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

[andreas603]

Lee Jay...I haven't posted in a while but still listening to this stream and the adobe labs one... I stick by my earlier point about the fact that it is not helpful whatsoever any more for people to post their experiences and provide input because there is no standard input 'form' being requested by Adobe.  How can you diagnose a problem and trouble shoot it when noone provides the SAME base information that Adobe needs... We all 'think' we are providing adobe the right information to diagnose but are we?  What EXACTLY does Adobe want to know about our configs/operating environment to run diagnostics, root cause, etc... WHO THE HE** KNOW!  CPU?  OS? RAM? Cache location?  All guesses...some great guesses mind you from from very smart users, but without GUIDANCE from Adobe we're fishing for paper clips in the ocean.   Just my 2 cents....I'll remain on 3.6 until fixed... (and my 5D MII...my new $3800 5D MIII is collecting dust at the moment beacause I can't process my *&^%!@&! RAW files!!!!)

[Robbie2006]

Hi Tony,

Just to clarify a point, Lightroom had created the path and the folder name for the scratch disk on my external hard drive but omitted to create the folder on my hard drive, therefore when I was using LR4 and ran out of RAM my poor old PC went looking for the scratch disk and couldn't find it  (that would explain the slowness after 5 minutes) its like trying to save a word document to a particular folder but it wont save cause that folder wasn't there.

Regards.

[John_Carter_from_Mars]

well I found the solution I think.... On windows machine go to edit, preferences, camera raw cache settings and make sure it's not anymore the 4G. Mine was set to 100 and as soon as I put it down to 4 everything worked great.. worked for me hope it works for everyone else!

[John_Carter_from_Mars]

I want to say it has increased the speed of operation at least 200% amazing! It never ran this quick!! all functions in the develop module are instantaneous.

[sparksdjs]

John Carter from Mars wrote:

I want to say it has increased the speed of operation at least 200% amazing! It never ran this quick!! all functions in the develop module are instantaneous.

Not here - performance still sucks to the degree that it is not usable.  Glad it helped you, though.

Dave

[SistersCountry]

John,

Did you happen to check to see what your actual usage was before reducing the size? Mine is running well now so I don't want to mess with anything, but I do see that I have about 6,5 Gigs in the cache. Mine is set at 35 Gb, probably way more than I need with a 16 Mb camera. I could imagine a correlation if you had a huge amount in the cache just as there might be if there was not enough room allocated.

Gary

John Carter wrote:

On windows machine go to edit, preferences, camera raw cache settings and make sure it's not anymore the 4G. Mine was set to 100 and as soon as I put it down to 4 everything worked great.. worked for me hope it works for everyone else!

[areohbee]

SistersCountry wrote:

John,

Did you happen to check to see what your actual usage was before reducing the size? Mine is running well now so I don't want to mess with anything, but I do see that I have about 6,5 Gigs in the cache. Mine is set at 35 Gb, probably way more than I need with a 16 Mb camera. I could imagine a correlation if you had a huge amount in the cache just as there might be if there was not enough room allocated.

Gary

John Carter wrote:

On windows machine go to edit, preferences, camera raw cache settings and make sure it's not anymore the 4G. Mine was set to 100 and as soon as I put it down to 4 everything worked great.. worked for me hope it works for everyone else!

My guess: It had nothing to do with actual cache size / use, but just shook things up a bit somehow...

I once had a problem in Lr3's earlier days that was solved simply by moving the cache. There was nothing wrong with where it was located, but it forced Lightroom to re-think some things... After moving it back to the original location, the problem did not return.

Cheers,

Rob

[bob frost]

Did you happen to check to see what your actual usage was before reducing the size? Mine is running well now so I don't want to mess with anything, but I do see that I have about 6,5 Gigs in the cache. Mine is set at 35 Gb, probably way more than I need with a 16 Mb camera. I could imagine a correlation if you had a huge amount in the cache just as there might be if there was not enough room allocated.

You can easily work out how much space you need in your ACR cache as each of the new xxx.dat files is about 500KB in size on average (my 55K  of .dat files take up 30GB of space in the cache. All 1:1 previews rendered). If you make it smaller than it needs to hold all the xxx.dat files it simply works on deleting the oldest .dat file to make space for a new one. These .dat files only  get changed when you delete and image or render a new image.

Bob Frost

[fliplip1]

Ive been having a real hard time with LR4. since the beta its been unbearably slow on my 3 year old dual core AMD PC with 4GB ram. I upgraded the ram to 8GB and that made no difference at all (although it did to every other program by the look of it). All this time LR3.6 has been flying.

I gave up and replaced the CPU and MoBo with a i5 and faster ram and that seems to have done the trick. I just plugged the HDD's back in, didn't re install anything, I just let Windows 7 64bit update its drivers and that was it. I've even tried it with just 4GB DDR3 1600 in and noticed no slowdown.

So at least that shows (on my system) that the amount of ram, and the speed/size of the HDD wasnt the problem.

[John_Carter_from_Mars]

I didn't check.. I was just brainstorming the tweaks I had done when setting up LR4 and had remembered that I changed the cache size 'more is better' haha.. not necessarily! checked it today, running great on raw files.. curious to see if it will slow down again. That's kind what happened after setting LR up, it progressively got slower to the point I wanted though the whole system out the window. One thing that I did find a bit useful was running CCleaner a file registry cleaner did help for 4 or 5 photos then it was useless.. well, sorry it didn't help to many of you.. Probably going to be a combination of factors unique to each system.

[areohbee]

When Lightroom is running normally (meaning good: no snafu-y bottlenecking...), faster hardware will make some improvement. However, for the vast majority of people reporting problems in this thread, Lightroom is not running normally on their systems, thus faster hardware will not help significantly, and may even make things worse. If it makes things significantly better, it's only because it eliminated one or more of those snafu-y bottlenecks...

Some people have found solutions by doing things like changing or deleting cache, deleting previews & prefs... - when something was amiss that "re-thinking" those things got back on track. For others, that isn't the problem...

Some people have found solutions by installing different hardware or drivers (or removing...) - since something done in that process helped..., others: that's not it.

Sorry if this has all been said already...

Rob

[glugglug]

For every problem on a computer someone suggests defrag, change cache, cleaning the registry etc etc. This problem is affecting people on Macs and PCs of all kinds of specifications. It is affecting Lightroom 4 but not their other applications. Logic? The problem is not the computer but with Lightroom. Doh!

The other 'solution' is to get upgraded hardware, as if that solves a problem. The best you can hope for if you are having a problem with a computer three years old is to double the speed, lets say quadruple it. With the speed of Lightroom as it is, you will spend thousands of pounds/ dollars/ Euros and end up with a previously unusable speed which in now unacceptable. My computer if easily capable of intensive video editing. If it is not able to run LR satisfactorily, that is a problem with LR, is it not?

Leave the silver bullets and the feelgood solutions. This is a problem with Lightroom that Adobe must solve. They don't give anyone much confidence by refusing to acknowledge the problem exists but if it is not to affect long term Lightroom sales, they must do something soon.

Rule number one in crisis management is to acknowledge the problem.

[areohbee]

glugglug wrote:

The other 'solution' is to get upgraded hardware, as if that solves a problem.

That *has* made for huge improvement in some cases, in others: not.

It may improve things because it shakes the system up with new drivers and what have you in a way that Lightroom likes better, *not* because the hardware is faster.

So the question you need to ask yourself is "Do you feel lucky?" - if you do, you may be able to find a bullet, if not silver, then at least bronze, to get you through until Adobe remedies, which they will, in time, at least to some extent, like they did with Lr3...

Lightroom performs pretty darn good, most of the time, for most people I think, certainly it does for me.

R

[gbdid]

I had to bite the bullet, costly silver one that is, and built a new computer today. i53570 cpu and H77 motherboard, windows 7 64 bit and 8 gig ram. Whereas lightroom 4 was totally unuseable on the old ?E6750 core 2 duo with vista 32 bit so far on this new machine it flies.I have only imported one CR2 image to work on but its the same image I had so much trouble with on the old machine.Almost instant responses to the sharpening and noise sliders. I hope it keeps going like this.

So for me Lightoom 4 has only cost the upgrade price plus the A$850 for the new bits.

[areohbee]

That's good news. Sounds like A$850 well spent.

Thanks for reporting.

Cheers,

Rob

[glugglug]

Here is something interesting. Started LR an hour ago. It starts to load then a dialog box opens up saying (as close as I can recall) "There is a problem with your catalog. Lightroom will check the integrity. This may take some minutes". I clicked OK, then the dialog appeared a second time. I thought, 'here we go' but no worries because I always have two completely up to date back ups on other disks, NAS and USB3 portable disk. Lightroom then closed itself down.

I then re-opened Lightroom to see what had happened. First thing I noticed was that my second monitor was refreshing instantaneously. Second, I tried the adjustments. They are operating at the same speed as I recall LR3 doing, though when first clicking on the (say) blacks slider, it hesitates for a couple of seconds, lagging behind the pointer. On catching up, it them operates in real time. Slide it up and down and watch the effect as you do it. Ditto the others.

I have no idea why this dialog box came up since I am working with the same catalog I always do. In fact, I only have one. The dialog box that came up I have never seen before. The odd thing is that deleting and renewing the catalog doesn't appear to speed things up......

I'm very glad I didn't spend £700 on a new machine, I must say.

[areohbee]

glugglug wrote:

I'm very glad I didn't spend £700 on a new machine, I must say.

Because:

A. you think it wouldn't have helped.

B. Even if it solved most of your performance problems, it wouldn't have been worth it.

C. You would have resented it, regardless of whether it helped or not.

D. All of the above.

E. None of the above.

?

The best reason to upgrade (or downgrade) your machine is:

- the one you have is not executing your software the way you want.

i.e. I mean, if you haven't upgraded recently, you could think of poor Lightroom performance as an opportunity to upgrade. And if you have upgraded recently, consider going to the store and buying an ultra-cheap graphics card, in case your graphics driver is part of the problem, or downshift to mainboard graphics.

I'm not saying the problems won't be remedied by Adobe, only that you may find relief if you seek it - may require small hammer, may require big hammer...

----------------------------

glugglug wrote:
Rule number one in crisis management is to acknowledge the problem. 

---------------------------

Adobe has acknowledged the problem, publicly:

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lr4_0_reacts_extremely_slow

Rob

[glugglug]

The answer is A. It doesn't need help from a new machine. It is running very nicely.

I make money with my computer and therefore wish to keep my profit margin as high as possible. I have computers in England and France since I come and go between those countries. The fastest computer (bought and installed a month ago, all mod cons) is in France. A video render which takes 4 hours on my old machine in England takes 2 on my France machine. That is no difference at all, since I set it going when I am doing something else. Drinking the local wine, for example

All my video editing and other work is done at satisfactory speed on both computers. Why would I change them, simply because one program, Lightroom, is performing badly? In fact, as I explained, Lightroom was a dog on both machines but, miraculously, now is working very well. It is not slow. I am entirely happy personally even if Adobe leave it as it is.

If I have a problem, I prefer not to just throw money at it. I prefer to thnk it through. I have no need of ultra cheap video cards since I already have expensive ones, though they make little difference to LR. A huge difference to flight sims, though.

I used to buy new computers every year or so but I now find that a 4 or 5 year cycle is more financially sound with upgrades if useful. Ditto cameras. The technical advances being made with computers now benefit games players more than anyone else. The advances to cameras, again, are of more benefit to technically minded amateurs than professionals in general.

[A_C_G]

Glugglug,

So what we need you to do is find out why LR came up with this message:-

""There is a problem with your catalog. Lightroom will check the integrity. This may take some minutes".

If this was the breakthrough for you then it might be for some of us. Can you find out what triggers that message?

Tony

[glugglug]

A C G wrote:

Glugglug,

So what we need you to do is find out why LR came up with this message:-

""There is a problem with your catalog. Lightroom will check the integrity. This may take some minutes".

If this was the breakthrough for you then it might be for some of us. Can you find out what triggers that message?

Tony

Tony, I wish I could be more helpful. I had reduced the cache size to 4gb but used LR several times after that and found the performance unchanged, ie slow. Then that message out of the blue and LR shut itself down.As I said, I thought I had a major ****-up since the message had a doomy air to it but I'm always well covered by backups, so not too much of a worry.

On starting it up again the problem had gone. LR is still not the fastest program on my machine but my second monitor now goes from image to image almost immediately as I click them in grid view on my first monitor and all the Develop settings happen adequately fast, certainly more than acceptable. The trouble is, I did nothing to trigger the message except start Lightroom up and It hasn't shown itself again since, presumably whatever the problem was was seen by LR and corrected.

What my experience proves to me is that the problem is not hardware related since I now have acceptable performance having made no hardware chaanges. It may be cache related but I have no reason to think so. I will keep an an eye out and if I notice anything that gives me a clue I'll post it here straight away, of course.

[A_C_G]

What a shame Glugglug.

I found you can get LR to  check the integrity of a catalogue by altering the box in Preferences/General to make it offer you a choice of catalogues instead of automatically loading the latest one.

In the selection box offered when you start LR there is a tick box to check integrity. Using it made no differerence to my LR4 speed.

Oh well. We wait on 4.1

Tony

[Chris GC]

I have been following this blog since I loaded LR 4 and RC2 - 4.1, I realIy like LR and the new features so followed the early advice to renew the previews etc and whilst performance is now generally OK it is slower with 2012 process.  I have noticed something strange when I went to check the Adobe Camera raw cache size. I have plenty of room with it set to 100gb - however I noticed that using develop module with the current version 2012 no new cache files were being created. A bit of experimenting showed that old pictures still with the old 2010 process would create cache files when opened in develop module - however any pictures already in 2012 process or converted to the 2012 process would not develop a cache file. I have tried to find out whether the 2012 process uses the cache differently but cannot find any details. Is this part of the reason why the 2012 process is slower because it doesn't use the camera raw cache or am I missing some settings somewhere?

[Lee_Jay]

Have you tried purging the CR cache?

[Chris GC]

Yes - I purged the cache and then monitored the folder to see when it was populated.

[Lee_Jay]

Chris GC wrote:

Yes - I purged the cache and then monitored the folder to see when it was populated.

Just so I make sure I got this:

Purge the cache.

Monitor the cache.

Edit an image in PV2010 - new file gets created in the cache folder

Edit a different image in PV2012 - no new file gets created in the cache folder

The behavior persists.

Is that correct?

And we are talking about raw files in both cases, correct?