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

[DavePinMinn]

Remember that if you're going to "Render standard-sized previews" you have to be in the Library...

Otherwise, you'll have no Library menu....

It works pretty well if you're not doing a lot of images - typically I'll re-render for 1 - 200 and it only

takes a minute or so.

[frank0239]

There must be something wrong with your LR3.  Mine has a library entry on the menu bar in library view ( file edit library photo metadata view window help) and fourth up from the bottom is 'previews'.

[hamish niven]

frank0239 wrote:

There must be something wrong with your LR3.  Mine has a library entry on the menu bar in library view ( file edit library photo metadata view window help) and fourth up from the bottom is 'previews'.

Look in the library, under previews, see below

Cheers

[frank0239]

Sorry folks.  My post about the library menu was in response to an email about a post from davepinminn that has disappeared leaving me looking abit silly.

[DavePinMinn]

Nah, you're not looking silly, I am!  I was already IN Develop when I was trying to find the "Render" command, and

about 10 seconds after I hit post I realized to get a Library menu I have to be IN the Library.  So, I jumped back in and

fixed it.......  You just happened to hit it while I was still asking where the Render had gone!

My bad!

[Guest]

embarrasment - I was looking outside Lightroom itself (preferences, libraray etc) for the preview file - never thought of looking there.......................

[mei_-EPZwbs]

I find the behaviour of menus like this in lightroom confusing.

It seems to be the only prgram I use where what's in the menus availible form the top of the window/screen change depending on where you are in the program.

And what is availible where isn't obvious either. eg in develop there are a stip of thumbnail previews across the bottom of the screen, and you can select several at once but there doesn't seem to be a way to force rendering of previews for them. You can't say "previews are a library thing" because there they are, in develop!

[imajez]

mei! wrote:

I find the behaviour of menus like this in lightroom confusing.

It seems to be the only prgram I use where what's in the menus availible form the top of the window/screen change depending on where you are in the program.

Shortcuts also change too! Even if there is no conflict.

And what is availible where isn't obvious either. eg in develop there are a stip of thumbnail previews across the bottom of the screen, and you can select several at once but there doesn't seem to be a way to force rendering of previews for them. You can't say "previews are a library thing" because there they are, in develop!

And are also there in grid + loupe on the second monitor if using two monitors in any module..

[Mikkasa]

mei! wrote:

I find the behaviour of menus like this in lightroom confusing.

It seems to be the only prgram I use where what's in the menus availible form the top of the window/screen change depending on where you are in the program.

And what is availible where isn't obvious either. eg in develop there are a stip of thumbnail previews across the bottom of the screen, and you can select several at once but there doesn't seem to be a way to force rendering of previews for them. You can't say "previews are a library thing" because there they are, in develop!

It's not one program, strictly speaking, it's four-in-one. That's why they're called 'modules' – it's a modular package. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the filmstrip is what links the modules, kind of independent of them, hence selections made in the filmstrip are not as functional as selections made in each module.

[imajez]

Mikkasa wrote:

It's not one program, strictly speaking, it's four-in-one. That's why they're called 'modules' – it's a modular package. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the filmstrip is what links the modules, kind of independent of them, hence selections made in the filmstrip are not as functional as selections made in each module.

Splitting hairs there, it's one programme with [annoying] modal behaviour.

[Ian Lyons]

...and modal behaviour etc has what to do with Lightroom 3 slowdown? Nothing!

If you have an issue related to performance then feel free to add  it to this thread, otherwise start a new one.

IanLyons

ForumHost

[muzza1006]

The new LR is painfully slow for me also, especially in the develop module. Using the crop tool is next to impossible. I'm running Win 7 64bit on decent hardware. I migrated my catalog when I upgradded but it only contains around 400 RAW images. My cache is set to 5GB. I've tried optimising the catalog and rendering 1:1 previews but nothing I've tried so far has helped.

I've used LR since the first relase to earn my living as a sport photographer. If there is anything I can do to help solve this issue please let me know. This new version is costing me time and money.

Is it possible to go back to LR2.7 and retain my setting etc?

[mei_-EPZwbs]

Ian said: "...and modal behaviour etc has what to do with Lightroom 3 slowdown? Nothing!"

That's a very big and very self-assured claim. What makes you so sure?

This thread is about slowdown. Perhaps the way in which the different modules share computing resources is the cause of the slowdown. Perhaps various aspects are blocking each other or doing things behind each others back that hinder performance. Multithreaded programming is a very difficult thing I think, and quite likely to be the cause of some problems.

And it's very clear from this thread and others that the modal nature of the program and whether it's one program or several, is making it hard for users to work out the problem when something goes wrong and to track down the cause.

The film strip and thumbnails is a good example. _If_ Lightroom is being slow because it's rendering previews in the background then it's important to know when it's rendering the previews and where they're used. The fact that the film strip shows in all modules suggests that previews are rendered in all modules, but the fact that certain options are only availible in, say, library, suggest the opposite. What is going on?

Ian also said: "If you have an issue related to performance then feel free to add  it to this thread, otherwise start a new one."

You're asking for the impossible there. The whole point is we don't know what's causing the performance issues, so if we tried to do what you ask how would we know what we're allowed to talk about?

Or put it another way, tell us what things are causing the perforamance issues and we'll only talk about those things on this thread.

[frank0239]

Mikkasa wrote:

frank0239 wrote:

Victoria Bampton advised users to render all previews very soon after LR3 was released.  I took her advice (yes, it took ages) but it produced a large reduction in background activities and a consequent vast improvement in performance.  I can't find the thread in which she offered this advice, but may I repeat it on her behalf?

That was her advice for LR2 too. I've linked this upthread but it's worth posting again. About half the posts since then are from people who clearly didn't read it first time round...

http://www.lightroomqueen.com/blog/2009/05/02/hurry-up-lightroom-the-best-speed- tips/

The tips she lists cleared up many, many issues I had with v2.x and I'm certain they're the reason why LR3 is working well for me now.

Essential reading!

I have read this blog.  It is all good stuff, but her references about nVidia graphics on Windows systems are a bit out of date.  They relate to the nVidia drivers of 2008 and earlier.  The interface has changed a lot since then.

The reading gave rise to a few related thoughts about possible performance hits that I found in the recent past.  Since many of the problems reported here seem to have little correlation with systems and configurations, it might be worth a look at what else is going on.

I install codecs for RAW and DNG so that I can, if necessary, have a quick look at my images.  The Adobe codec really slowed my system - it seemed to kick off the Windows indexer, which took ages to deal with it.  I know the Windows indexer is a pain in the ****, but this was something else.  The problem was well described in the Adobe DNG forum.  Removed the codec (by restoring back) and the performance came back.

I also found some earlier versions of iTunes to slow my system and screw up memory.  Apple may have sorted it now, I don't know because I changed my MP3 player and never reinstalled iPlayer after the last rebuild.

To Dave Pinminn - thanks for the clarification, I thought I was seeing things.

[Jonathan Westcott]

mei! wrote:

I think you're onto something here.

I deleted all my previews from the old version of lightroom and I'm going through my catalogue of approx 200,000 images recreating the standard previews.

So far I've done about half of them and it's taken roughly 20 hours of processing time. I think it will be worth it in the end, and it shows how much LR is having to do in the background if you try viewing directories of images the previews aren't already there for.

Even on a flying machine tht's gonna take a while. Start  it rendering when you leave for vacation!

[mei_-EPZwbs]

Hahaha, yes!

[hamish niven]

mei! wrote:

I think you're onto something here.

I deleted all my previews from the old version of lightroom and I'm going through my catalogue of approx 200,000 images recreating the standard previews.

So far I've done about half of them and it's taken roughly 20 hours of processing time. I think it will be worth it in the end, and it shows how much LR is having to do in the background if you try viewing directories of images the previews aren't already there for.

Do you really need 200,000 previews? How many images do you look through on a regualar basis? If most previews are 200-500 kb... ( mine are at 1440 px in size, then 200,000 images is.... 100 Gb preview  container on a mac or folder selection if on pc...

That is a lot of maths and within 30 days ( if you've set the disguard unused images after 30 days) you'd lose many many previews. That is a huge amount of wasted cycles =  coal / nucleur power, C02 wafted away.

[mei_-EPZwbs]

Hamish:

"Do you really need 200,000 previews? How many images do you look  through on a regualar basis? If most previews are 200-500 kb... ( mine  are at 1440 px in size, then 200,000 images is.... 100 Gb preview   container on a mac or folder selection if on pc...

That is a lot  of maths and within 30 days ( if you've set the disguard unused images  after 30 days) you'd lose many many previews. That is a huge amount of  wasted cycles =  coal / nucleur power, C02 wafted away."

100gb isn't a lot of space nowadays and I can easily spare it. Likewise a couple of days processing pales next to the time some people spend on games or even driving their car to the shops when they could walk, so I don't feel bad about it.

The option for discarding previews is for 1:1 previews, so I assumed that regular previews are kept indefinitely.

Lightroom ends up needing to access and display most of my photos at some time or another, I'm sick of 10 minute waits while it generates previews and locks up my whole computer!

[Ian Lyons]

mei! wrote:

Hamish:

"Do you really need 200,000 previews? How many images do you look  through on a regualar basis? If most previews are 200-500 kb... ( mine  are at 1440 px in size, then 200,000 images is.... 100 Gb preview   container on a mac or folder selection if on pc...

100GB for 200,000 images seems rather low to me. I have a catalog with 27,000 images and 1:1 HQ preview for each. The preview folder is currently sitting at 164GB

[mei_-EPZwbs]

I'm only generating standard previews, not 1-1, and the 100gb wasn't my figure. We'll see hwo big the filder gets when I'm done!

[mei_-EPZwbs]

We need a standard speed test for Lightroom like they have for FPS games. Maybe a standard batch of 100 images which could be imported, have previews rendered, moved through, some standard adjustments made and then exported in a variety of formats. It would all have to be automated so human response times wasn't an issue.

Ideally with a log of performance, I/O etc. as this all happens.

Is that possible?

[Oceanviewstudio]

Greetings,

I upgraded from 2.5  as well as CS3 to CS5 last week. Initially, I had no problems at all. I am on 8x core Nehalem OSX 6.4 now, 32 Gig. The upgrade was still on OSX 6.3. My LR pictures (650Gig) and Catalog reside on an external not very fast hard drive, WD My book studio II connected via eSata, setup as Raid-1.

Since yesterday all kind of oddities happen which I can not reproduce on purpose, you call it intermittent errors I guess. Three times now I had to force quit LR, there was no other way to continue. This is really getting scary to me, I need to be able to trust LR with my assets, that I make a living from.

Using the correction brush started to act up first. Here is what I did: K- Burn in areas on a picture, K again, and the cross circle cursor would stay on the screen and not disappear. Back to Grid and choosing another picture, same thing, the K cursor still is on the screen.

Other oddities such as in Slideshow, the first SS I created to check the music features went just fine. The second and every following SS did not work anymore. I was not able to select new pictures from a collection, every time I did that and started the slideshow after prebuilding it, the SS started with the Intro Screen as desired, but stopped right there and did not play. Only by pressing space bar it would start to play, which of course messed up the timing with music.

On the issue of sluggish to slow performance, I can confirm what many said before.

I have a question for you folks:

When LR crashes, where would we send LOG reports to in an effort to help the developers with information? What else can we do to help on that front?

Thanks

Georg

[mei_-EPZwbs]

"Using the correction brush started to act up first. Here is what I did:  K- Burn in areas on a picture, K again, and the cross circle cursor  would stay on the screen and not disappear. Back to Grid and choosing  another picture, same thing, the K cursor still is on the screen."

I had that same problem intermittently but numerous times on previous versions of Lightroom on Windows XP.

I must have had pretty much every problem anyone mentions on these forums at some point. I think there are a number of deep-routed, cross platform logic bugs in Lightroom that are hard to track down because they're intermittent and don't happen for everyone.

At some point the programmers are going to have to sit down and do a slow, methodical code review of the entire program. Doing beta versions and bug bashing just doesn't work comprehensively with the number of platforms, hardware, other software and work patterns Lightroom is tasked with.

This is illustrated very well with the latest release. There were two betas which a lot of people were involved in, but still on final release there are numerous bugs and a tonne of performance issues being found when people actually put it to real use, doing real work with large catalogues.

[calm_Light157F]

Hi,

Are you able to reproduse the slowness?

Can we help you out by running a debug-version that is logging whats happening to help you out here? I would not mind doing that.

- Terje

[Jonathan Westcott]

I've gradually worked towards getting a machine that works well with Lightroom. It's important to bear in mind what we are dealing with nowadays e.g I shoot with a Canon 5D mkII in RAW so each file is in excess of 21mp. A shoot may consist of 500+ images. That's a lot of rendering etc. I use dual 24" & 30" screens so previews are large. Now have a system that flies with very little lag rendering full res and almost none in adjustment brush even with auto masking. System spec. Rampage Extreme II, i7 930, 12GB 1600 RAM(triple channel), dual ATi cards in Crossfire (which are working perfectly with dual monitors and separate calibration profiles..), hd's in striped RAID and LR/PS caches on dedicated drives. I can run PS alongside Lightroom happily - and yes if make both very busy it will use ALL the ram! For me a faster processor & more/faster ram has made huge improvements in LR responsiveness.

I've found the final release version of LR3 is snappier than the beta's(which is to be expected).

Some suggest that it should not need such a high spec system to get good performance which is probably valid, but the lag used to drive me crazy when editing through large shoot so now having got it sorted I'm happy!

Jon