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

[areohbee]

What's abnormal, is that it only uses one CPU (zooming to 1:1 and having to render in Library module).

I mean, maybe that's normal on some machines, but on mine all 4 CPUs are used @100% (win7/64, AMD).

R

[bob frost]

From: "Rob Cole

What's abnormal, is that it only uses one CPU (zooming to 1:1 and having

to render in Library module).

I mean, maybe that's normal on some machines, but on mine all 4 CPUs are

used.

OK found his original post. If it were me, I would turn off hyperthreading

in whatever Macs use for a Bios, and see if that makes any difference. My

Win7 is the same as yours; all cores used in rendering in Develop and

Library.

Is this a general problem on Macs?

Bob Frost

[Geoff the kiwi]

My i7MBP uses 4 cores for rendering.

I don't know if bios can be changed in a Mac, who would want to??

[bob frost]

From: "Geoff the kiwi

I don't know if bios can be changed in a Mac, who would want to??

Someone whose mac isn't working properly?

Bob Frost

[Bob_Peters]

Rob Cole wrote:

What's abnormal, is that it only uses one CPU (zooming to 1:1 and having to render in Library module).

I mean, maybe that's normal on some machines, but on mine all 4 CPUs are used @100% (win7/64, AMD).

R

Yes!  And the fact that it takes longer to see an existing 1:1 preview in the Library module that it does in the Develop.

[Bob_Peters]

bob frost wrote:

From: "Stephen_Carpenter

Yes but if you make any changes in develop then in library mode it will

have to re-render the 1:1 preview when you look at it at 100%. This

operation takes almost twice as long as rendering a 100% view in develop.

I believe this is what the other Bob was referring to.

Ah, I see what you/he means. On my machine I wouldn't describe this

difference as 'abnormal' because it is just under 3 secs in Develop and

about 4 secs back in Library (with D800 nefs). Not a significant difference,

but if his D800 nefs are taking 12 secs in Develop, then I can't see any way

round needing a faster computer to cope with those big nefs.

Bob Frost

I agree.  I had a 6-core MacPro for 5 days but it only gave a factor of 2 improvement which wasn't worth $3k.  I returned it to Apple on Tuesday.

[Bob_Peters]

bob frost wrote:

From: "Rob Cole

What's abnormal, is that it only uses one CPU (zooming to 1:1 and having

to render in Library module).

I mean, maybe that's normal on some machines, but on mine all 4 CPUs are

used.

OK found his original post. If it were me, I would turn off hyperthreading

in whatever Macs use for a Bios, and see if that makes any difference. My

Win7 is the same as yours; all cores used in rendering in Develop and

Library.

Is this a general problem on Macs?

Bob Frost

My MacPro has 4, real cores.  As far as I know those old XEON processors knew nothing about hyper-threading.

The problem with the MacPro is that it has been neglected by Apple.  Getting a factor of 2 speed improvement over a span of 5 years is pitiful.

[Bob_Peters]

Geoff the kiwi wrote:

My i7MBP uses 4 cores for rendering.

I don't know if bios can be changed in a Mac, who would want to??

How many cores are used to view an existing 1:1 preview by zooming to 1:1 in the Library module?

I'm getting closer and closer to replacing my 2011, 13-inch MacBook Air with the new MacBook Pro, using that to drive my main monitor and mounting the MacPro as a bank of external drives.  And then wait for Apple to clean up this mess in (Calendar?  Fiscal?) 2013.  That littli MacBook Air is as "fast" as my MacPro

[SavagePhoto-lItHqa]

Bob I was just opening LR when I started to access these files.... Lightroom was opening to the Library Grid.

[Guest]

AFAIK,

Zooming to 1:1 in Library uses the 1:1 previews you have already created and

should therefore be quick. If you haven't created 1:1 previews, then they

have to be made on the spot and that will cause a delay.

Zooming to 1:1 in Develop, on the other hand, always re-renders the file, so

there will always be a delay. It doesn't use the previews, even if you have

them.

Bob Frost

-------

This is a superb answer. I've spent a few days checking on slowness simply because of a difference in expectations on my end and a habit of browsing photos while in the develop module - this simple tidbit of information has rectified my issue.Thanks Bob, and best of luck to those whose problems persist.

[Guest]

I remember back in the days of LR2 on my 2006 MP 1:1 previews took on the order of 3-5 seconds. With each version of LR since then, this got longer and longer, until LR 4.0 streatched it to 10+ seconds. LR 4.1 cut a couple seconds off, but working in LR was still more a chore than something I look forward to as I did 3 years ago. Last week I bought a new 5,1 Mac Pro (yes I know, the processor is 3 years old). It's the 6-core model (3.33 GHz) with 24 GB of RAM and a 512 GB Crucial SSD, to which I moved my LR master cataloge. I'm happy to report that, $3600 later, I'm zipping through 1:1 previoew in 2-3 seconds, even in Develop mode.

[SavagePhoto-lItHqa]

your going to LOVE this bit of troubleshooting. coming from the idea that a better computer is what causes problems with LR. I installed Linux. Created a virtual box to install windows7. this virtual box is setup as a 4 core system with only 8g ram. then installed LR 4.1 in this. Guess what. it runs like a charm. If I could figure out how to share drives between the Linux VM and real windows without mapping drives in the VM I would do all my work in linux untill adobe figures this out.

[bob frost]

From: "Stephen_Carpenter

Yes but if you make any changes in develop then in library mode it will

have to re-render the 1:1 preview when you look at it at 100%. This

operation takes almost twice as long as rendering a 100% view in develop.

Just got the answer to that one. It takes longer for Library to render a 1:1

than Develop, because Library has to render the whole 1:1 preview - the

whole image - to save. Develop only renders the part of the image on the

screen at 1:1 so that is quicker.

Bob Frost

[Bob_Peters]

akadmon wrote:

I remember back in the days of LR2 on my 2006 MP 1:1 previews took on the order of 3-5 seconds. With each version of LR since then, this got longer and longer, until LR 4.0 streatched it to 10+ seconds. LR 4.1 cut a couple seconds off, but working in LR was still more a chore than something I look forward to as I did 3 years ago. Last week I bought a new 5,1 Mac Pro (yes I know, the processor is 3 years old). It's the 6-core model (3.33 GHz) with 24 GB of RAM and a 512 GB Crucial SSD, to which I moved my LR master cataloge. I'm happy to report that, $3600 later, I'm zipping through 1:1 previoew in 2-3 seconds, even in Develop mode.

Are those D800 files?  If so, I confused...again.  I returned a 6-core MacPro to Apple last week because the 1:1 generation was taking about 6 seconds.

[Guest]

These are Canon RAW, roughly 20-25 MB each.

[bob frost]

From: "akadmon

These are Canon RAW, roughly 20-25 MB each.

OK so half the size of your D800 files, bob, and half the time to render.

Bob Frost

[Bob_Peters]

bob frost wrote:

From: "akadmon

These are Canon RAW, roughly 20-25 MB each.

OK so half the size of your D800 files, bob, and half the time to render.

Bob Frost

Agreed.

Now I still want to know why it takes longer to zoom an existing preview to 1:1 in the Library module that it does to render the NEF in the develop module.

And why does my aged MacPro only use a single core to perform the zoomiing operation in the Library?

And why in a 2-core, i5 MacBook Air the same operation still uses a single core at a time.  There is some activiey on 2 cores but the overlap is slight and the virtual cores are bystanders?

And why I keep beating my head against this wall

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

Bob_Peters wrote:

Now I still want to know why it takes longer to zoom an existing preview to 1:1 in the Library module that it does to render the NEF in the develop module.

The 1:1 preview was rendered before you made Develop adjustments, and now needs re-rendering?

[bob frost]

Bob_Peters wrote:

Now I still want to know why it takes longer to zoom an existing preview to 1:1 in the Library module that it does to render the NEF in the develop module.

And why does my aged MacPro only use a single core to perform the zoomiing operation in the Library?

And why in a 2-core, i5 MacBook Air the same operation still uses a single core at a time.  There is some activiey on 2 cores but the overlap is slight and the virtual cores are bystanders?

And why I keep beating my head against this wall

Zooming an existing preview to 1:1 should be more or less instantaneous in Library. If it isn't, my guess is that there isn't an existing 1:1 preview, or if there is the previews database doesn't think there is, or you have done something in Develop that makes it necessary to re-render the preview.

As to why your macs are only using 1 core while rendering the 1:1 preview, I'm lost. I've never used a Mac in my life, so I don't understand their foibles. AFAIK most of LR is multithreaded, and rendering certainly uses all of my 6 cores.

If you delete the 1:1 previews of some files, and then set LR to build them again, does it still only use 1 core, or does that make it use all cores?

As to why you're beating your head against the wall, I think it's called 'Mac Syndrome' 

Bob Frost

[Bob_Peters]

Victoria Bampton wrote:

Bob_Peters wrote:

Now I still want to know why it takes longer to zoom an existing preview to 1:1 in the Library module that it does to render the NEF in the develop module.

The 1:1 preview was rendered before you made Develop adjustments, and now needs re-rendering?

No.

I imported some files, made no adjustments, cleared the ACR Cache and then rendered 1:1 previews.  All measurements/observations were made after that time.

[Bob_Peters]

bob frost wrote:

Bob_Peters wrote:

Now I still want to know why it takes longer to zoom an existing preview to 1:1 in the Library module that it does to render the NEF in the develop module.

And why does my aged MacPro only use a single core to perform the zoomiing operation in the Library?

And why in a 2-core, i5 MacBook Air the same operation still uses a single core at a time.  There is some activiey on 2 cores but the overlap is slight and the virtual cores are bystanders?

And why I keep beating my head against this wall

Zooming an existing preview to 1:1 should be more or less instantaneous in Library. If it isn't, my guess is that there isn't an existing 1:1 preview, or if there is the previews database doesn't think there is, or you have done something in Develop that makes it necessary to re-render the preview.

As to why your macs are only using 1 core while rendering the 1:1 preview, I'm lost. I've never used a Mac in my life, so I don't understand their foibles. AFAIK most of LR is multithreaded, and rendering certainly uses all of my 6 cores.

If you delete the 1:1 previews of some files, and then set LR to build them again, does it still only use 1 core, or does that make it use all cores?

As to why you're beating your head against the wall, I think it's called 'Mac Syndrome' 

Bob Frost

  I always follow the same prescription:

(1)  clear the ACR Cache

(2)  select the images of interest

(3)  discard 1:1 previews for those images

(4)  render the 1:1 previews for those images

(5)  observe zooming in the Library and Develop modules for only those selected images.

This is the sequence of events and I never deviate from that sequence.

"Mac Syndrome' sounds as good as anything I'veheard so far

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

Bob_Peters wrote:

I imported some files, made no adjustments, cleared the ACR Cache and then rendered 1:1 previews.  All measurements/observations were made after that time.

So when you view the photo in Develop, it just processes the bit you can see on screen if you're viewing a zoomed view, or processes a screen res view if you're zoomed out.

When you create a 1:1 preview in Library, it applies the full processing pipeline to the whole full res photo, so that's slower.

The bit I'm not clear on - are you saying you've just created this 1:1 preview in Library, made no further Develop adjustments, and yet it's slow to zoom in to that ready-built preview?

[Bob_Peters]

Victoria Bampton wrote:

Bob_Peters wrote:

I imported some files, made no adjustments, cleared the ACR Cache and then rendered 1:1 previews.  All measurements/observations were made after that time.

So when you view the photo in Develop, it just processes the bit you can see on screen if you're viewing a zoomed view, or processes a screen res view if you're zoomed out.

When you create a 1:1 preview in Library, it applies the full processing pipeline to the whole full res photo, so that's slower.

The bit I'm not clear on - are you saying you've just created this 1:1 preview in Library, made no further Develop adjustments, and yet it's slow to zoom in to that ready-built preview?

Please see the response I sent to Bob Frost.  It's just prior to your post.

I always follow those steps and zoom out before zooming to 1:1.  Zooming to 1:1 on an existing 1:1 preview in the Library is slower than performing that operation in the Develop module. This is true for my 5-year-old Mac Pro and my 2011, core i5 MacBook air.

And for both computers there is essentially one core active at a given instant when zooming to 1:1 in the Library module.

[Bob_Peters]

Why was the posting of this message delayed? I don't understand this at all.

Bob Peters

[DavePinMinn]

Somebody PLEASE tell me there's a set of optimizations somewhere, that make drastic improvements in LR4.x performance...

Anyhow, in case it matters....  i7 processor clocked at 4GHz, 12GB of memory, SIX SATA spindles so everything associated with the O/S and LR is on a different drive, CREATED a catalog from scratch, CONVERTED the raw D300 files to dng, and on and on... I even rendered 1:1 previews for everything I was going to work on tonight, and it STILL takes a visibly perceptible amount of time JUST TO SET A LABEL (massively slower than v3).  My Develop issues are similar to those already stated here by many others. 

So, please tell me there's a fix (fixes?) out there that I've just missed (with a pointer, please)...  Or some set of optimizations specific to LR4 that'll help.