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

[DdeGannes]

Surely this thread is obsolete, we have gone through LR 3.2 rc and now at LR 3.2 official release. Comment on LR 3.2 not 3.0.

[JayS_In_CT]

DdeGannes wrote:

Surely this thread is obsolete, we have gone through LR 3.2 rc and now at LR 3.2 official release. Comment on LR 3.2 not 3.0.

Alternatively, we can pin it to the top, change the title to "Why is Lightroom "x" so slow"  ..  Since everytime we get a version or update there is a discussion of slowness.. we can just make this one home.  

Jay S.

[thewhitedog]

@DdeGannes: How is the thread obsolete if the final release of Lightroom 3.2 fixes most, if not all of the problems people have been reporting? In my opinion it couldn't be more relevant. It remains to be seen if early reports, like mine, hold up as others download and use the update. This thread will remain topical until we know if, and to what extent things have improved. If you're not interested you're free to ignore the discussion. What you're not free to do is decide for everyone else what's important and what's not. When people are no longer posting to this thread, then it will be obsolete.

[prairiedream]

I have installed 3.2 final and so far overall performance is much faster. However, I am still having the problem with Smart Collections and keywording. If I do some keywording, then move over to Smart Collections and add or change a Smart Collection, then go back to keywording, there is severe lag before the checkmark appears next to the keyword. I have to close LR and re-open it to make this problem go away.

[JayS_In_CT]

prairiedream wrote:

I have installed 3.2 final and so far overall performance is much faster. However, I am still having the problem with Smart Collections and keywording. If I do some keywording, then move over to Smart Collections and add or change a Smart Collection, then go back to keywording, there is severe lag before the checkmark appears next to the keyword. I have to close LR and re-open it to make this problem go away.

PrarieDream,

I'm guessing here, but my bet would be that Adobe really focused 3.2 on getting some of the big(ger) performance things under control before attacking some of the offshoot problems.  Seriously, somewhat akin to when a storm creates a major power outage.  You always fix the things that restore power to the most folks first, then ultimately down to the household level.  I've seen a number of "performance is much faster but "x" isn't fixed" posts.  If you haven't already, make sure you file it as a bug report.

Jay S.

[prairiedream]

I just noted it because earlier in this thread, Dan Tull (?) had mentioned that this was listed as a bug that

was reported as fixed for 3.2.

[JayS_In_CT]

prairiedream wrote:

I just noted it because earlier in this thread, Dan Tull (?) had mentioned that this was listed as a bug that

was reported as fixed for 3.2.

I'm sure they had to make some decisions as to what was in and out, but if that was supposed to be in and still broken, all the more reason to write it up.  This is not the formal channel for reporting things and Dan and Melissa do what they can here.  I'll have to try your steps and see if broken here.

Jay S.

[labungo100]

What is the Operating System installed in your Computer?

Try restarting the computer with Selective Startup from run>msconfig and check if it  works.

[DdeGannes]

Maybe some one who is having problems with the latest version Lightroom 3.2 should start a new thread "Why is Lightroom 3.2 so slow"

and let this thread be put to rest. Just so we can focus on the existing problems.

[areohbee]

Or if not, at least make sure the version you are talking about is specified exactly. Everybody will assume now

that recent posts are referring to Lr3.2, but it will be a lot less clear to people going back and reading them after 3.3 is out...

[Mvox]

Well this is an epic thread..are we going for some sort of record?

I can confirm that 3.2 runs well on my average machine again, just like 2.7 did. I was one of those that had the whole thing reduced to a crawl.There are a couple of small glitches, but I imagine they will get ironed out in time, meanwhile I've finally moved away from 2.7 and 3.2 feels quick and responsive in all modes. So...panic over...still got another 1200 images to process from the last shoot and I've sort of been keeping it going through all of this. I guess the result of this lesson is that I'll be far more cautious in future when there's a major upgrade..

I must say though, all you guys here helped immensely with your input right through this thread. I never have the time or the inclination to delve around inside a computer program, like I don't delve around in my car engine, I just use them, photography to me isn't a scientific process.

So thanks and all power to you who have the interest and the knowledge and the grace to share. You've been most helpful, directly and indirectly, to those of us who end up all at sea when things go tits up...:) .

[Rmurrayphoto]

I would have to agree with most of this! I too had been reduced to a crawl and was unable to even use the software. I too am experiencing much better performance and I too will shy away from converting to the latest version of software until it has been put through the paces.

Thanks Adobe and all the folks who I'm sure have been working hard to correct this for the fix. Do know however that you have lost a lot of trust.

Ronn

Sent via AT&T Mobile

[laurencec]

I too have had great success with the new software release and since starting this thread I have learnt so much from all the comments made but I am finally happy that I can work efficiently again.

[Guest]

I don't have time to search through the forum (3 days looking up this problem is enough) to see if this has been answered.  I upgraded to Lightroom 3 and then 3.2 and man, what a slug.  Previews whether in grid or not were painfully slow (have a nap time) and then I saw how many photos I had in my library, thinking that since I'm just looking at a single photo with 1,391 photos in it (I'm a horse show photographer, so this up to 7,000 photos is normal for a show) that it's gotten painfully slow slow slow.

So, I went back in time and realized that the more photos I added to my catalog, the slower it got, so I changed the preferences to ask me which catalog to load and removed my ginormous one (981,657 photos) and decided to catalog my catalogs and now I have 2010 Reining Horse Shows, 2010 Arabian Shows, etc. - each being a separate catalog.  It's easier to search, add keywords, metadata, etc. and now it's fast like when I first started.  My biggest catalog has 35,000 images in it and it's still fast.  They're all RAW files (5D MKII) and TIFF's, so the size of the photo does not matter, nor does the format.  I am on a PC with 9 GB of RAM, 64-bit system, with a quad four processor and lots of peripherals and things are flying along (again) after much frustration.

Don't know if this'll work for anybody else, but it sure did for me.

[Guest]

Here's what I finally discovered after my last post on the forum. In order for Light room to load your previews with the adjustments and metadata first it must be a catalog you have created previews for. The stored previews will be in the same location and have the same file name as the catalog (highlighted in the screen shot below).

If you load a catalog and your previews are loading greyed out until you scroll down in Grid view and the development setting load next one preview at a time you must have loaded one of your backup catalogs Your backup catalogs do not contain any previews. If you load a "Backup catalog" It will work but very slowly as it has create standard previews on the fly as you are looking at your thumbnails. After viewing a backup catalog the previews are not saved after exiting Lightroom unless you have created them. So backups are just that a back up of the catalog without the previews. If your catalog has become corrupted in some way, you would have to load your backup catalog and create standard previews for it.

Hope this helps. I was going to add to my post but was so frustrated by the process of discovering what exactly was wrong that I didn't. Also somewhere in Lightroom's help files it is mentioned what the backup catalog does not

contain but for the life of me I couldn't find it for you the second time around.

Dale

[n781lc]

You have probably discovered the problem of a large number of those eperiencing the "slow" problem.  In checking with a number of friends who  either use several catalogs or only load a few hundred images at a time for review and or workflow, none have had the problem descibed by so many except a couple who in upgrading to LR 3 didn't follow the recommended procedure.

As an aside, with the number of images you indicate, have you considered a mainframe??  😉  No slideshows??

ed

[appcoop1]

Yes, Lightroom 3.x is slow. Significantly slower than 2.x

Using the same machines and upgrading from 2.x to 3.x,

I immediately noticed a significant slowdown in response on BOTH

my laptop and my PC. The PC is a relatively new quad core 8g system with 2TB

drive and 1GB Radeon video card. That maching should fly. But it doesn't.

3.x is not nearly as efficient as 2.x, despite the notable feature improvements.

[JayS_In_CT]

appcoop1 wrote:

Yes, Lightroom 3.x is slow. Significantly slower than 2.x

Using the same machines and upgrading from 2.x to 3.x,

I immediately noticed a significant slowdown in response on BOTH

my laptop and my PC. The PC is a relatively new quad core 8g system with 2TB

drive and 1GB Radeon video card. That maching should fly. But it doesn't.

3.x is not nearly as efficient as 2.x, despite the notable feature improvements.

Appcoop1,

Your post doesn't give much info about where you're seeing the slowdowns and if you've tried any of the steps folks have mentioned.  I know it is a long thread, but there are some "pointers" throughout, e.g. deleting the prefs file, making the cache larger, etc.  Lightroom likes memory and while I still think they are working on it, 3.2 made it a much more acceptable platform.  Keep in mind certain areas of LR3 are more CPU intensive, like the 2010 Process model.

Have you also tried it with a new (vs. converted) catalog?  Some folks had problems with upgraded catalogs vs. new ones, have you done an "optimize" to the catalog, etc.  It's harder to try and help without much info to go on.

Jay S.

[DJ-G]

My start-up catalog for 3.2 was the one I created for the 3 beta. My biggest pain was the images that had tons of healing spots, most everything else was fairly smooth and I could work with.

But I decided to bite the bullet and create a brand new catalog in 3.2. After importing everything back in (around 15000 images) I'm in the process of recreating the collections, which I'm doing a bit reorg on. Now a mega-spotted image (over 200 heals) that used to take ~ 1:30-2 minutes to load takes ~30 seconds. I'm also not getting "LR has stopped working" when doing lengthy batch jobs, e.g. making previews, etc.

I'm on Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, i7 980X w/ 12GB, RAID 0 and RAID 10 volumes.

Message was edited by: DJ-G - changed "recreating catalogs" to "recreating collections"

[ChBr02]

Jay, you make some good points, several of which were beneficial to me. BUT, be very careful deleting the prefs file. Always make a backup or just rename the file without deleting. When I did this when I had a converted catalog, it helped. When I tried this again in 3.2R the results weren't pretty. But, I just deleted the prefs file, and renamed my old one back, and I was good to go. Can't remember exactly what happened, but it was catalog related. I no longer had the photos in my catalog. Anyway, just saying rename the prefs file instead of deleting it.

Charlie

[JayS_In_CT]

ChBr02 wrote:

Jay, you make some good points, several of which were beneficial to me.  BUT, be very careful deleting the prefs file.  Always make a backup or just rename the file without deleting.  When I did this when I had a converted catalog, it helped.  When I tried this again in 3.2R the results weren't pretty.  But, I just deleted the prefs file, and renamed my old one back, and I was good to go.  Can't remember exactly what happened, but it was catalog related.  I no longer had the photos in my catalog.  Anyway, just saying rename the prefs file instead of deleting it.

Charlie

Charlie,

I haven't had that issue with the prefs file after deletion, but your suggestion certainly carries merit.  🙂

Jay S.

[katemac02]

Is there a recap somewhere of this whole thread?  My 3.2 is super slow too, especially after using adjustment brush.  Is there a fix?  Should I just trudge through the 23 pages of this thread and/or is there a response from Adobe that myself and future readers could be directed to?

Thanks.

[Butch_M]

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/742964?tstart=0

http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/

[JayS_In_CT]

katemac02 wrote:

Is there a recap somewhere of this whole thread?  My 3.2 is super slow too, especially after using adjustment brush.  Is there a fix?  Should I just trudge through the 23 pages of this thread and/or is there a response from Adobe that myself and future readers could be directed to?

Thanks.

In the release notes for 3.3 RC Adjustment brushes are being addressed.  Hopefully it will help.  If you're on Windows be aware that the 3.3 RC will overwrite your 3.2 installation, so be sure you want to committ.  Mac users can run the two side by side.

Jay S.

[TK2142]

JayS In CT wrote:

In the release notes for 3.3 RC Adjustment brushes are being addressed

Not in these release notes?

Am I missing something?

Would be great if there were improvements for the adjustment brush. Still to slow for my taste (on my system: DELL E6400, Windows XP).