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

[Ian Lyons]

TK2142 wrote:

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?

It's not in release notes. You aren't missing anything, the fixes relate to the spot/heal tool.

[JayS_In_CT]

Ian Lyons wrote:

TK2142 wrote:

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?

It's not in release notes. You aren't missing anything, the fixes relate to the spot/heal tool.

Agreed..  my quick pass through and misread.  Talks to spot/heal tool (but they are in the same vacinity in Develop though)..  Again sorry.

Jay S.

[BradCan]

Without reading every single post it appears most people are have problems with slow loading catalogs and previews. My issue is a little different and am wondering if anyone else is experiencing the same. I shoot Hasselblad H3DII 39mp. With LR2.7 it took about 7.5 seconds to render a full rez image but on LR 3.2 it takes upward to 45 to 60 seconds. Obviously this is beyond painful for editing images so I have gone back to LR2.7 for editing. It is also very slow on any raw files such as Fuji S5 files and Panasonic DSLR files. Anyone have any suggestions for this? Adobe tech support was of no help.

[jgblair]

Hi Brad,

You didn't say what computer hardware you are using, but I can give you my results.  I am running a year old iMac (2.93 GHz, 4GB memory) with an external firewire drive for the catalog and images.  I set standard previews.  When I click on a Fuji S5 RAF file, it comes up instantly in the develop module and it takes less than 5 seconds for the "Loading" label to go off.  This is with a bunch of other programs open (Safari, Photoshop CS, another version of LR, etc) at the same time.  Maybe you can fill in more details about your computer system and setup and see if others can suggest ways to speed things up for you.

John

John G. Blair Studio

Occidental, California

[thewhitedog]

The problem may not be directly related to your catalog. There are a number of variables that govern rendering times: these include the preview size and quality specified in the Catalog Settings>File Handling window and the preview mode you use when you import files into Lightroom. A large preview size (up to 2046 pixels) and a high quality setting will naturally take longer to render. Conversely, if you specify a large (Standard or 1:1) preview size on import, these previews will take less time to render because they are already large - though importing large previews will take more time. What settings are best depends on your workflow. You will need to test the various options to see which work best for you.

[BradCan]

Thanks for the quick response. I am running Windows 7 64bit Ultimate with 12 gig ram quad core 3.0ghz. WD Raptor 10,000 drives for scratch and software. I have tried setting the preview resolution differently and obviously it does make a difference but no matter the setting LR is still painfully slow. I have not set the preview resolution all the way to 1:1 but will try that. With CS5 if I select several Hasselblad files and open them in raw it takes approximately 5.5 seconds per image to convert them at full resolution 16bit(223mb file). I realize LR is a different beast but 45 to 60 seconds is not workable.

[areohbee]

Yes, 45-60 seconds for 1 photo falls into the "something is seriously amiss" category. And its obviously a Lightroom 3 thing and not an ACR thing (since you don't have the problem opening with Photoshop/ACR or Lr2.

My guess: There is something in your system that isn't playing nice with Lightroom 3 or vice versa.

First, test with a fresh 1-photo catalog to get catalog issues out of the equation, then:

(I'm assuming you've already got the latest and correctest drivers for your hardware, if not - do that next).

Rip all the hardware and software out of your system that isn't critical for Lightroom, and boot into safe mode, or some downscaled version of that idea, and see what happens. It may be there is some device / driver that's causing the rub, or some process / service.

I'm not sure Lightroom will even run in safe mode, since the screen resolution may be too low. So, you may have to just back everything except the graphics driver off using msconfig (initiated via command line) or the like. But the problem may in fact be the graphics driver, so I'd try the newest, and/or older graphics drivers as well...

If it runs ok with a minimal config, then start adding stuff back in until you find the culprit.

If it doesn't, at least you know some things it isn't...

Rob

[BradCan]

Rob,

Thanks for your suggestions. I will try that tomorrow. The catalog is not the problem because of my workflow I save a new catalog in each clients folder so that it is always available no matter the machine I am on or if I had to work from a cd/dvd or external backup.

Thanks,

[kwdaves]

This may not affect you due to your multiple-catalog workflow, but you can try deleting your previews and regenerating standard previews for one of the problem catalogs. Deleting/regenerating the standard previews worked wonders for me when I upgraded  my LR2.6 catalog to LR3.0.

[WJMooney]

Based on the info provided, isn't LR3 the culprit? If it loads quickly in LR 2 and PS, and not in LR3, it doesn't appear likely that going through all those other steps will change things? And since LR3 has had some performance issues since the day it was released, it appears this is a new iteration of the underlying poor performance issues of LR3 in general. I personally have notice significant performance improvements with each new v3 release, but still looking for the Accelerated Performance feature of "Get your digital photography tasks done fast and have more time to shoot and promote your work. Already quick performance has been dramatically accelerated in Lightroom 3, saving you time from first look to final image." as still advertised as an upgrade feature for LR3.

Cheers,

Bill

[areohbee]

There are two kinds of issues:

Normal: e.g. takes longer to render due to lens corrections and better quality raw conversion, or even coding inefficiencies not yet shaken out... - all users are affected by these to varying degrees.

Abnormal: Takes way way way too long for certain unlucky individuals due to unusual circumstances.

Normal issues will be handlable by getting faster hardware, and Adobe improving code efficiency over time, and learning how to manage previews and caches, ...

The abnormal issues however require real troubleshooting..., by the user - assuming Adobe tech support has been exhausted...

I mean another possibility is to try different computers until you find one that it works well on... - most computers do not have the abnormal issues.

PS - I too am inclined to consider the advertised "performance acceleration" a bit of an exageration... but there's not much I can do about that...

PPS - I just upgraded my motherboard to one thats say 3x faster, and got say 5x performance increase - degree of improvement not all due to raw horsepower, but also device driver compatibility - or something...

Rob

[thewhitedog]

It looks like you have more than enough resources on your PC to run Lightroom and just about anything else perfectly well. Have you tried the latest Lightroom 3 beta? It's available from the Adobe Labs site (http://labs.adobe.com/teOnechnologies/lightroom3-3/). Be aware that the beta installer replaces the existing Lightroom 3 app on Windows, unlike on the Mac where the two versions can happily coexist. But since you find Lightroom 3 in its current state all but unusable, replacing it with the beta should cost you nothing important.

One other thing that may or may not have a bearing on the problem: you mentioned that you have the Lightroom catalog files as well as your images on an external hard drive. I imagine this could affect Lightroom 3 performance. Try moving the Lightroom folder to you boot drive to the default location on the drive - probably in your My Pictures folder. Then, relaunch Lightroom 3 holding down the Option key (Alt on the PC?) to have Lightroom ask you for the location of the catalog you want to use. Remember, your image previews are kept in the Lightroom 3 Catalog Previews.lrdata file that accompanies the Lightroom 3 Catalog.lrcat file. So be sure to copy the entire Lightroom folder to insure you get everything. This is a simpler solution so you might want to try it before doing something more drastic.

I assume you've already tried reinstalling Lightroom 3. That's one more relatively simple thing to try, if you have not yet done so.

[DaveJDSP]

Has anybody eliminated display cards and/or drivers? Way back at the beginning of this thread, a guy said he was using Win7/64 and an ATI HD4350 display card (now buyable for $30), and that he had none of the described slowness and was very happy.

I'm using an NVIDIA® GeForce® GT220 and panning in ACR is brutally slow and jerky. But in Photoshop panning is perfect. I strongly suspect some bug related to display cards/drivers.

I'm not using lightroom, but I do use Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and Photoshop CS5.

I just ordered an HD4350 ($15after rebate) and will have it tested within a week and will post my results here.

[areohbee]

I tried eliminating my display card, but then I couldn't see anything (ha-ha).

I agree that display cards and/or drivers can cause issues beyond what one might expect (may make things slow that really don't demand high graphics performance).

That's true of any devices / drivers in the loop, but especially true of graphics cards / drivers.

Rob

[thewhitedog]

I suggested earlier in this thread that video cards might have something to do with the Lightroom performance issues and was thoroughly castigated for my assumption. In any case, I suspect there might be something else causing your trouble in ACR, but you didn't offer any system info except the display card. Photoshop CS5 allows you to allocate more RAM than earlier versions if you're running it in 64 bit mode. It could be that it is hogging system resources and that ACR, as a result, is being starved for RAM. It could also be a cache issue depending on how much contiguous free space is available on the drive you have designated for your Camera RAW cache, and how large the cache size is set to. Check your ACR settings in the Photoshop preferences. Try purging the ACR cache and see if that helps. If you frequently open more than one file in ACR at the same time you might also need to increase the designated cache size.

[DaveJDSP]

This is VERY obviously an Adobe ACR bug. And it is Adobe's responsibility to track it down and figure it out, not the responsibility of those in the user forum. I'm not getting paid to fix their products. I have my own work to do.

I didn't post all my other system info, as it is obviously irrelevant, based on what we've seen posted by others. We've seen some folks post with very modest systems that seem to be running just fine. And some very high-end systems that are running horribly. I have Win7/64 8GB. GeForce GT220. Have tried every conceivable ACR & Photoshop & Display card setting, including running my ACR and/or Photoshop caches off of my SSD and all versions of ACR 6x. And it doesn't matter whether I host ACR in 64 bit (^O) or 32 bit (^R).
Because I need to get real work done, and I need the features of ACR 6x, I'll try testing a few display cards that have been posted as working properly (Nvidia 8600GT /512 & ATI HD4350). I'll post back when I can.

[George in Seattle]

Over the last 5 months, I gradually upgraded my system from: 32bit Win XP 4gb  TO: Windows 7 12gb I-7 processor & SSD drives (at no small expense). I am currently running LR 3.2.  I can tell you that most of what people are complaining about performance-wise is hardware related.   Lightroom now loads in 1 second and the directory counts, in another second. photos have sub-second 1-1 render time where before I was having freeze problems.

This is not to say there are no LR problems. But CPU GPU or RAM size is not the problem here.  Lightroom appears to in fact not take enough memory because it gets a horrendous number of page faults while not doing much in particular.  It could take 6 more gb of my free memory to alleviate that, but does not.   And the Spot removal tool has a serious bug --it should be running fast on this system but slows way down after the 5th spot.  With no processor activity, the only conceivable problem appears to be memory thrashing. 

Just some observations.

[DaveJDSP]

Thanks George.

Your contribution is a big help here. Also to me it is very obvious that LR/ACR has a serious bug that is causing slow/jerky panning and balky spotting. (ACR in CS4 worked just fine) I could probably zero in on the problem and report it to Adobe, but I could only afford to take that time if Adobe would pay me. It is their problem and product and they have people who are paid to create a proper product. It seems to me that they have the responsibility to track this down and fix it.

Meanwhile I am continuing to get closer to dumping my 10+ years invested in Adobe products and move to a vendor that is not so arrogant/complacent.

[WJMooney]

I'm not convinced it's hardware related. I believe it's totally LR3 software related. Recently, I have been tagging a lot of photos. In doing so, tagging and other features slowly derogate the longer I stay in LR3. E.g. the check mark for a tag goes from instant to about a second or longer within 30 minutes or so of running LR3. I'm running LR3 on the exact same system as LR2 and never had this problem with LR2. There are clearly issues with the software. Heck, look how much better LR3 runs today vs. the day it came out. My hardware hasn't changed from LR2 to today's LR3 RC; (Intel Core Duo 2.5 GHz, 4 GB RAM, Windows 7 Enterprise 64 Bit, Quadro FX 570M video). So if a software program degrades in performance as time goes on, how could that be hardware?

[Guest]

WJMooney wrote:

I'm not convinced it's hardware related. I believe it's totally LR3 software related. Recently, I have been tagging a lot of photos. In doing so, tagging and other features slowly derogate the longer I stay in LR3. E.g. the check mark for a tag goes from instant to about a second or longer within 30 minutes or so of running LR3.  I'm running LR3 on the exact same system as LR2 and never had this problem with LR2. There are clearly issues with the software. Heck, look how much better LR3 runs today vs. the day it came out. My hardware hasn't changed from LR2 to today's LR3 RC; (Intel Core Duo 2.5 GHz, 4 GB RAM, Windows 7 Enterprise 64 Bit, Quadro FX 570M video). So if a software program degrades in performance as time goes on, how could that be hardware?

I think nobody doubts that the performance issues are purely hardware related. But when referring to "hardware", many include the drivers, which is software. So the question is, if all problems are really related to Adobe's own code (some of them probably are). We don't know if all drivers are properly implemented or if third-party libraries work as expected or specified. For some of the discovered problems Adobe may have to write workarounds

However, it seems clear, that the problems are - while not solely hardware specific - likely system configuration specific, because there are a lot of systems out there, where Lightroom simply runs fine.

Thomas

[DavePinMinn]

>However, it seems clear, that the problems are - while not solely  hardware specific - likely system configuration specific, because there  are a lot of systems >out there, where Lightroom simply runs fine.

You actually don't know that...  You know those people that have reported IN HERE stating that "their system has ABSOLUTELY no performance issues with any component of LR" are "running fine".  Beyond that, it's unknown.

I know at least THREE people that have LR3, have encountered massive problems, and have either reverted to LR2 or completely stopped using Lightroom.  They don't report in here, may not even be aware this forum exists, and only know THEIR SYSTEM failed abysmally with LR3........

I'm using the current version of LR3, and it runs OK......  Not great, but not so badly that it's unusable.  I also don't try to do things in LR that have bedeviled many other users.....  BUT, having said that, in order to GET LR to work decently I had to put in an i7 920 that's overclocked to run at 4GHz, 12 GB OF 1600MHz memory, and a SSD for the application to run from...  Which is pretty ridiculous to get to an "adequate" level of performance......

On the laptop, with an i7 720, 4GB of memory, and dual 7200 rpm drives, LR is dreadful.  Fortunately, I don't use the laptop for anything important, so other than the initial examination (which is done in Bridge since it's quantums faster), and shoving things into a catalog, which gets done while I'm sleeping, I don't try to do critical editing on the laptop.........

BTW:  Since LR is a fine organizer, and an adequate RAW processor (making simple, gross adjustments), I have CS5 running concurrently.  With the two products running on the desktop, I routinely see memory usage in excess of 10GB for the two products...  Which is why there's 12GB of memory in the box.

While you can blame the "system configuration" or the "drivers" or some other "third-party" excuse for the performance problems, there are FAR too many systems, used by folks that aren't idiots and know how to install a driver, tune a box, and set a preference for a significant amount of the problems NOT to be the LR software.  It may be quaint or irrational, but the software designer/developer bears the obligation to ensure that their product works without major bottlenecks on an AVERAGE SYSTEM.  If you want to force your users to by a 16 processor G5, then SAY SO ON THE BOX.  If you want to force your users to have at least 6 or 9 or 12 GB of memory, ADMIT IT...  Don't tell everybody in your press releases that "you'll get better performance with this version" and not deliver...  'Cause "you'll get better performance" means I'LL GET BETTER PERFORMANCE ON MY CURRENT BOX WITH NO CHANGES.  NOT that if I spend $1000 or $2000 to replace my system I may get adequate performance.

Unfortunately, the reality is Adobe is the 800-lb gorilla.  And until somebody brings out a competing product that eats their lunch, they have little incentive to be price competitive or to do the work BEFORE releasing the product to make it efficient or perform well on the vast majority of systems in use by people that aren't computer geeks.

[DaveJDSP]

To Adobe:

Please ALWAYS remember that I would ALWAYS rather have the new version have fewer bugs and do a better job of what it used to do, than have it add "features" and change the way of doing things, and in so doing add (rather than remove) bugs and become much more unwieldy.

Your current "development" path is guaranteed to lose me (and millions more) as customers.

[Guest]

I guess we all have no clue whether LR 3.x actually has less bugs than LR 2.x. It has some issues with speed under some conditions, which would probably have been fixed already, if there would be a simple solution for it. For me, LR 3.x, including the betas, was by far the most stable release of Lightroom overall, and is much less error free than some of the competitors.

The notion that a software company should refrain from adding features and attempt mostly for stability and bug "freeness" is nice in an ideal world, but not applicable in the real world (unless the amount of testing is increased to a level that nobody would be able to pay the product). Without adding features, the product would not be able to remain competitive.

Being asked, if Adobe did right to release LR 3 in summer, possibly knowing already some difficult to resolve issues, I would definitely say yes. The advantages of the new version clearly outweigh the performance problems I face from time to time, and the people with massive problems aren't either not too many (relative to the total market) or face problems, which can't be solved immediately anyway. Shipping and resolving hard to fix and to be reproduced issues needs to get balanced in order to deliver a consumer product with a realistic market price.

The time between LR 3.3 RC and the not yet released final version of LR 3.3 is quite long, so we can assume that there is heavy work going on to identify the reasons for some reported issues and to fix them.

Unfortunately, the latest rants about the performance issues completely failed to give information of what exactly did not work or takes too long, and in what environment the problems occur. Just ranting does not help anybody.

And, yes, LR 3.3 RC1 runs on my machine without significant problems. (Now I get asked to leave the thread.)

Kind regards

Thomas

DaveJDSP wrote:

To Adobe:

Please ALWAYS remember that I would ALWAYS rather have the new version have fewer bugs and do a better job of what it used to do, than have it add "features" and change the way of doing things, and in so doing add (rather than remove) bugs and become much more unwieldy.

Your current "development" path is guaranteed to lose me (and millions more) as customers.

[ChBr02]

Thomas,

It is my recollection that you have posted some helpful insights.  I don't care whether you are having any problems or not.  My problem is with those that just come on here to bash those who would dain to suggest that there may be a problem with this software that they are trying to resolve.

Personally, I had no serious problems with LR from 1.0 - 2.7.  I heard so many compliments about LR3.0 beta that I jumped at the official release.  For me it was unusable.  With help on here and the LR3.2RC & then LR3.2, I was able to get by even though the slowness wears me out.  I look forward to the official LR3.3 release.

BTW, do you know what "whinge" means??

[George in Seattle]

The way code is written nowadays it could be both, if slower hardware reveals threadsafe or timing issues.  Or at least it looks like that sort of problem.  Nothing else explains how when I sufficiently upgraded my machine, the folder view freezes stopped, and at worst were replaced with some strange but tolerable screen flashes.  When the lockups were occurring, at no point was there any processor or excessive memory use, which rules out many other things.