow (we are not talking so much about if it is slower than LR 2.x, but if it is unacceptable slow for business).

Personally, I would not be sure, if my computer is setup so that LR runs properly. There are too many cases you need to account for. I had cases, where software issues drove me nuts, and in the end it was a faulty memory card, which caused the problems. In comparison and by experience, I can only say than it was always Lightroom amongst raw processor products, which gave the best and highest quality product experience even during beta phases. At DxO, it took more than a year to get a version 5 out, which was stable enough on my PC, to use it for daily work. With LR, I never experienced anything remotely similar. I used LR3 all through the beta phase, without any serious problem for production work (at my own risk), and today I even don't remember a single crash. (I guess there was one, but it was not reproducible, just I forgot about). This was on two desktop PCs, one notebook, and one netbook, with four operating systems (Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit).

There are bugs, which Adobe acknowledged, and which seem to got fixed, there will be other bugs as well. They haven't affected my setups,  don't know why. Therefore, I asked Dan to report also, if they figured out the differences, under which conditions LR3 is ok and under which conditions not.

I am not here to defend Adobe, ultimately it is their image problem, that a significant amount of customers aren't happy. But oversimplyfied statements such as "don't buy", never buy until x.4 version is out, never buy until a year from first release is over, are not serious in their boldness and create too much uncertainty among potential users, for whom Lightroom 3 would actually be a very good solution. Again: test, then buy.

Sure this does not help you, but oversimplified statements do not help others either.

To sum up: even in a fair amount of different Windows and machine setups, I haven't noticed anything similar to the reported problems here.

Kind regards

Thomas

[JayS_In_CT]

tgutgu wrote:

Of course, I am serious, because I do compare as well. Currently, I would not recommend anybody to upgrade to Lightroom 3 without testing it for a while, but it has always been like that. In this thread (and in the forum in general) of course most people, who post, have problems, therefore, you can't expect to get any representative figure from it. On the other hand, I have not witnessed any other person in my environment, who claims that LR 3 is slow (we are not talking so much about if it is slower than LR 2.x, but if it is unacceptable slow for business).

.....
.....
.....

To sum up: even in a fair amount of different Windows and machine setups, I haven't noticed anything similar to the reported problems here.

Kind regards

Thomas

Thomas,

And there's the rub.. what is it about your setup that makes it run (apparently as good as 2.7 ran - maybe better given new function) and the person next to you bordering on their machine dying a slow death trying to edit pictures.  I think part of the frustration is that this is the 3rd release of LR.  Yes, VERY significant changes were introduced, but at this state there is an expectation that out of the box, it should run well pretty much everywhere and not have some of the major issues on caching, previews, memory, hi-res, cpu, etc., etc. that we're seeing and that Adobe has admitted.  Now on the plus side for Adobe, they are jumping in and trying to get as much as possible fixed as quickly as possible as evidenced by 3.2RC, but again, there are seemingly some pretty large errors that got through the process..  If those were eliminated, we may not be having the levels of frustration we are.

So for the ones where it is working well (and I'm somewhere north of the middle towards working well) the level of sensitivity about these issues isn't quite as high.  For those in the middle of it, every day when turning on your machine is a seemingly new (or the same) adventure in pain.  Best thing we can do is work with Adobe to help them fix things by reporting issues and each other to see what we can do amongst ourselves to smooth out the bumps for those struggling..

Just my 2 cents..

Jay S.

[Guest]

Thomas,

And there's the rub.. what is it about your setup that makes it run (apparently as good as 2.7 ran - maybe better given new function) and the person next to you bordering on their machine dying a slow death trying to edit pictures.  I think part of the frustration is that this is the 3rd release of LR.  Yes, VERY significant changes were introduced, but at this state there is an expectation that out of the box, it should run well pretty much everywhere and not have some of the major issues on caching, previews, memory, hi-res, cpu, etc., etc. that we're seeing and that Adobe has admitted.  Now on the plus side for Adobe, they are jumping in and trying to get as much as possible fixed as quickly as possible as evidenced by 3.2RC, but again, there are seemingly some pretty large errors that got through the process..  If those were eliminated, we may not be having the levels of frustration we are.

So for the ones where it is working well (and I'm somewhere north of the middle towards working well) the level of sensitivity about these issues isn't quite as high.  For those in the middle of it, every day when turning on your machine is a seemingly new (or the same) adventure in pain.  Best thing we can do is work with Adobe to help them fix things by reporting issues and each other to see what we can do amongst ourselves to smooth out the bumps for those struggling..

Just my 2 cents..

Jay S.

Every major release is a different case. They have to deal with new operating systems and patches, which did not exist when development started, deal with new hardware categories, which were not there, when testing, they may have used other third party frameworks under the hood, cope with faulty drivers from hardware manufacturers, which they did not expect, and so on. When to release someting as big as Lightroom is always a trade off: too late is a problem, too early is a problem, with such and such known error is always a debate. I found that after some point of testing (certainly with some confidence) it is better get the stuff out in the real world, deal with the storm, when things aren't so well, and then fix it quickly. If you do otherwise, you won't find the issues quick enough with the consequences that fixes will be more costly and difficult the later you discover them.

This is common experience, which probably even Adobe cannot escape. Coding and testing strategies can only help until a certain, albeit important extent.

Thomas

[Guest]

tgutgu wrote:

This is common experience, which probably even Adobe cannot escape. Coding and testing strategies can only help until a certain, albeit important extent.

Thomas

I agree....to a point. I know what irks me, and prob others was the fact that there was an EXTENSIVE beta test group, and then Adobe took it back in house and apparantly made some more coding changes - when it was last in beta it sounds like those who were testing it really liked it. If there was that many changes made why not let the beta testers have at it again instead of rolling it out as a new release, charging and taking money for a product that now runs vastly different than the beta? Or they should have rolled out the beta version, and continued working on the other changes.

Either way - for those of us who use this to make our living, the slowness is incredibly painful, and the only reason I went ahead and purchased the upgrade was the glowing comments I'd heard from people I knew personally who had used the beta and loved how it was working. Normally I don't purchase a new release until it's been out awhile, but in this case it just feels like a bait and switch. Why bother with a beta group if you're going to do what appears to be drastic coding changes to what they work with and not let them see how that affects performance? How is this going to attract anyone to the next beta group?

And yes, to those who are saying that people from Adobe are in this thread commenting, that's true. Dan and Melissa to name a couple, have been here, but they have admitted their hands are tied on how much they can say. There are people in management over in adobe (people with offices and names on the doors) that could come over here and post up a comment or two to let us know when and what is up, but they aren't talking.

I've installed 3.2RC which is running even slower than 3.0 (which I wouldn't have thought was possible) and there is nothing letting us know when that will become a full release update or when the next one will be coming out....so we basically just have to sit and wait, while I watch my machine clog up when all I am trying to do is use the Library module and cull images. There is no reason that I should have to wait to go from one image to the next when I'm just trying to loook through them and assign ratings.....

All we are asking is for someone to tell us where this in in terms of resolution. I'm basically stuck, as I've worked on the catalogs in 3.0, and since they aren't backwards compatible, I can't go back and work in 2.7 until this gets sorted out.

The thought of getting into LR every morning doesn't make for a bright way to start the day. I dread it, as I know I'll be spending wasted time waiting for images to load...

[Guest]

LydellPhoto wrote:

I agree....to a point. I know what irks me, and prob others was the fact that there was an EXTENSIVE beta test group, and then Adobe took it back in house and apparantly made some more coding changes - when it was last in beta it sounds like those who were testing it really liked it.

If there was that many changes made why not let the beta testers have at it again instead of rolling it out as a new release, charging and taking money for a product that now runs vastly different than the beta? Or they should have rolled out the beta version, and continued working on the other changes.

Either way - for those of us who use this to make our living, the slowness is incredibly painful, and the only reason I went ahead and purchased the upgrade was the glowing comments I'd heard from people I knew personally who had used the beta and loved how it was working. Normally I don't purchase a new release until it's been out awhile, but in this case it just feels like a bait and switch. Why bother with a beta group if you're going to do what appears to be drastic coding changes to what they work with and not let them see how that affects performance? How is this going to attract anyone to the next beta group?

I think their will be always enough beta testers if a new version is going public. The question if the final version should not have been going out without another beta test is difficult to answer. Probably Adobe did not want to disclose the last important feature (lens corrections)  before final release. So far I haven't found any vendor who does the public beta testing until the final feature set has been finished. Most do not do public beta tests anyway.

And yes, to those who are saying that people from Adobe are in this thread commenting, that's true. Dan and Melissa to name a couple, have been here, but they have admitted their hands are tied on how much they can say. There are people in management over in adobe (people with offices and names on the doors) that could come over here and post up a comment or two to let us know when and what is up, but they aren't talking.

I've installed 3.2RC which is running even slower than 3.0 (which I wouldn't have thought was possible) and there is nothing letting us know when that will become a full release update or when the next one will be coming out....so we basically just have to sit and wait, while I watch my machine clog up when all I am trying to do is use the Library module and cull images. There is no reason that I should have to wait to go from one image to the next when I'm just trying to loook through them and assign ratings.....

All we are asking is for someone to tell us where this in in terms of resolution. I'm basically stuck, as I've worked on the catalogs in 3.0, and since they aren't backwards compatible, I can't go back and work in 2.7 until this gets sorted out.

The thought of getting into LR every morning doesn't make for a bright way to start the day. I dread it, as I know I'll be spending wasted time waiting for images to load...

Management almost never does this and they would never make announcements about timeframes and give details (mostly because of legal issues). I know some other cases (most notably the competitor famous for its lens corrections), where the issues were much worse, where nobody ever talked in the forum except on "PR" guy, which denied the issues and slammed people for their critics. I did yell at them, asking for public statements as well - to no avail. Then I realized that such posts do nothing, they are always publicly ignored and will not receive any immediate reaction. Only when sales are really going down because the product's image is going downhill, the PR guy is fired and friendly developers start to participate in the forum for a while until silence is prevalent again. I don't see this here with Adobe as their stuff is participating regularly to different extents in various threads (not all of them of course).

Thomas