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]

Hey guys.

sparksdjs is right. You should report this:

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

Right now there are only 39 persons (including me) reporting this.

[pdeeh]

Sick of the speed issue, I have tried two things:

First I deleted Camera Raw cache & the entire Previews folder, then rebuilt all previews (1:1)

This made no difference

Then I renamed my old catalogue, restarted LR4, created a fresh catalogue and imported all my images, creating 1:1 previews on importl finally I read in metadata from disc.

This seems to have improved matters somewhat - there is still a noticeable but not unbearable lag when zooming, but more importantly, sliders are no longer laggy - it works about as well as LR3.6 in this respect.

For me this wasn't too much of a hardship as I have less than 3K images.

The major downside is I have lost all the autostacked raw+jpg/virtualcopies, and detailed history for each edit.

If this improvement is not sustained as time goes on I will of course report back

[Guest]

my system:

i7 2600k @ 4.2 GHz

16 GB ram

240 GB Vertex 3 SSD (for catalog and preview)

geforce 460 GTX 1GB

win7 64 bit

i had the beta installed before. i removed LR4 BETA and the LR4 BETA catalog prior to installing LR 4 final.

im working with a fresh test catalog (not imported from LR 3.6) that contains ~9000 images.

the LR 4 final works MUCH smoother end responsive then the beta.
the beta was nearly unuseable. the sliders moved like snails.

but.... i have the impression that LR 3.6 was a bit faster. not much but a bit.

especially switching from the library to the develop modul feels not so fluid anymore... i think there is a small lag (but maybe it´s just pure imagination).

overall i can not complain about speed with my system.... but i don´t know how things look on slower systems.

[mizzified]

just thought i would update my info, had a chance to work on LR4 again tonight to see if i could get it flowing. Here is some details of my personal issues. none of which i had with LT3

my system update:

Dual monitors. Loupe view. (A MUST)

AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor

Win 7 64bit

12 gigs ram

HIS H467QR1GH Radeon HD 4670 1GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

2 External 2T ESATA drives (500K images or so) .CR2 Files

slideshow works nice, and library mode is fine.... little lag there, but for me it's not bad.

in develope mode... as i start to edit an image (dual monitors on) the more i edit the more it lags to the point on complete 5 second frustration.... sliders wait seconds to move then jump.... everything just starts to lag dramatically to the point of total frustration. Of course unselecting details section helps.... as does turning off the dual monitor view.... slightly, but, i'm really hoping this isn't they way I'm expected to use the software.

some other notes: works really nice on my macbook pro with single monitor view and a DRAMATICALLY smaller catalog. Just a little sluggish if i get to crazy with edits and detail perameters. Otherwise, very useable in this way.

thanks everyone for all the posts... good to see i'm not alone on this.

[Jeff Schewe]

mizzified wrote:

in develope mode... as i start to edit an image (dual monitors on) the more i edit the more it lags to the point on complete 5 second frustration.... sliders wait seconds to move then jump.... everything just starts to lag dramatically to the point of total frustration. Of course unselecting details section helps.... as does turning off the dual monitor view.... slightly, but, i'm really hoping this isn't they way I'm expected to use the software.

There are reports that something about dual display is really, really slow....it would be useful to know if this is a facot. Can you go to single display and do the same steps and see if you are getting the same response?

[stationarymotionOKC]

I'm also using two monitors, I'll try it on one and see if that helps.

[mizzified]

mizzified wrote:

in develope mode... as i start to edit an image (dual monitors on) the more i edit the more it lags to the point on complete 5 second frustration.... sliders wait seconds to move then jump.... everything just starts to lag dramatically to the point of total frustration. Of course unselecting details section helps.... as does turning off the dual monitor view.... slightly, but, i'm really hoping this isn't they way I'm expected to use the software.

There are reports that something about dual display is really, really slow....it would be useful to know if this is a facot. Can you go to single display and do the same steps and see if you are getting the same response?

Thanks for askin jeff. I did switch to single display and it does make a considerable difference.... way less delayed responses and long winded redraws.

I tried to come up with a workflow like this, single monitor and no details panel active..... as these two things seem to me to be the killers...... but it still started to bog down in time as I worked with the sliders editing even without them options in my flow. I'm guessing here, but I don't think Adobe would want people with my computer specs to have to find work arounds to use their software. The dual monitors and details tab rock in LR3.

I'll try some new tricks tonight.... maybe rebuilding catalog files and previews, i'm just a little couscous when it comes to touching my catalog files... lots of work and time associated with those darn files

Thanks everyone. I'm glued to this forum until I can get this LR4 into my work-flow with dual monitor view. Absolutely love the changes to the develop module.

[ChrisFourie-Lipman]

I installed Lightroom 4 on a newly setup Windows 7 64bit computer and if I compare it to Lightroom 3.6 (running on a 5 year old box with an Intel Quad Core processor & 8GB Memory), Lightroom 4 is very sluggish with most adjustments, things get even worse when I enable viewing on a second monitor.

Adobe, believe us, Lightroom 4 is SLOW!!!!

Computer configuration:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz, 3401 Mhz, 4 Cores, 8 Logical Processors
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64
16.0 GB Physical Memory (RAM) (4 x 4096MB DDRIII)
1 x 240GB Kingmax SATAIII 2.5” Solid State Disk (Operating System, Programs Lightroom Catalogues & Caching)
2 x 1000GB Seagate SATAIII 7200RPM Drives
Nvidia GTX560TI 2048MB Graphics Card.

All hard drives are less than 30% full with no fragmentation of any files.

[andreas603]

I've now tried so many different things to speed it up I'm losing track of which variables I'm playing with.  For me, dual display doesn't make a diff unlike many of you... I was hopeful that creating a new catalong and importing everything again would help and I thought it it...In Library Mod, it seem to have sped up just a bit but still not a quick as 3.6 ( I regenerated previews as well)... In Dev Module its made NO difference- loading each file takes 2-3 seconds during which time everything greys out while it trys to read the RAW file.. .Someone posted that the 'engine' used to pain RAW files in Dev is the RAW file itself, while in Lib, its the LR preview file.... This could help to determine the root cause perhaps....

I've not messed with any other setting like noise, lens correction, etc...This is a direct import of CR2 files from Canon 5D MII and its still not usable in the Dev Module.  Back to 3.6...

Will Adobe refund an upgrade???

[quenton8]

Does not seem to be a lot of consistency except that a lot of people are finding it slow, and another "a lot" are NOT finding it slow.

Maybe its time adobe development staff visited a few of the "slow" people to get a handle on this??

[stationarymotionOKC]

Dual display also didn't have an effect on my speed. It's slow all the way around overall. I had to keep working so as I posted earlier, I just continued editing until around 4 this morning while multi-tasking on other design projects while waiting on LR.

What's scary is the fact that LR4 is still so much better off than After Effects. That program is so great and yet almost unuseable due to the bugs.

[andreas603]

dumb question...how do I know if a file has a preview generated already in the Library Module...? 

[Jeff Van de Walker]

The Lightroom team is investigating this problem. Right now we attempting to nail down the specific issue/ issues. Just be aware that development may go dark on the forums while trying to research this problem. In addition we may be contacting people individually for more information.

Thanks,

Jeff Van de Walker

Lightroom QE

[hamish niven]

Good to hear from Adobe.

Thanks guys. Its been pretty dark since release date of LR4.0, but I'm sure you are well aware of the issues.

Communication is appreciated and even a comment every few days will make us customers feel appreciated and that our concerns are noted.

Go make LR4.1 an amazing product, and Jeff VdW, thanks for the feedback

[Wanchese_West]

Now THAT is what I like to hear!

I hate to say it but, I am getting used to the balky sliders, slow rendering to the 2nd monitor and herky jerky crop tool. I wonder how I will feel though Friday, which is my deadline day....

[kwdaves]

For a little context:

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/656635?start=0&tstart=0

[Eaglerapids]

Thank you for the reply Jeff, good to know you guys are looking into this issue.

[Tashka]

I'm happy to hear from a live team member. LR4 is broken!

PROBLEM SUMMARY:

LR4 runs snappy for the first few actions in the first few minutes.  It then rapidly slows until it is extremely slower than even sluggish 3.6.  After a few more minutes, it is so slow you cannot use it in production - taking up to 1-3 seconds for a selection to be highlighted after clicking it. 

Every subsequent mouse action then takes as long until it is like a computer out of memory.  It acts the code instance is thrashing, there is a memory leak, the cache routines go brain dead, or some combination thereof.

It still works but     v..e….r…...y     s….....l……....o……......w!

Another manifestation is that after selecting some images (say 1-30) and waiting for the selection to complete (it take 0.5-3 seconds),  the thumb slide highlighting seems to flash a bit, the info panel's vertical cursor jumps up and down a few times, and then all settles down 0.5-3 seconds later.

Everything else being equal, after 5 minutes of browsing and tagging, v3.6 was extremely faster.

We tried to open the v4 catalog with 3.6 but didn’t expect to work and it didn’t.  We were just hoping for a miracle.

We tried only 1 monitor and disabled add-ins.  No noticeable change.

ENVIRONMENT

We had LR2, 3, and now LR4.

LR2 and LR3 ran a bit slow but it was consistently less than 1/2 sec per mouse action.

LR4 runs so slow we cannot use it.

CPU: I7-930, 2.7-3.2 Ghz

RAM: 8GB (2GB cached, 4GB Used, 2 GB free)

GPU: Radeon HD4670 PCIx

Video: 2 digital HD screens. 24" Dell and 22" Samsung.

DASD: 6TB of SATA/eSATA drives with 20-200 GB free.

DASD usage before starting: 6 drives, 8 TB total.  All drives with at least 20 GB free.

DASD Fragmentation: System C = 0-1% and Optimized, Catalog E = 0-4%.

OS: Windows Ultimate 7x64 (fully patched)

Apps (usual full pantry):

All major Adobe apps (Master Collection + others)

Office Pro 2010, Financials, Utilities, Socials, etc.

Far too many to list.

Current LR Version: 4.0

Comparison Version: 3.6

Add In's (only Cole's RC METADATA) DISABLED in Add-In manager.

USER EXPERIENCE:

30 yrs coding (ASM to C and all between), photography (analog+digital), AV imaging services (recording, capturing, scanning, retouching, printing, etc), software authoring, Q/A, etc. 

Advanced user of PS (not guru).  Moderate user of LR (cataloged/tagged 37,000 image. No advanced developing).  Advanced user of Office suites, most, and countless utilities.

Proudest achievement.  A 29 year old accounting system using MDBS database written in Basic, C, and Assembler with over 100,000 lines of code is still running and hasn't crashed in 20 years.

INSTALLATION:

  Ran installer on purchased 4.0 ESD.  Did not install beta.  Was using 3.6.

  Converted 3.6 catalog to v4.  Then deleted 3.6 cat for space not knowing LR4's problem.

LIBRARY CONTENT:

37,000 images (mostly 90% JPG, 5% NEFs, 4% PNGs, 1% videos/other).

USAGE STYLE:

So far, only browse catalog, 4-6 thumbs wide.  Use 2nd monitor for full screen image viewing.  We browse images, mark 1 or more than add EXIF/IPTC tags to each image.  We usage 100's of tags but assign only 0-20 to each image.  Ex, we add tags to define style, location, subjects, etc.

We browse through ALL IMAGES (37k), selecting 1-many then adding the tags. 

GUI set as follows:

Source/ Folder Tree on left

Thumbs catalog in center.

Info panel on right.

Operating in Library Mode.

Thumb selection ribbon at bottom (sometimes off).

Hope that helps.

We are really desperate here.

Our cataloging work flow is dead.

XOR42

[raincitydigitalarts]

I think you beat the nail over the head! Is Adobe listening…

[rosalynsam]

This is very similar to the problems I am experiencing....only my problem happens within seconds, not minutes and external plug ins crash.  I am on a serious time crunch and want to just revert back to LR 3.6 -but I don't know how to proceed without risk.  Do I just uninstall LR 4? I'm extremely gun shy at this point.  I don't want to loose what I have imported in LR4 or cause other problems.  It tooks hours to import, and nearly locks up on export on ONE image. 

[SistersCountry]

@Rosalynsam - Did you uninstall your 3.6? Hopefully you still have a copy of the 3.6 catalog intact in a separate folder from the converted version? I never uninstalled my original 3.6, just the beta version of 4. I just did a test for you and my original 3.6 runs just fine with 4 being installed alongside it. I did get a warning about needing to re-register my Smugmug plug-in but that had been upgraded this month anyway.

Probably a good idea to do a little backup first, especially the presets and Lightroom settings folders. I do see a mix of the newer and older presets in my panel but the new ones I have created in 4 don't seem to throw any errors. They just don't give the intended results. Old ones seem to work fine.

I'm not sure if there would be a problem if you need to do a fresh install of 3.6 with 4 on board but I haven't heard of any.

Something sure seems curious on your system it sounds like as most folks aren't having that level of problems. I would be tempted to do a maintenance scan on the hard drive in case there may have been some file corruption. Have you tried turning your anti-virus off to see if there is any impact from that?

[rosalynsam]

Thanks so much for your help - I still have 3.6 installed....I guess I don't even understand for sure if I can determine if I have a separate folder - I didn't do anything to set up a different folder, other than the normal install of 4.0. I know I am ignorant of some of the basics here and I hate that-and I get lost easily in the how to do simple things - I can function well within LR and Photoshop  if all systems are go.   Yes, I thought the same thing about my level of problem.  I did try disk defrag, cleanup, catalog optimize, catalog optimize, and turned off antivirus. I need my own personal assistant computer assistance to keep me from messing something up.   My husband thought I might have a "memory leak" through LR after view the CPU usage, but if so, I have no idea about how to fix it...thanks again for your kind assistance. 

[Kennedda]

I want to add to this thread.  I find the time to import photos has slowed down, the time to export photos has slowed down.  But, most importantly, as many have described the sliders in develop model are slow and, thus, not natural to use.  When a program is updated, it should be more effective and efficient as well as more fully featured.  I use a Mac Book Pro, core 2 duo, with 6 Gb of ram, an external monitor.  To complicate matters, I have recently just updated to Lion.  I do not believe that would add to the problems here.  I will follow the advice above to "delete writing changes to xmp".  Besides getting a new and faster computer, what other suggestions are there.  Or, do we live with this until Adobe brings out Lightroom 4.1?

[Lou Dina]

Kennedda...

I have done a lot of playing with settings, caches, catalogs, folder locations, turning features on and off, turning off a second monitor, etc., on my Mac Pro. Some help a little (at least for awhile), some degrade performance, and others seem to have no effect. I've got more HP in my Mac than you do, but  LR4 is still dog slow, no matter what I do. When it does speed up, it only seems to be faster for awhile. I'm still on Snow Leopard (10.6.8) since I didn't want to lose functionality of some programs that won't work under Lion. Lion is not the problem, Macs aren't the problem, PCs aren't the problem...it's clearly the program. In spite of the fact that the beta was out there for quite awhile, they released it anyway. There is absolutely no way they couldn't have known about these problems before the official release, given all the beta testers out there.

Customers shouldn't have to jump through hoops to make a program work acceptably. Yes, to maximize speed and performance will always involve some tweaks, but the program should perform properly out of the box, as long as customers meet or exceed the system requirements as specified by Adobe. My computer isn't a total screamer, but it isn't a dog either, especially using a 256 GB SSD and 16 GB RAM. All my other apps run fast, including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc (even with they are all open at the same time).

I've gone back to LR3. The new features, while nice, aren't worth the performance hit, at least not to me. I suspect you'll have to wait for Adobe to release 4.1, 4.2 or 4.3 for decent performance. Buying a faster computer than I have is a non-starter. Very disappointing, to say the least.

Lou

Mac Pro Tower, dual 2.26 GHz processors, 8-cores, 16 GB RAM, 64-bit, 256 GB Solid State Drive, (3) 1TB, 7200 RPM HDDs, OSX 10.6.8

I run regular maintenance to keep it running fast and clean.

[Scooby007]

@Lou - Buying a faster computer than I have is a non-starter. Very disappointing, to say the least.

The problem isn't your computer hardware or the new features in the software causing bloat. Plenty of users with specs the same as or weaker than yours report LR4 running normally or faster than LR3. Something - a bug in the software that likes your environment (likely), or a problem with your system (unlikely) or your settings (possible), as they relate to LR specifically - is preventing the software as a whole from running properly for you.