Experiencing performance related issues in Lightroom 4.x

[BCormier]

Anyone else notice that lightroom 4 is slow? Ligtroom 3 always ran fast on my system but Lightroom 4 seemlingly lags quite a bit.

My system is:

2.10 ghz Intel Core i3 Sandy Bridge

8 GB Ram

640 GB Hard Drive

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit

Message title was edited by: Brett N

[piotrh01]

I,ve just read this announcement: https://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2012/03/lightroom-4-hot-issues.html.

Looks like slowlyness of new LR is not a hot issue for adobe. Well, it is for me, majority of people posting on this forum and probably

for many more lightroom users.

[andreas603]

thx for the link piotrh01- nice to know that they dont consider speed important...soooooooo frustrating!!!!

[A_C_G]

I have added my twopennyworth to that blog.

It is odd that they have not noticed that one or two of us find LR4 slow. It is almost as if the department is on a diet of magic mushrooms.

Tony

[sparksdjs]

That's why I've been encouraging people to go the official feedback site and post an input.

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/problems/common

[kkelln@sasktel.net]

Forget more posting. It's time to break out the pitch-forks. Adobe, consider this piece of rabble officially  r o u s e d !

[nph2go]

I reported on the feedback site - please add your feedback too:

http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2012/03/lightroom-4-hot-issues.html#comment-50650

[Geoff the kiwi]

nph2go wrote:

I reported on the feedback site - please add your feedback too:

http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2012/03/lightroom-4-hot-issues .html#comment-50650

Mate, that is not the feedback site at all.

The feedback site is here

[stationarymotionOKC]

Something has to give somewhere, using the full upgrade to LR4 and working with 5DmII & 7D images and it's unuseably slow. Reimporting images is too much of a task also having a current library of over 300k images. I am going to need an energy drink for the night ahead of me.

[Jeff Schewe]

stationarymotionOKC wrote:

Something has to give somewhere, using the full upgrade to LR4 and working with 5DmII & 7D images and it's unuseably slow. Reimporting images is too much of a task also having a current library of over 300k images. I am going to need an energy drink for the night ahead of me.

Sorry you are having problems...a couple of things to try assuming your speed hit is in Develop (it's useful to spell out EXACTLY where LR is being slow). If you are using noise reduction in PV 2012, try turning off the apply switch in the detail panel. New in LR 4 is the attempt to try to render the noise reduction at any screen view. This take cpu clicks...if you turn off the noise reduction while doing other work, it'll speed up the responsiveness of other adjustments. Other things that are known to tend to slow things down are lens correction and tons of local correction.

Again it would be far more useful to know EXACTLY where your slow downs are coming from...I'll also say that due to the adaptive image nature of PV 2012, a lot more cpu cycles are being used. Not for nothing, but if you are running a lot of other apps in the background that are stealing cpu cycles, that will also add to the speed hit. I have issues when running LR and photoshop at the same time but LR by itself seems to be fine...YMMV.

You all really need to be explicit in your reports of slowdowns and what your OS & processors are, ram and other things running.

[nph2go]

Jeff

Thx a lot for helping out, you are the first person to try and steer this conversation towards a solution! So much appreciate your help here.

W7, 64bit, i7 quad core, 16GB, 2TB HDD - upper end system with 1 monitor turned on.

50K images in catalog

i see the incredibly slow response in LIBRARY module, all i am doing is - working in a folder with ~200 images, using the filmstrip view and scrolling between images using the arrow key as i scored the images (1-5).

if you need more details please (hardware or software) please let me know.

thx again

nagendra

[Jeff Schewe]

nph2go wrote:

i see the incredibly slow response in LIBRARY module, all i am doing is - working in a folder with ~200 images, using the filmstrip view and scrolling between images using the arrow key as i scored the images (1-5).

Are these images that have already had previews made? Are you looking at the images in Loupe View? (as apposed to the thumbnails inside of Library) Once you've got the images imported, have you given LR enough time to render the previews?

I wouldn't expect major slow downs when viewing Fit Image size in Loupe unless you haven't gotten the standard previews rendered...if you are viewing at 1:1 and you haven't made 1:1 previews, I would expect that to also be slow'ish.

This is an entirely different animal than having slow response time to adjustments made in Develop. That's why it's super critical to know exactly where the slow downs are and what people are doing when they see a slow response.

I would expect moving between Fit Image zoom views to be pretty fast (no lag) after you've made the standard previews after an import. If you are importing and immediately trying to Loupe the images, yes I would expect slow downs.

[nph2go]

i am displaying using 'Fit' in Library.

the display is set to 1920x1080

>Once you've got the images imported, have you given LR enough time to render the previews?

i imported from LR3.6. dont know about the previews, what do i need to do to check on previews

i've been running LR4 for several hours (with occasional use) - what do i need to do to check this and what do you recommend - i.e should i create new previews?

[quenton8]

If I may interject -- I am running

W7, 64bit, i5 quad core, 8Gb

My catalog is on my c:\ drive, my photographs on a USB-2 1Tb drive.

I tried working in a collection of 18,000+ photos, many of which had not been viewed other than as thumbnails.

I used the single-photo view, and the arrow keys.

I was able to move as fast as I could hit the arrow keys.  The full preview however would take about 1/2 sec before

the view was fully clean.   I then exited LR4 and re-entered and moved over the same photos.  In this case they

appeard fully clean as fast as I could press the key (not holding the key down, just a normal down-up-down-up).

Is this sort of what you were doing?

[stationarymotionOKC]

Apologies Jeff, I should have included that.

Windows 7 64bit, Quad core i7, 8gb of ram, ATI video card I believe...

Using LR4 out of the box, I've created quite a few mapped locations & develop presets but that's it.

Upon launching LR, sometimes it won't ever show that there are images across 9 hard drives in the catalog. All of the date folders are greyed out. If I close LR4 and re-open it, generally within 3-6 minutes, it will show the image counts in each folder. When in Develop mode, I have the same complaint as so many others, you move the clarity slider from 0 to 18 and it's a 30-60 second turnaround. When clicking on a preset I have created, sometimes you don't ever get the image updated with the new settings.

LR3 also gave me major speed issues and was not snappy at all and I was hoping LR4 would remedy that.

Currently working through 1,200 images from a wedding and I'm able to multi-task to other design projects while I'm waiting on LR.

Thank you!

[Jeff Schewe]

stationarymotionOKC wrote:

Upon launching LR, sometimes it won't ever show that there are images across 9 hard drives in the catalog. All of the date folders are greyed out. If I close LR4 and re-open it, generally within 3-6 minutes, it will show the image counts in each folder. When in Develop mode, I have the same complaint as so many others, you move the clarity slider from 0 to 18 and it's a 30-60 second turnaround. When clicking on a preset I have created, sometimes you don't ever get the image updated with the new settings.

When you imported the 9 drives of images...did you actually try to use the previews or did you simply upgrade a LR3 catalog? Big difference...when you import images either from a CF car or a previous catalog, LR has to "know the images" meaning it needs to have loaded and previewed all the image you may look at. Initially after an import, particularly before the previews are done rendering, it takes a while for LR to absorb the image data and organize the previews. That's why sometimes it shows a grayed out drive/folder name and sometimes shows the three dots next to an image preview and sometimes shows the preview as a grey square...that's normal for new use of an import or catalog. This tends to go away over time (once LR works in the background to fully enter in the database records and makes previews).

This has nothing to do with potential slowdowns when in Develop. Unless you explicitly tell LR to make previews, it doesn't do it as a foreground function, it does it as a background operation. Which means anything you may do in the foreground will impact (negatively) the background operations.

With regards to the Develop slowdown (and entirely different animal) again I would ask whether or not noise reduction has been applied/turned on. That is a cpu hog when dealing with any images whose noise reduction is other than zero.

For the engineers to understand what's happening, the reports of slowdowns need to be less emotional (ranting) and more informational. That's the only way to try to isolate what's going on for some but not impacting others.

[stationarymotionOKC]

Jeff, here is my develop panel, it's upgraded to 2012, but I'm not seeing the option you're mentioning.

Here is part of the library list, which is pretty standard. When importing all of these, I didn't import the LR3 catalog, if I remember correctly, it told me it wasn't valid for one reason or another (I may be losing it, I really don't remember) and I just used the Add function in the Import options to get them in to LR.

[Jeff Schewe]

So, based on your screen shots, I would expect the Develop module to be slow showing images zoomed in since the Develop previews are ripped not from the LR previews but directly from the raw file. Again it would be useful to know whether or not you've applied and noise reduction.

Just understand the Library and Loupe views are using the previews rendered by LR when you import. When you go to Develop, LR must (by nature) re-render the whole raw file to present a color accurate rendering which will include any noise reduction you've applied. It's not at all surprising that moving image by image in Develop in the film strip is slow unless you've visited that image before.

Again, all of these reports of "slowness" are separate and distinct. You may not realize how LR works, but there is a standard practice that would be useful to follow. Wait till LR is done rendering standard previews, then use Loupe view to view the images, if you want 1:1 (100% previews) that's gonna take time to generate. No free lunch...getting pixel level info takes time.

[stationarymotionOKC]

Makes sense to me, I'm working on files that were imported in to LR3.6, but I didn't start touching them until after I had download 4 and re-imported everything. I will work on being patient with it and allow it to do it's job. Having each image between 20-30 mb on average can be a strain I'm sure.

[A_C_G]

OK Jeff,

I have turned Sharpening and Noise to Off

Lens Correction is Off

Effects are Off.

I have clicked Render Standard size for all images

I have clicked Render 1:1 Preview for the image I am working on.

I move the Exposure Slider and my CPU shoots to 100%. I lose control of the Exposure Slider. The CPU does not settle down for about four to five seconds.

That's with LR4.

In LR 3.6 with the three items set to On I can move the Exposure Slider. The CPU raises to 90% (never 100%) and drops back to zero or 1% or 2% within a second. I never lose control of the Exposure Slider.

If LR4 is working fine can you tell me what I am doing wrong, please?

Tony

[kkelln@sasktel.net]

A C G - my experience is nearly identical to yours, though I find the NOISE slider to be the worst. Every experiment I have tried, the deifference in the amount of CPU usage and even memory usage between Lr4 and Lr3.6 is generally huge. Then a red hearing pops up. After my 30th reboot, I opened Lr4 intending to create yet another new catalog and try something differet but when I did I noticed it opened faster than before.So I clicked on the develop module and fiddled around and BAM, without me doing a thing, all sliders seemed perfectly responsive. I then opened up my resource monitor and sure enough, resource usage was no longer peeking. I flipped through a few pictures and tried developing them Here too the things were quite responsive. I can't explain it. I closed the catalog, opened my "real" catalog, which has over 30,000 images, and it was right back to being slugissh. So, I fiddled for a while, closed my  'real' catalogue and opened up the test catalogue and BAM, it was slugish again. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!  The hardest problems to fix are one that can't be reliably reproduced. Until now, the slugishness issue has been a near constant for me. I have no idea how this is possible. Ugh.

[A_C_G]

Kirk,

I'll keep this short. You and I have been around here a lot.

I'm the guy who posted, probably last Friday, that if you uninstall the beta, remove all the lrdata files, reboot and install the paid up version you'll be OK. At the time I posted that I was.....but, like you, things changed for the worse.

I'm typing this msg on a PC that never had the beta. Initially LR4 was fine - and now it us unuseable.

That's all for now.

Tony   a c g

[googull]

Like many others, I use LR3 daily and it blazes even when I enable the 2nd screen.   If LR4 survivied BETA but is now having issues with it must be connected to differences in the HW platforms. I am one that never installed the LR4 BETA. 

Running Vista-64 SP2

LR 4.0 64 bit

PS CS 5.1 Extended 64 bit (configured to use 48% of available RAM)

Notes:

1. Adobe DL link for my purchase failed so I had to use the Trial Download to install and license application.  Perhaps just an issue with the Trial Build?

2.I have two monitors but rarely use the 2nd for LR.

3. I didn't notice the perf hit unitl AFTER i had messed with the MAP and BOOK module and AFTER I had performed an import of some fresh JPEG images.

4. I have messed with catalogs, changes in settings and viola - things appear better - but I can't be certain the changes I made caused the improvement or just another restart.  But one thing is clear, after I run another import the system slugs again.  It really feels like the import module is triggering the change for me.  I just imported 100 JPEGS (small) and it took 4 min 35 seconds and the LR4 perf is totally hosed again.

4. Response is just as others have described but best place to see the hit for me is the crop tool under DEVELOP module.  It isn't just slow, it painfully repaints the screen in ways I have never seen before in LR1,2,3.

5. I get sluggish reponse with or without PS5 running.  Also, if I run PS5.1 first I can run LR4 but if I load LR4 then try to open an image from LR in PS5.1 the system has tendenancy to hang. I am used to flipping between LR and PS with extreme regularity.

It feels like memory managmenet has been severly broken and/or the GPU isn't being used  (I thought LR exploited GPU) or the GPU use is being interrupted so I see this on again/off again behavior perf behavior. (NVIDIA GTX280)

Intel Q9550, 8GB, Vista-64, NVIDIA GTX280

[Malco48]

I have also just given them my two pennies worth. Maybe if more of you on this thread did the same it might push the team into replying.

[Scooby007]

LR4 does seem to be more of a memory hog than LR3 for sure. It's using almost 8gb for me at the moment in Win7/64. I have 16gb ram and LR4 is superfast, but I imagine if I had 4 (or even 6 or 8), it would be swapping and performance would tank. Slow performance for people with fast machines makes no sense and is certainly not the case for everyone.

[Eaglerapids]

The thing for me is that I have 8 gigs of memory and with Chrome running and LR4 going I'm using 49% of my memory but as soon as I move the Blacks slider all four cores of my AMD 965BE quad-core running at 3.4ghz will jump to 80-85%.....just to move one slider a tiny bit and it is very jerky. This is on Win 7/64bit. Oh, and this is using my second monitor, turning it off improves things quite a bit. Also, my video card is a PNY GTX 560TI.