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]

Even if some of the recent topics would have been closer to the subject, they would not have come back, because enough information was gathered anyway. Now this thread is more like a meeting point for some participants of the thread, to explore stuff a little further, which is not just on topic but related, and exchange opinions. No problem with that. A thread with over 900 posts smells in itself, and anybody who needs concrete help quickly should go somewhere else anyway or start a new thread.

Also, people always misunderstand for what user to user forums are made for. There are not there in first place to submit bugs or problems to the vendor. There are made for discussion amongst users about the product, nothing else. Particpication from staff is fine and in the interest of Adobe, but there is no obligation or policy to it. Therefore participation will continue to be very selective here. I know several user forums, where it is policy that staff does not participate (or just for announcements).

Serious bug reporting must be formalized, so the forum is not an appropriate way to get help directly from the vendor.

Kind regards

Thomas

[ambienttroutmask]

sherlocc wrote:

I repeat here what the House of Commons said to Neville Chamberlain in 1938 (which echoed what Cromwell said about the King a few hundred years earlier):

    "You have sat here too long for any good you are doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"

I can't think of a better way to voice what I think should happen to this thread at this point. If it was applicable to a King and a Prime Minister it should be OK for this thread as well.

Cromwell said this to the Long Parliment, not the King, who was dead at the time.

Leo Amory, a Tory MP) quoted Cromwell in the debate on the failed British invasion of Norway in 1940 that lead to Chamberlains resignation  the same day and his replacement by the leader of that invasion Winston Churchill some days later..

Sorry to be accurate but history is rather important.

[TK2142]

thewhitedog wrote:

TK2142 seems determined to put me down for even suggesting the video card might play a part, but besides a pugnacious attitude he has nothing substantive to offer in rebuttal.

Whether my initial post (http://forums.adobe.com/message/3065900#3065900) has nothing substantive to offer apparantly lies in the eye of the beholder. Regarding the merit of your suggestion, I hope you don't accuse the others that also provided good arguments suggesting it may not be a hot trail as "blind" as well. Regarding "pugnacious", perhaps you would like to care reading my initial post again and note that you then started to insult me.

[thewhitedog]

@Jay S. Thank you for the low-down on your technique. Though this forum may not have been entirely appropriate for our discussion, I found it useful. For those who do not, my apologies, but the opportunity to learn something presented itself and I took advantage of it.

[JayS_In_CT]

thewhitedog wrote:

@Jay S. Thank you for the low-down on your technique. Though this forum may not have been entirely appropriate for our discussion, I found it useful. For those who do not, my apologies, but the opportunity to learn something presented itself and I took advantage of it.

It was a fruitful exchange both ways.  🙂

Jay S.

[imajez]

thewhitedog wrote:

@Jay S.: I still think you are making it harder than it needs to be by exporting to DNG. Opening DNGs in Photoshop still flattens the image, as it does with RAW files, and renders the adjustments you made in Lightroom. If you opened the batch of images directly from Lightroom into Photoshop via the Edit in Photoshop contextual menu item, you would get the same result you have using Bridge to open the DNG versions you saved, but with a lot less effort and residual clutter. I get that your original question was how to bypass ACR, but your whole workflow is antiquated and more cumbersome than necessary. That's why I went to the trouble to explain the Edit issue in so much detail. Give it a try with a few images and see if it isn't easier than what you're doing now. Or not. I know how comfortable people's work habits can be and that they often resist changing them, even if it's for the better.

Actually I find batching processing images from Br much easier, less cumbersome and much faster than using LR - I use both programmes a lot BTW.

Not using LR is not necessarily an antiquated approach, it is a different approach. Maybe it is you who needs to reconsider your work habits!

File managers have advantages over databases and vice versa. Most people have no idea of how powerful and fast Br can be and simply dismiss it as Adobe's version of Finder/Explorer as opposed to a non-database version of LR, which is what it fundamentally is.

[JayS_In_CT]

imajez wrote:

thewhitedog wrote:

@Jay S.: I still think you are making it harder than it needs to be by exporting to DNG. Opening DNGs in Photoshop still flattens the image, as it does with RAW files, and renders the adjustments you made in Lightroom. If you opened the batch of images directly from Lightroom into Photoshop via the Edit in Photoshop contextual menu item, you would get the same result you have using Bridge to open the DNG versions you saved, but with a lot less effort and residual clutter. I get that your original question was how to bypass ACR, but your whole workflow is antiquated and more cumbersome than necessary. That's why I went to the trouble to explain the Edit issue in so much detail. Give it a try with a few images and see if it isn't easier than what you're doing now. Or not. I know how comfortable people's work habits can be and that they often resist changing them, even if it's for the better.

Actually I find batching processing images from Br much easier, less cumbersome and much faster than using LR - I use both programmes a lot BTW.

Not using LR is not necessarily an antiquated approach, it is a different approach. Maybe it is you who needs to reconsider your work habits!

File managers have advantages over databases and vice versa. Most people have no idea of how powerful and fast Br can be and simply dismiss it as Adobe's version of Finder/Explorer as opposed to a non-database version of LR, which is what it fundamentally is.

Imajez,

Thanks for the added tips..  Bridge is oft times overlooked.  That said, I think for my purposes, batching from a folder to a folder is more appropriate.  Even with bridge, I believe all the images still have to be fully opened on screen for the automation to work.  That's not to say that when going the folder to folder route, PS isn't opening the image, but it is a sequential opening and closing which I think when doing hundreds is effective.  Thanks agian.

Jay S.

[imajez]

JayS In CT wrote:

Thanks for the added tips..  Bridge is oft times overlooked.  That said, I think for my purposes, batching from a folder to a folder is more appropriate.  Even with bridge, I believe all the images still have to be fully opened on screen for the automation to work.  That's not to say that when going the folder to folder route, PS isn't opening the image, but it is a sequential opening and closing which I think when doing hundreds is effective.  Thanks agian.

If you are batch processing images from multiple folders in Br use collections, just like in LR. That way you can add photos to a collection and then process en masse when finished selecting.

If you have a collection in LR you'd like to process in Br, keyword the files with a suitable name and find the files with that keyword in Br to batch process.

[imajez]

JayS In CT wrote:

thewhitedog wrote:

@Jay S.: Apparently, then you are not using Photoshop automation. What application are you using for automation and what kinds of actions or processes are you automating? That's the part that's not clear (to me). I've used Photoshop Actions with the Batch function in Photoshop. But to use Photoshop, you have to open the files *in* Photoshop.

WhiteDog,

Either I'm not explaining it clearly or we're on a different page.  I am absolutely using Photoshop automation.  File -> Automate -> Batch.  I use it specify a particular action I want to run against an entire source folder of images and then have those images placed into a Target folder when complete.  It's a very useful mechanism when I have a large number of images that I've exported from LR where I want to do some final touchups.

You can also Batch images directly from Bridge - Select files, Tools/Photoshop/Batch. 

Which is much easier than opening files from within PS.

You can do most of what LR does in Br, the main difference being Br is a File Browser not a Database, so collections for example are not so quick to use and ACR is not as nicely laid out as LR's Develop module. Br can be much faster than LR to use at times anyway, all depends on your workflow.

[hwnoord]

I can report that Lightroom 3.2 has definitely speeded up work

with my HP Laptop (Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T5200 @

1.60GHz, 1600 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s), with 2 GB memory,

running Microsoft Vista), but not my main computer, running Microsoft XP

Pro, with 2GB memory and older processor. I find that both 2.7 and 3.2

are slower there than in the laptop. But 3.0 and 3.2 are impossibly

slow, with long delays to see the responses to any of the sliders.

With the laptop there seems to be no more memory leak; definitely

still in the desktop.

hwnoord

[areohbee]

Just a simple request to specify Lr3.2RC, instead of just Lr3.2. Right now, its clear what you mean, but in a month when people are comparing Lr3.0 to Lr3.2 proper it could get real confusing, since leaks and performance issues may change yet again between RC & Final.

[bob frost]

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.

[Guest]

I don't think that screen resolution is a ubiquitous factor. On my lower speced notebook (see above), I attached a 1920x1200 screen without facing a major performance degradation. In fact, I was suprised how well it worked. The delays when using local edits (brushes and spots) were not significanly larger (if any) than on my higher speced PC. Brushing got delayed only to a slightly disturbing extend, when painting the brushes very quickly. If you paint slowly (which you do anyway to keep control), there is almost no delay. Just sometimes LR3 "takes a break" for a short while, probably when releasing memory or manipulating the cache (don't know).

So as many observe, many factors play together. If your computer is sensitive for the slowness, then a higher resolution screen may make things worse. Therefore, as I have used LR 3 with varying speced hardware with no problems, which would make the product "unusable", I believe that it works well for the majority. I am not one of the few luckies, the posters of this thread are likely the few unluckies.

Personally, I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense to search for workarounds and tweaks any further. The problems are fundamental for certain conditions, which need to get fixed or come around but not tweaked. My positive experience gives me confidence that everything will be settled within a reasonable timeframe.

Kind regards

Thomas

[ChBr02]

@tgutgu    

"Personally, I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense to search for workarounds and tweaks any further. The problems are fundamental for certain conditions, which need to get fixed or come around but not tweaked. My positive experience gives me confidence that everything will be settled within a reasonable timeframe."

Feel free to not read or continue to contribute to this forum any longer if that is your wish.  LR 3.0 and/or LR 3.0RC1 seem to be working for you.  But with all due respect Thomas, it isn't your place to tell those who are having problems not to seek tweaks or workarounds. Some of the "tweaks" and/or "workarounds" on here have really improved my use of LR 3.0.  It still isn't acceptable by a long shot, but I am eeking out my edits which I could not do previously.  Your positive experience can't determine for me what a "reasonable" timeframe is.  It is beyond reasonable for me already.  I am way past trying to get an important project done in a "reasonable" timeframe.

[Guest]

ChBr02 wrote:

@tgutgu    

"Personally, I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense to search for workarounds and tweaks any further. The problems are fundamental for certain conditions, which need to get fixed or come around but not tweaked. My positive experience gives me confidence that everything will be settled within a reasonable timeframe."

Feel free to not read or continue to contribute to this forum any longer if that is your wish.  LR 3.0 and/or LR 3.0RC1 seem to be working for you.  But with all due respect Thomas, it isn't your place to tell those who are having problems not to seek tweaks or workarounds. Some of the "tweaks" and/or "workarounds" on here have really improved my use of LR 3.0.  It still isn't acceptable by a long shot, but I am eeking out my edits which I could not do previously.  Your positive experience can't determine for me what a "reasonable" timeframe is.  It is beyond reasonable for me already.  I am way past trying to get an important project done in a "reasonable" timeframe.

With by searching  for tweaks and workarounds I refer to people spending hours with speculation that this and that change on their system did something, which has improved the performance in some areas of Lightroom slightly apparently, but we are not sure of. So far, except for acknowledged bugfixes, I don't see much "tweaks", which actually gave breakthroughs and which could be confirmed to be related to a problem, maybe I have overlooked something in this thread. Neither I see clearly that any change in hardware stuff gives clearly benefits which would put systems with poor performance on par with system of normal performance such as mine.

For sure the term reasonable timeframe is subjective and relative.  But 3.2 RC came out quite quick, given the complexity of the issues. I had other examples, where it took over a year until I could get a competitor even run stable for more than 1 hour without crashing.

Kind regards

Thomas

[Guest]

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.

Which the Lightroom developers could not be accounted for (if true).

Thomas

[teho59]

bob frost wrote:

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

Anyone tried to take out their graphics card and seen whats happening? I have a ASUS ENGTX275, maybe it is worth a try?

- Terje

[ChBr02]

@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

In my case, LR 2.7 had acceptable performance  -  (I didn't test the Beta)  -  LR 3.0 was seriously slower  -  LR 3.0RC1 was faster (but not quite as fast as LR 2.7) responding to sliders, brush adjustments, healing, cloning, etc., but when going to loupe from film strip or grid mode, it is outrageously slow; even slower than LR 3.0.  Also exporting is still way slower than LR 2.7.

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.

[Lee_Jay-ZyZk56]

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.

[areohbee]

Lee Jay wrote:

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

And profile-based lens corrections.

_R

[Guest]

You are probably right. I think with LR 3 we are scratching the current limits for the possibilities of parametric editing, given current hardware setups. DxO offers perspective and lens corrections as well and seems to be better on that (i.e. more complex parameters and algorithms) but the preview rendering is dreadfull in detail, when compared to Lightroom. Also the slight progressive degradation in performance when using multiple instances of localized edits indicates the same. But all in all Lightroom shows a good balance between improved stuff and resource limits.

There is probably room for optimizations, but the product has to be used in the real working contexts to find the right meaures to get more things out of it. As always, the last 10 percent takes the most time and money.

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. I think that the current release is targeted at normal (average) use of such edits with a max of around 20. Afterwards, by pulling the edits to an extreme, we may face performance issues. Nonetheless, 99% of daily editing work can be done easily even with such limitations, which vary anyway from machine to machine.

Thomas

areohbee wrote:

Lee Jay wrote:

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

And profile-based lens corrections.

_R

[Gavin Farrington]

All bets are off when it comes to bugs, but generally speaking the video card has very little to do with the performance of non-3d applications.

There are a few rare exceptions such as when the app is capable of utilizing the GPU to do specialized tasks, but this is still a pretty niche thing.  I'm sure Dan could speak to this more specifically, but I've seen nothing to suggest any reason for LightRoom to be GPU bound - even with onboard graphics.

If you have a high powered video card it's for gaming, gaming, or gaming.

There are some exceptions to this rule, but if you know about those then this message isn't targeted at you anyway. 

[TK2142]

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.

[csaager]

Heck, why not?

Lr is wasting GBs of my disk space for previews - eats a lot of memory - why

should it be impossible to have edit-level caches? There is no reason why 40

brushesspot corrections pc-correction should slow it down except in the

final rendering. If it - and it seems to - strive for perfection in Develop

mode, it misses the boat completely. Perfection is only reached at the point

of collapse. Local perfection (1:1 views) - yes, but when editing in Fit

view an approximation is all you need.

Perhaps only the cache handling is broken, but as I wrote earlier, this is

the hardest part to fix

[Guest]

Perhaps only the cache handling is broken, but as I wrote earlier, this is

the hardest part to fix

This is what I would call optimization.

When refering to current limits, I don't mean absolute limits, rather limits to the current implemented architectures or programming wisdom of the development teams (being Lightroom or Bibble). To change such things could be very costly and time consuming, which is then a matter of economics and marketing.

So far I haven't seen any parametric raw editor, which does localized edits flawlessly without performance issues. However, what has been achieved to date is perfectly usable, if you accept the current small limitations.

Thomas