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

[hamish niven]

Consider the hyena, it is a strange animal.

The evolutionary path the hyena has lead is slowly killing the breed. All too soon, they will be no more. They have barked up the wrong tree so to speak, evolved in a direction that imposes such stress on the beast, that it simply can't go on, they are evoling themselves to death.

The structure and shape of a Hyena has made the next generation harder to develop, harder to carry to term and very often the offspring causes so much damage to the mother, often killing them, no wonder they bark and howl like banishees.

Feel free to swap the word replace the word Hyena with...

[glugglug]

I am experiencing the same clunky and lethargic performance with LR4 as many others. Performance with LR3 was perfectly acceptable, I am going to stay with with LR because it so perfectly suits (or would suit) my needs. While it is not unusable, it is verging on it.

What was a program that was a pleasure to use has now become one that I dislike using with the censequent impact on my enjoyment of my work. What a shame!

[MarceloTrad]

Download LR4.1 RC2 (Release Candidate)

It should have drivers for the D4 and also improvements in some way of

speed.

One thing I did and read on this forum was to increase the raw cache to

10gb instead of 2 gb that came as standard...

That gave some improvements in terms of speed!

Marcelo Trad

[LynneHarty]

Marcelo,

How do I increase the raw cache? I' m on a mac. Thanks
Lynne Harty

[MarceloTrad]

Hummm...

I have a PC, maybe it´s the same. Go in the menu "Edit" then "Preferences"

then under "File Handling" tab. You should be able to see in the botom of

that window the size of the cache!

Did it help?

Marcelo Trad

[LynneHarty]

Thanks Marcelo - it was set at 1 GB, so I changed it to 10. Hopefully that will help!

[Guest]

LynneHarty wrote:

Okay all "oneupping aside", I am back to my basic question. I'm a professional photographer, and nowhere near the tech level of most of the people I'm listening to on this forum. Here is what I'm hoping to get answers for:

I had to upgrade to LR4 because LR3 won't open the files shot with my new Nikon D4, which I had to purchase after all my equipment was stolen in December, so it made sense to get the newest and best camera I could afford. I have about 50,000 images in my catalog (I'm unclear on whether that matters or not in terms of speed). I've been using LR since version 1 and using LR4 with these new files (yes, RAW, of course RAW) is unbearably slow in every way. Waiting for each image to "focus" to edit takes way too long, as do the rest of the adjustments. I can't shoot tethered with this camera either. I found a workaround with a free download called Sofortbild, or something like that, for my D700, but alas it doesn't recognize the D4 either. So now I have this sweet camera and new LR software and I feel like I'm in the dark ages.

There has been a lot of discussion about cache size and location. I have no idea where mine is or how to find it.

Am I just screwed until adobe fixes the issues with LR 4 and the nikon D4 compatibility? Do I have to shoot with my lesser D700 till then?

Thanks.

Lynne

Basically yes, you are screwed. Unless you start considering any of the competitor's alternatives to LR.

There are a few that are highly praised by reviewers. Some are paid, some are open source.

I am getting familiar with Corel After Shot Pro. Nice interface, (maybe not as elegant as LR, but IT WORKS!).

It was suggested to shoot RAW and then convert to DNG and then use 3.6. I wouldn't do that. First, you are only getting more and more tied to Adobe (I stopped DNG conversion altogether since some of the alternatives do not work well or at all with DNGs). Besides that, the thought of using a DNG converter (free) or even using LR4 as a mere DNG converter, that is very sad.

In case you want a list (I posted one somewhere else but it got buried in the "only last 15 posts are shown)

- Corel Aftershoot Pro (Paid - Free Win/Mac/Linux) http://www.corel.com/corel/product/index.jsp?pid=prod4670071&cid=catalog20038&segid=6000006&storeKey...

- Darktable (Free -Mac/Linux) http://www.darktable.org/

- RawTherapee (Free Win/Mac/Linux) http://www.rawtherapee.com/

- Cyberlink Photo Director (Paid Win/Mac) http://www.cyberlink.com/products/photodirector/overview_en_US.html?&r=1

I have tried all the them  except for Darktable (I run a Win gig) (either the full version or the trial version). I was pleasently impressed by Corel Aftershoot Pro and I find myself playing with it more and more. I really believe that Adobe decided to release an unbaked software because it has to be done before X (X being the release of Cyberlink Photo Director) As much as I like some of the features in LR4, well, it's like Adobe didn't actually implemented them since I cannot use it! I feel almost like having a long empty street and a Ferrari... but no gas (and no gas station anywhere to be seen).

Like it was mentioned before, it is a bit disturbing that Adobe employees only pop up here and there to "moderate" but never to inform. I don't want to get into a side-by-side comparisson BUT if the government of your country would be performing business the way Adobe is doing things now, I think there would have been riots on the streets a long time ago.

In any case, I am dissapointed on:

- How Adobe is handling this

- How Adobe released a product like this

- Adobe's support.

[A_C_G]

uphotography,

For me a useful post. It does seem that I am going to have to wait for LR5 (I started by saying 'we are' until I remembered all the folk around here who say they don't have a problem) for software that runs smoothly.

In the meantime do I jump ship and move to Corel Aftershoot Pro - or do I move back to the 2010 process alternative in LR4?

You say "As much as I like some of the features in LR4,". Would you like to list them? I'd never use LR to make a book, a web folder or a map. All I want it to do is to produce the best tiff or jpg from my RAW files. I like the new slider arrangement in LR4 - but are they actually extracting more from the RAWs than 3.6 did? If not then I'm stupid not to move back to the 2010 process.

I worked on some pretty tricky images yesterday, using 2012, and love the results. Does anyone think I would not have done so well in 3.6? I suppose I ought simply to try. In fact I will - but I'd love a second opinion.

Tony

[Robbie2006]

Stick with LR 3.6 Tony, Corel Aftershoot Pro is not nearly as good as Lightroom and it doesn't support Dng, I tried it when I couldn't get LR4 to work properly, I also looked at Elements 10 but ACR has less controls than LR 3.6 ie:- no gradient tool and noise reduction lacks some of the control in LR 3.6.

[SimDC]

Is the same problem happening in Photoshop CS6+ ACR 7.x ?

(for the same image and same configuration)

[A_C_G]

Robbie.

I didn't know whether you were still lurking. I re-tried your idea of putting the RAWs, the cache and the catalogue on Drive J (C is my operating drive) and it ran with fewer crashes (is this a complement you rightly ask) than with everything on C.

I guess that the number of times the screen went totally white was reduced - so do I smell progress?

Would you say that 3.6 is still better than running LR4 in 2010 mode?

What I have learnt using LR4 that its often best to start with the highlight recovery and fill shadow sliders at the extremity and then to ease them back (maybe but not always) as the exposure settles to what I want. But then I could do this with 3.6 of course.

Tony

[Robbie2006]

Hi Tony sorry to take so long to get back to you, I took delivery of a 100-400mm lens today and I was out trying it out(absolutely unbelievable pictures with it)

You say you put your photo's catalogue etc., onto a separate drive(make sure its not the one the operating system is onr(mines on an external drive) the other thing to check is

go into pteferences / click the tab file handling and about 2/3 of the way down you will see where the say cache is  and what its called, hopefully it's on your "J" drive, go in and check the folder that it says in cache has been created on your drive if not there create the folder and increase it to 10-20 gig, hopefully it might improve

the slowness you are experiencing, thats all I done and mine is running great now, if not you will like it once Adobe get round to fixing the software-it's strange how some work and some don't, bye the way what part of the UK are you in.

[areohbee]

A C G wrote:

I worked on some pretty tricky images yesterday, using 2012, and love the results ... but I'd love a second opinion.

Lr4/Pv2012 rocks! - that's my opinion. - hang in there people: it's always darkest before the dawn...

[Jao vdL]

>Lr4/Pv2012 rocks! - that's my opinion.

I would agree. The quality of raw conversion in LR4 is head and shoulders

above anything else I have seen and the built-in soft-proofing is genius.

Luckily I don't have any significant speed issues but I would definitely

say it's worth the wait (sorry for the pun). My experience with Adobe is

very different from the strange image being painted here of a

marketing-driven place. It is quite the opposite in my experience and I've

had really good interactions with the software engineers that resulted in

changes to the raw processing pipeline in betas and subsequent versions

based on issues I encountered. My guess is that the issues discussed here

are far more complex than people realize. Also, I remember very similar

discussions when LR 3 came out about glacial performance and locking up

issues. Somehow those issues disappeared.

hang in there people: it's always darkest before the dawn...

In my extensive experience of being up early to photograph sunrises I have

noticed that it is actually really bright out right before dawn. The

darkest time is closer to midnight (in the old meaning of midway between

sunset and sunrise) in general.

[areohbee]

Jao vdL wrote:

The quality of raw conversion in LR4 is head and shoulders

above anything else I have seen...

This is why I encourage people to hang in there...

Jao vdL wrote:

Luckily I don't have any significant speed issues

Lr4 is *usually* very responsive for me too, although sometimes it "cops a mood...".

Jao vdL wrote:

...I remember very similar discussions when LR 3 came out about glacial performance and locking up

issues. Somehow those issues disappeared.

Indeed. I had more performance problems with Lr3 in it's early days - people sometimes forget that.

Jao vdL wrote:

In my extensive experience of being up early to photograph sunrises I have

noticed that it is actually really bright out right before dawn...

Nevertheless, me-thinks, just when people think there is no hope for Lr4 performance, is probably when they'll find the key...

Cheers,

Rob

[Guest]

Rob Cole wrote:

Jao vdL wrote:

The quality of raw conversion in LR4 is head and shoulders

above anything else I have seen...

This is why I encourage people to hang in there...

Jao vdL wrote:

Luckily I don't have any significant speed issues

Lr4 is *usually* very responsive for me too, although sometimes it "cops a mood...".

Jao vdL wrote:

...I remember very similar discussions when LR 3 came out about glacial performance and locking up

issues. Somehow those issues disappeared.

Indeed. I had more performance problems with Lr3 in it's early days - people sometimes forget that.

Jao vdL wrote:

In my extensive experience of being up early to photograph sunrises I have

noticed that it is actually really bright out right before dawn...

Nevertheless, me-thinks, just when people think there is no hope for Lr4 performance, is probably when they'll find the key...

Cheers,

Rob

Guys, the encouraging words are, unfortunately, not enough. In my specific case, I am not talking about LR being a bit slow. I am talking about editing 3 photos and then, when moving to the 4th one, the screen going black for 5-10 seconds. I'm talking about trying to zoom on a photo and the photo appearing like it has 10x10 pixels of 2cm^2 each. When I say that it is impossible for me to work, it means that I drag a slider and nothing happens, I release it by "experience" somewhere and then have to wait between 5-10 seconds for to show something.  If I ignore all this and move to a next photo, then I start getting the "this program is not responding message". After 15-20 seconds it recovers and works again.

I have a powerful 64bit system. I have never, ever seen anything like this. not even when I had a 8086. Either I could run it or not, but if I would be able to run it, it would never behave nowhere similar to this.

So when you say, "hang in there" well... That's exactly what I am doing, or better say, that's what LR is doing, it is "hanging there"

[areohbee]

...

Guys, the encouraging words are, unfortunately, not enough. In my specific case, I am not talking about LR being a bit slow. I am talking about editing 3 photos and then, when moving to the 4th one, the screen going black for 5-10 seconds. I'm talking about trying to zoom on a photo and the photo appearing like it has 10x10 pixels of 2cm^2 each. When I say that it is impossible for me to work, it means that I drag a slider and nothing happens, I release it by "experience" somewhere and then have to wait between 5-10 seconds for to show something.  If I ignore all this and move to a next photo, then I start getting the "this program is not responding message". After 15-20 seconds it recovers and works again.

I have a powerful 64bit system. I have never, ever seen anything like this. not even when I had a 8086. Either I could run it or not, but if I would be able to run it, it would never behave nowhere similar to this.

So when you say, "hang in there" well... That's exactly what I am doing, or better say, that's what LR is doing, it is "hanging there"

The fact that when it's bad, it's really really bad, is actually good news:

It means there is some specific thing in your system that is not playing nice with Lightroom, and when it's fixed Lightroom will function normally.

Have you tried stripping your system down to bare bones, both software(services) & hardware-wise? If the former doesn't reveal, I'd even be tempted to try a new hard disk and format it with just OS & Lightroom - as a test anyway.

I know you don't want to have to do that, but sometimes it's worthwhile to back your system down to something Lr likes. I mean, Adobe did not ship it with these problems happening in their lab, or in the use cases they knew of.

One way to rule a whole bunch of stuff out, or in, is to take a big hammer to your system. Depending on the result, you may know what to do:

* If it works well when stripped, re-introduce things...

* If it does not work well stripped, then it's a core hardware/driver/config thing.

Don't get me wrong - I understand you may prefer to wait (and of course be frustrated and/or angry), until Adobe fixes this, or screw it altogether...

R

[gbdid]

This is why I encourage people to hang in there...

Not easy to do Rob when you are having the problems that people like me are, having a program that is virtually unuseable.

It is very frustrating having paid for a program that we now cannot use.

[areohbee]

gbdid wrote:

This is why I encourage people to hang in there...

Not easy to do Rob when you are having the problems that people like me are, having a program that is virtually unuseable.

It is very frustrating having paid for a program that we now cannot use.

Understood. I sympathize (and try to empathize ;-}). -R

[rpavich1234]

I LIKE LR4...that's why this is so frustrating for me.

I had to go back to LR3 100% because my experience is just like the other poster's above..really bad..so bad it's unusuable...huge pauses over the slightest thing.

I'm not going to reconfigure or tear my system apart because Adobe has huge bug issues with this release...that's rediculous!

I'm expecting them to fix whatever henius issue they have and then everything will be pretty normal...if they don't...I paid for something that I'll never use and I'll call it a lesson.

[areohbee]

rpavich1234 wrote:

I'm not going to reconfigure or tear my system apart because Adobe has huge bug issues with this release...that's rediculous!

Adobe is taking responsibility for *their* problem: They are trying to solve bugs that effect sales / profit...

Why not take responsibility for *your* problem? - Lightroom is not working well on *your* machine.

I'm not saying there aren't some *very* good reasons for not wanting that *job* (like your time+money, and technical know-how...), but "Adobe should..., and I shouldn't have to..." are *not* good reasons, in my opinion.

Good luck with it...,

Rob

[rpavich1234]

Lol..take responsibilty for MY problem? That's laughable.

LR3.6....greased freaking lightening.

Every other app on my machine....no problem...

LR4....so freaking buggy that I can't even move a slider without the most grevious crash....

And it's MY problem?

Get real Adobe fan boy

[joshnl77]

There have been 14 - that deserves repeating - 14 pages of discussion on this thread, and no real solutions have been reached. This and the incessant, ridiculous bickering between many of you is a perfect example of what makes most of these forums so utterly useless.

[Lee_Jay]

joshnl77 wrote:

There have been 14 - that deserves repeating - 14 pages of discussion on this thread, and no real solutions have been reached.

Few people are trying to reach any solutions, with most people posting very little information and instead just ranting.  And when I try to get people to work together to try to find an element that might be common to the affected systems, I get a lot of "that's Adobe's job" sort of feedback, even though this is a user-to-user forum.

[kwdaves]

joshnl77 wrote:

There have been 14 - that deserves repeating - 14 pages of discussion on this thread, and no real solutions have been reached. This and the incessant, ridiculous bickering between many of you is a perfect example of what makes most of these forums so utterly useless.

I agree with you, but I will use a reply to you as my own way to vent on the subject.

I am not an IT professional so I will use my own layman's terms. Pretty much since the gitgo Lightroom has been finicky about the condition of some users' catalogs.

Some users get blank (usually gray) thumbnails because Lightroom doesn't "like" their monitor profile. Changing the profile fixes that problem.

After and upgrade or update, Lightroom can become so sluggish that the program is unusable for some. Deleting all the previews and regenerating standard previews fixed the problem for some users (twice for me).

Far from ignoring the problems, Adobe employees, including Thomas Hogarty, Melissa Gaul, Dan Tull and Eric Chan, have posted on this the U2U forum from time to time to solicit information, including inviting users to send in their problematic catalogs for examination by Adobe. The fact that some users have these problems while some don't has made it more difficult to isolate the  the problem(s).

I am not claiming that Lightroom 4 doesn't have its own problems. I sometimes see a lag in the screen re-drawing when using the sliders in the Develop module, usually after I have been using them for an extended period. That includes a lag in the noise reduction appearing on screen.

Also, the map module freezes after importing .gpx files from my handheld GPS. Closing Lightroom 4 and immediately re-opening it fixes that for me.