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

[Blind Monk]

Just noticed that I was in the wrong place. Thanks for the heads-up. "Delete/Edit" option is not available for the post.

[Eaglerapids]

I have the problem with the second monitor and my video card is the Geforce GTX 560 Ti running the latest 296.10 drivers.

[kiddid]

try this; backup all the lightroom (v.3 and v.4) preferences file ("ligthroom 3 preferences.agprefs" or "ligthroom 4 preferences.agprefs"), then delete ALL the preferences files, let lightroom create new preferences file when it starts. O ya start lightroom 4 first, let lightroom 4 create fresh preferences file not imported from lightroom 3 preferences file.

Good luck

[A_C_G]

Kiddid,

That preferences trick seems to work but don't you then lose all your catalogue info?

Tony

[Jim Wilde]

A C G wrote:

That preferences trick seems to work but don't you then lose all your catalogue info?

This post from Lightroom Forums may help:

http://www.lightroomforums.net/showthread.php?14226-Resetting-%28or-Trashing-%29-the-Lightroom-Prefe...

[Afro Badger]

nice one Jim,  I have recreated my "Lightroom 4 Preferences.agprefs" and it is as good as gold now.  Happy days!

[kiddid]

yes, but only took me minute to make my preferences as a like it, but adobe really needs to optimize the coding of lightroom 4.

[Scooby007]

Adobe has a good doc on optimizing LR here

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/400/kb400808.html

Things like upping the CR cache can make a big difference (up to 20gb or so if you can). LR4 can definitely run very fast.

[Guest]

Thanks, Brett, this was really helpful. I'm on a 4 year 24" iMac, and it was approaching unuseable for Lr4.

Read the article first, since your machine & mileage may vary.

Here's what I did:

- set preview size to 2048 for my 1920 screen.

- increased the ACR cache to 20 GB.

- turned off modules I'm not using, unchecked showing them in the contextual menu.

- switched everything to solo mode.

- closed Navigator & Histogram (when I'm not using them).

Faster, newer computers might only need the first 5. I also did:

- trying to minimize other apps open (including Safari, which can be a hog).

- eliminated started items I don't really need.

Finally, one I saw a couple of years ago. Do a G them minimize thumbnails so they all show, watch that the "..." in each image is done. Scroll through sections of thumbnails for a large folder.

This seems a lot better. Thanks again.

[WesternGuy]

I would just like to add my voice to the growing audience of folks who find that Lightroom 4 is slow, I mean really slow.  I haven't changed a thing on my hardware/OS configuration - Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q9300 with a 6MB L2 Cache running at 2.5 GHz, 8GB Memory, Nvidia GeForce GT220 (1GB) Graphics card,  1TB HD running under Win 7 Premium Home, 64 bit.  How slow is it - well I would say things that were done almost instantaneously under LR3, now take a few seconds or more under LR4.  It is slow to the point of being absolutely frustrating.  I did not use the Beta version.  I am using my "old" catalog that I imported.  Not sure if that is an issue or not.  As well, I am converting images to the "new" process as I go along, with new imports being done under the new, 2012, process.

If this is the best they can do, then I will go back to LR3 until they can make it move faster, but I guess I can't do that can I as I have imported my old catalog - lessons learned - I supposed I could always return to one of the backup versions as I do a backup every day - hmmmm.  I am not really interested in work-arounds - shades of Microsoft???

WesternGuy

[Scooby007]

As well, I am converting images to the "new" process as I go along,

Don't convert groups of images to the new process in batch, especially if they already have edits done in previous process versions. The result is unpredictable and sometimes quite drastic. It has to be done one at a time.

[stationarymotionOKC]

In following some of the instructions that I've seen people post, I have created 1 to 1 previews of the wedding I'm editing, upped the cache to 200gb, cleared out over 300gb of images on my main hard drive and now I'm back to working on these pictures and I honestly believe that LR4 is slower now than it was 2 hours ago. It's so unresponsive that when I select an image, it takes 3-5 seconds before it actually shows as the selected. If I try to move a slider, it hesitates and eventually moves after a few seconds, often times yielding various results because I want minor tweaks as I'm looking at the image but I can't get them. When trying to Sync the develop settings across a handful of images, you might as well forget it. You'd think I'm trying to render a Hollywood blockbuster on a laptop. I have a machine that is more than capable of running this software, which has all been detailed on a previous page.

When my clients demand the best from me and we get such a questionable upgrade from Adobe, it really makes things difficult.

[Blind Monk]

stationarymotionOKC wrote:

When my clients demand the best from me and we get such a questionable upgrade from Adobe, it really makes things difficult.

Right there with you -I've tried it all, and this update to Lightroom has been lackluster to say the least.

You're not alone.

[stationarymotionOKC]

I know Adobe is working on it, so I'm not trying to throw them totally under the bus. It just makes me wonder how much testing in different environments is done, it seems like the beta testing would have provided this same info that they're 99% there, but not quite .

[Blind Monk]

Really great words. It's hard to remember these thoughts when you're relying on Adobe to be consistent.

[Scooby007]

OP said

Lightroom is slow... My system is:

2.10 ghz Intel Core i3 Sandy Bridge

8 GB Ram

640 GB Hard Drive

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit

Not to poke you with a stick, but that's honestly not a very robust system for something as demanding as Lightroom. Your performance would increase dramatically with a fast i7 processor, night and day

[A_C_G]

Brett,

"Not to poke you with a stick, but that's honestly not a very robust system for something as demanding as Lightroom. Your performance would increase dramatically with a fast i7 processor, night and day"

My LR 3.6 works find on a 32bit Win 7 system with a mere 2gig of RAM. At times I have even had LR4 working perfectly on it from time to time. Snag is the software is not stable as we all are concluding.

It makes a mockery of a 60 UKP upgrade if one needs a new PC to run it on.

I well understand you folk with these PC's with enough chips to run Cape Kennedy but that's not what good software is about.

Tony

[Scooby007]

I well understand you folk with these PC's with enough chips to run Cape Kennedy but that's not what good software is about.

Tony

MS Notepad is good software, so is Maya. One is free, tiny, and could run on a calculator processor, the other is huge, $3,500, and needs a powerhouse workstation for optimal perfromance. Not all software is the same.

Tony

My LR 3.6 works find on a 32bit Win 7 system with a mere 2gig of RAM.

There's no way in the world you can fairly expect LR to perform on a system with 2gb ram. I've seen LR 4 using 11gb of my ram all by itself, not to mention the operating system. This isn't 2005

[quenton8]

There is something (or more likely somthingS) going on here ...

I have a quad-core 64-bit PC running windows-7 -- standard builtin intel graphics and 8Gb of memory.

That is NOT a powerhouse!!!

I have all modules loaded and have used all modules.

I have a 20,000+ catalog (and a 3 others around 5,000).

I converted all to LR4.

It runs just as fast as LR3.

So what is going on

• are all the people complaining about performance "out-to-lunch" (I doubt it)
• are all the people NOT complaining "out-to-lunch"? not using it to full capacity?  (I doubt it, too many saying its fine)
• are we dealing with out-of-date vidio drivers? - likely in some cases
• are we dealing with some other application causing issues? - again likely in some cases
• is it dual monitor issues? - seems likely as some have seen that make a difference
• is it a change in how LR uses the video, multi-cores, ...
  • this in my mind is the most likely -- but then why does it work well for some and not others
  • this may again be related to driver versions or similar
• are there real issues with LR4 re performance? - again likely, but not readily detectable or they would not be there
  • many things can cause this kind of thing in S/W and they can be some of the most difficult to deal with -- if 100's of people have no problem, there is good chance none of the systems used by the LR development group have a problem

So if I had a REALLY badly slow LR4, I would try a few things, wait patiently - remember this is a .0 release, and if my livelyhood depended on LR I would probably go back to LR3 for a short time.

[LR_Mowang]

Dennis...

You did not say what disk you are using... for LR

[quenton8]

... You did not say what disk you are using...  for LR

Sorry, thought my post was long enough

Actually I don't know the details.  I buy from our office supplier and just say "configure me a Win7 PC".

So its physical drives, raided -- speed I don't know.

That is for my .lrcat and previews (on C:\).

My photos are on a USB-2 external 1TB drive -- this does NOT seem to slow things except on import

which I expect and don't care that much about -- I just go get a glass of scotch while I wait a bit

I have an LCD/LED-IPS monitor (24") which replaced my LCD-TN 22" -- that did not affect anything so far as I could tell

except cleaner colours and brightness.

[LR_Mowang]

If it is a raid disk system... then you will get great response. It is

my belief, LR4 has increased the writing to disk ( or changed how and

when) and that has impacted the performance for even beefy systems with

average disk drives.

[quenton8]

This type of raid (2 drives mirrored) will not affect performance.

[quenton8]

Simple raid (2 drives mirrored) will not improve performance at all -- no effect

[Scooby007]

Dennis @ My photos are on a USB-2 external 1TB drive -- this does NOT seem to slow things except on import

This will slow you down if you have auto-save metdata to files enabled. Also on export, but I wouldn't imagine by much. Doesn't it also slow you down in the develop module since it references the original to create develop cr cache?

I would definitely move to usb3 or esata though, for something as critical as the primary storage of your photo files. Even esata is much, much faster than USB2 (about 3x faster on average in practical use, which is huge)