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

[JayS_In_CT]

john Nall wrote:

Yes many many notes.  I deleted the file---no difference on performance.  Darn!

Sorry John..  Was worth a try.

Jay S.

[Guest]

Hey Dan and Melissa.

You've probably noticed this pattern already but I thought I'd point it out. Many users have posted similar system info to this:

Built-in memory: 3069.2 MB
Real memory available to Lightroom: 716.8 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 450.6 MB (62.8%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 510.7 MB

The "Real Memory available to Lightroom" seems to often be around 700M even though the system has lots of RAM installed. For comparison my system (reasonably snappy in LR3 so far) gives this right after I start LR3:

Built-in memory: 6143.1 MB
Real memory available to Lightroom: 6143.1 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 426.4 MB (6.9%)

I'm thinking something is causing Lightroom to not see all the available memory, and therefore not take advantage of it.

Also - I really hope you don't see this until Monday after a good weekend away from all of this 🙂

Jim

[JayS_In_CT]

JimC13 wrote:

Hey Dan and Melissa.

You've probably noticed this pattern already but I thought I'd point it out. Many users have posted similar system info to this:

Built-in memory: 3069.2 MB
Real memory available to Lightroom: 716.8 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 450.6 MB (62.8%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 510.7 MB

The "Real Memory available to Lightroom" seems to often be around 700M even though the system has lots of RAM installed. For comparison my system (reasonably snappy in LR3 so far) gives this right after I start LR3:

Built-in memory: 6143.1 MB
Real memory available to Lightroom: 6143.1 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 426.4 MB (6.9%)

I'm thinking something is causing Lightroom to not see all the available memory, and therefore not take advantage of it.

Also - I really hope you don't see this until Monday after a good weekend away from all of this 🙂

Jim

Jim,

Can't speak for what's happening on your machine, but LR 3 is seeing and using the memory on my Macbook Pro without fail.  I can watch real memory rise and fall throughout operations.

Jay S.

[kwdaves]

Adobe has limited Lightroom's physical RAM usage on 32 bit versions of Windows to 1GB of RAM or less.

[areohbee]

That's a limitation of all 32-bit apps - not imposed by Adobe.

[kwdaves]

Nope. Windows limits applications to a max of 2GB by default (up to 3GB with the 3gb switch in XP or "increaseuserva" in Vista/W7 32 bit set).

See this for one of the explanations. My understanding is that Adobe did it in response to all the "out of memory" crashes that came with Lr2.1.

[Guest]

The pattern is pretty clear that Lightroom often thinks it has about 700 Meg available. Several different users have posted System Info on this and other threads showing this. The limit from Windows on a 32 bit App is 2GB (There is a way to push this to 3GB but we'll ignore that since 99% of users will never do it) - I'm not sure of what the limit is for 32 bit Apps on a Mac.

Anyway it seems Lightroom is only using about 1/3 of the memory that it has available. This could definitely cause slowdowns or at least not going as fast as the PC has the potential for. Again it works fine for me on my 6GB/64 bit system, but there is definitely a pattern of users reporting only just over 700MB available to Lightroom.

If Adobe has indeed dediced not to put all the available memory to good use, that is a stange decision. Sort of like a football coach (Amemican or FIFA as you prefer) deciding to only use some of his 11 players and have the rest stand still on the field and not take part in the game.

Again just hoping this can help at least some of the problems observed.

Jim

[kwdaves]

There have been complaints about sluggishness and freezes, particularly from people using the adjustment brush, in LR ever since LR2.0 came out. My understanding is that Adobe tried to fix it in LR2.1 by "throwing" RAM at the program- that is by not releasing RAM as it normally would. The result was a flood of program crashes/freezes when the system ran out of free RAM. XP/Vista 32 bit led the way. Apparently Adobe then set the RAM usage to less than 1GB limit beginning with LR2.2 to stop those crashes. I have never seen an official statement from Adobe, but one of the real insiders on this forum stated it. 

[Lou_Gonza]

Hey Ronn,

Just an idea for you. Don't cull in Lightroom. Do it another leaner program. I used to cull in LR but not anymore. I shoot weddings and my assistat and I take around 4,000 images per event. I used to then import all 4,000 images into LR. The import would take a LONG time and then after culling I'd end up removing them from the LR catalog anyways. Dumb.

Now what I do is cull all of the images outside of Lighroom using the free Image Viewer from http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm.  It allows you to see the raw embedded JPG and you can tag the keepers by simpy hitting the \ button on your keyboard (tagging must be enabled in the program preferences to do this). You can then filter your view by tagged or untagged images, etc. Once I'm done tagging my keepers, I select the untagged shots, and put them in an Outtakes folder. Once I'd done culling the entire event in Image Viewer, I only import my keepers in LR. My work flow is MUCH FASTER since I've been doing it this way! So LR only has my finals. Imports are obviously much quicker now and LR is strictly an editing environment for me now. Give it a try.

[Keith Reeder]

Very good call, Lou.

I do my culling with Irfanview (as a bird 'tog I can pretty easily come home with four figures' worth of images): no tagging needed, but I can navigate through a whole folder, culling as I go, by opening the first image in Irfanview and then using the left and right arrows to navigate from image to image, and the Delete key to cull any that don't pass muster,

It's as quick as your brain and fingers can handle, then - like you - I use Lr 3 to its strengths, rather than as a file browser.

[Lee_Jay-ZyZk56]

rrossi1959 wrote:

Well for some of who ran the beta for months without any issues and have several thousand new images already in a LR3 catalog, going back to 2.7 is not viable, because the catalogs are not backward compatable.

That's why the instructions for the beta specifically said it was for testing, not for real work.

[areohbee]

rrossi,

Just in case you hadn't thought about this: Although the catalogs are not backward compatible, the xmp is, mostly. You'll lose virtual copies, stacking, collection afilliation, and lens corrections.. but most everything else is transferrable backward. I realize your point is that you don't want to and shouldn't have to..., I just wanted to make sure you understand the option.

Rob

[JayS_In_CT]

areohbee wrote:

rrossi,

Just in case you hadn't thought about this: Although the catalogs are not backward compatible, the xmp is, mostly. You'll lose virtual copies, stacking, collection afilliation, and lens corrections.. but most everything else is transferrable backward. I realize your point is that you don't want to and shouldn't have to..., I just wanted to make sure you understand the option.

Rob

Rob,

Assumes he turned that on in Catalog section defaults, but a good thought.  I wasn't sure if the XMP could travel back to 2.7 or not?

Jay S.

[areohbee]

XMP can be saved manually in Lr3, then the import or folder sync in Lr2 will bring everything up to date, except for the aforementioned exceptions. Lr2 just ignores Lr3-specific things in the xmp.

[Guest]

ChBr02 wrote:

There is a lot of esoteric discussion on here.

Hey, I just want LR3 to work at least as fast and reliably as LR2.7.

There are a lot of things mentioned on here that I really don't care for either, but if I had to, I could live with.  (even though I would be looking for another product)  The thing that I can't live with is virtually no response to sliders.  If I have to wait two seconds or more for each slight variation to react, it is totally unusable for me.

I checked doing the same operations on the same photos on LR2.7.  No noticeable delay.

Dan, listen carefully.....  Do you hear those people screaming at me, and demanding to know what is taking me so long to get their project done????

Can I get a refund on the "UPGRADE" until it is fixed (at least as good as 2.7)??????

Dan, What do we do until Adobe gets its fix out to us?  Trust me, I don't want additional problems caused by a rush job.  I just wished that you had waited to release LR3 until it was ready for prime time.

What is the best way to make an official complaint to Adobe?

Do you really think that posts like yours help? We just got this thread out of such "want a refund, when you gotta fix it, have to have project work, not ready for prime time" stuff. For many people LR 3 works well, for some not. You could help, if you would be more specific in providing, what problems you have on which hardware and in which other conditions (network, raid etc.). Your post does not help. It does not make bug fixing, testing, and releasing an new version quicker. Developers (i.e. Dan) work on it. If you don't care for the lot of things posted here, then don't post here and write your complaint to customer support.

Kind regards

Thomas

[tbob22]

I was able to get it working full speed. The main problem was speed in Develop Mode.

Sometimes it would sit for a minute before showing the 1:1 image, it could take 5 seconds or more for the sliders to respond, the brushes were unusably slow and sometimes it would take 30 seconds just to switch photos.

Now the sliders respond nearly instantaneously (~100ms to see a change, depending on the setting) I can switch photos in about 2-3 seconds and zooming usually takes under 1 second to render as long as you have the 1:1 preview, brushes are usable now but could be faster.

Here is what worked for me, you can try one at a time and see if it fixes the problem:

1. Update nVidia and Motherboard drivers to the latest you can find, if you don't know what motherboard or chipset you have you can use Everest to find out and of course make sure Windows is updated.
   
   
2. In Develop mode, hide the history panel on the left, for some reason this slows everything down on certain photos (can result in things taking 10x longer than they should), this does not seem to be consistant but you can try it anyway.
   
   
3. If you have an nVidia card make sure to try to override the 3D settings for Lightroom. Instructions can be found here:
   http://www.thejohnsonblog.com/2008/09/06/lightroom-2-and-nvidia-performance/
   http://lightroom-news.com/2008/09/02/nvidia-settings-to-speed-the-brush-tool-on-xp/
   
   
4. Disable Superfetch in Windows Services (google it), for me Superfetch seemed to slow things down by about 10%, not exactly sure why.
   
   
5. Defragment.
   
   
6. Disable your anti-virus and other programs running in the background, I did not have a problem with this but it is worth a try.

My computer specs just in case someone has something similar:

Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit

Intel Pentium E2160 Dual-Core @ 3ghz

4gb DDR2 1000mhz

Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L Motherboard
Nvidia 9600GT 512mb

4x 1tb WD Black HDD's

2x 22" Lenovo L220x monitors

Nikon D90 with NEF Raws

Library mode is still a bit on the slow side but it is usable and I think it feels faster than before.
Zooming 1:1 takes much longer (4-5 seconds) when compared to develop, it  feels like it might be re-creating the preview every time you zoom in.
Switching photos is about 2x faster when compared to develop.

[Bernd_Hoeppner]

I don't know, if somebody has given this answer some posts before, I did not read all of them.

(My machine: Q9550 at 3,2 Ghz, 8 g ram, Win7 x64, some hds in raid - about 3 tb, about 40.000 images, 40% 30d-cr2, 40% 5dII-cr2...)

I began with LR1, updated to LR2 and now to LR3 over the years.

My first cam was a Canon 30d, then I changed to 5dII. The raw files are very big, from 20 to 40 MB...

In LR2 it wasn't that big problem, I thougt...but in LR3 changing from image to image in dev mode ist slower,

changing from image to image in lib mode has become slower too. Always there was this message: "loading data..." for some seconds

I always let LR render default previews on import, 1:1 previews before developing images. In LR2 this was OK, LR3 was slowing down...

My problem was the default preview size, set by LR on install which was at 1000 (??). LR2 was faster, so I could live with this issue...

I work on a 24 inch monitor with 1920 x 1200 pixels and the default preview size after install is too small, I checked higher preview resolutions and selected 1440 pixels in the catalog settings of LR, rerendered all the default previews and...switching between the default images in library is very fast again!

So check your monitor resolution...with 19xx pixels take min. 14xx pixels resolution for default preview in LR3 and the "Loading..." message does not appear anymore. 🙂

Bernd

[tbob22]

Hey Bernd, that is only true for library view.

I believe you will always get the loading box when switching photos when in the develop view, but it will be quite a bit faster if you have the standard size previews as well as the 1:1 previews than if you didn't.

[Lee_Jay-ZyZk56]

tbob22 wrote:

Hey Bernd, that is only true for library view.

I believe you will always get the loading box when switching photos when in the develop view, but it will be quite a bit faster if you have the standard size previews as well as the 1:1 previews than if you didn't.

Available preview size should not affect the speed of getting rid of the "loading" box in Develop.  Develop uses the Camera Raw cache, not the previews.  Making the CR cache bigger will allow you to store more previews before they are tossed, and rendering images, even the previews, should populate the CR cache for later use.

[tbob22]

Lee Jay wrote:

tbob22 wrote:

Hey Bernd, that is only true for library view.

I believe you will always get the loading box when switching photos when in the develop view, but it will be quite a bit faster if you have the standard size previews as well as the 1:1 previews than if you didn't.

Available preview size should not affect the speed of getting rid of the "loading" box in Develop.  Develop uses the Camera Raw cache, not the previews.  Making the CR cache bigger will allow you to store more previews before they are tossed, and rendering images, even the previews, should populate the CR cache for later use.

Oh okay, that makes sense. I have mine set to 90gb, can't hurt I guess.

[JayS_In_CT]

Bernd.Hoeppner wrote:

I don't know, if somebody has given this answer some posts before, I did not read all of them.

(My machine: Q9550 at 3,2 Ghz, 8 g ram, Win7 x64, some hds in raid - about 3 tb, about 40.000 images, 40% 30d-cr2, 40% 5dII-cr2...)

I began with LR1, updated to LR2 and now to LR3 over the years.

My first cam was a Canon 30d, then I changed to 5dII. The raw files are very big, from 20 to 40 MB...

In LR2 it wasn't that big problem, I thougt...but in LR3 changing from image to image in dev mode ist slower,

changing from image to image in lib mode has become slower too. Always there was this message: "loading data..." for some seconds

I always let LR render default previews on import, 1:1 previews before developing images. In LR2 this was OK, LR3 was slowing down...

My problem was the default preview size, set by LR on install which was at 1000 (??). LR2 was faster, so I could live with this issue...

I work on a 24 inch monitor with 1920 x 1200 pixels and the default preview size after install is too small, I checked higher preview resolutions and selected 1440 pixels in the catalog settings of LR, rerendered all the default previews and...switching between the default images in library is very fast again!

So check your monitor resolution...with 19xx pixels take min. 14xx pixels resolution for default preview in LR3 and the "Loading..." message does not appear anymore. 🙂

Bernd

I agree with the others that generating standard previews should have no impact on Develop, but it sounded like you were saying your preview experience had gotten better.  Are you saying you are no longer getting the loading message when going from standard view to 1:1 in Library?  Maybe I'm misreading.  I have a 24" 1920x1080 and I can go screen to screen in Library without much delay, but going from the preview size to 1:1 still takes a period of time to load.  I've tried 1440 and 1620 without much difference.

Jay S.

[kwdaves]

Of course you can turn the messages off in View/View Options. For some people that creates the impression that loading is faster because the image actually comes into focus before the histogram appears and the panels become active.

[JayS_In_CT]

kwdaves wrote:

Of course you can turn the messages off in View/View Options. For some people that creates the impression that loading is faster because the image actually comes into focus before the histogram appears and the panels become active.

Well that's new..  Subliminal "fastness" 

Jay S.

[Guest]

Subliminal fastness....love it!

I didn't find an answer to this in the thread. but I may have missed it.

When I filter a folder and come back to it later it seems that the default setting for filters is off - is there a way to turn this on so it remembers the last view I had on a folder (either looking at the folder or at a collection...) It's frustratring to set up a filter view and then have it off when you return to it later.

Is this a bug or am I missing a setting/switch somewhere?

[Jasonized-nfnCsn]

Sigh.

No, you're missing an entire thread of discussion:

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/659662?start=0&tstart=0

Cheers!