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

[Another_Photographer-qoO2PF]

Rob Cole wrote:

davepinminn wrote:

I believe the best thing that could happen to us as consumers would be a real, fanny-kicking, spectacular set of tools to compete with Adobe.

Google maybe? - I heard they recently purchased Nik Software - they must have something up their sleeve...

Picassa + Nik + $ = Lightroom killer?

Do you think Google bought Nik for Capture NX or for Snapseed?

[areohbee]

Dunno, but perhaps it warrants a new thread:

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1104421

[Todd Shaner]

As I see it there are two primary groups of LR users – Professionals (i.e. how they earn a living) and Semi-Pro, Amateur, Point & Shoot. When I offered a suggestion concerning shooting JPEG or raw+JPEG it received criticism from the first group (Pros). "So we should just let the camera do everything and then just use LR for cataloging, creating slide shows and books?"

In 1974 I started using SLR cameras and fixed focal length lenses with completely "manual" metering, shutter speed, aperture, and focus. I've experienced the complete evolution from full manual analog film photography to what we have with today's digital photography, and there is no reason to believe we've reached the "end of the line" concerning technology advancements.

For example, when autofocus was first introduced it took a considerable amount of time before “serious photographers” would consider purchasing new autofocus bodies and lenses (self included). The lack of investment in autofocus technology even caused some camera companies to go out of business. How many people in this forum still actually use “manual” cameras that don’t have autofocus, auto aperture and auto shutter capability?

I'm sure many "future" technology enhancements will be just as useful to ALL photographers. It’s also clear that just about everything is moving to Cloud computing. Those companies that come up with the best and most cost-effective Cloud implementations will be the clear winners. It should be very interesting!

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

Another Photographer wrote:

They rushed LR4 out the door unfinished just as Nikon was releasing the D4 and D800 so that they can avoid supporting those cameras in LR3.  Shameless.

The release date was set long before anyone knew about the D4 and D800, believe me.  They don't set release dates based on what other companies happen to be doing.

[areohbee]

Knowing the truth takes all the fun out of conspiracy theories.

[Charles Putnam]

Up to 74 pages on just this thread, and no real solutions from Adobe.  My biggest issue is the lag switching between modules after first starting LR4.1.  Specifically, it takes upwards of 25 seconds for the Book module to load the first time (this, on a 2010 MBP with a 7500 rpm drive and 8gigs of RAM). 

When Mountain Lion comes out next week, LR4.1 will most likely be replace by Aperture.

[areohbee]

BigCPixelbender wrote:

My biggest issue is the lag switching between modules after first starting LR4.1.

Really? Lr only loads modules upon first use - it's a design thing. But 25 seconds sounds abnormally long. (I just checked, Book module takes several seconds to load (first time only), but not anywhere near 25). Anybody have any idea why it's taking "BigC"'s system so long to load Book module? - disk is healthy?

Rob

[Another_Photographer-qoO2PF]

Rob Cole wrote:

BigCPixelbender wrote:

My biggest issue is the lag switching between modules after first starting LR4.1.

Really? Lr only loads modules upon first use - it's a design thing. But 25 seconds sounds abnormally long. (I just checked, Book module takes several seconds to load (first time only), but not anywhere near 25). Anybody have any idea why it's taking "BigC"'s system so long to load Book module? - disk is healthy?

Rob

I know exactly why it's taking so long.  Comptetition.  There isn't any.  LR needs to have more comptetition. 

[areohbee]

I know you're miffed. But, seriously: why 25 seconds to load the Book module - that sounds abnormal to me.

I mean, if Lr were performing abnormally for me, I'd be miffed too. - it's one thing to be disappointed with a normally functioning Lr, and another entirely if your perception of Lr is being influenced by abnormal performance issues.

Believe me, I have my gripes too, but Lr is mostly fast in develop mode, once loaded, and mostly fast in library mode, once previews are available. So I am mostly happy with Lr performance. I have my complaints, but it's *far* from "unusable" or "molasses in winter"...

Rob

[Charles Putnam]

The disk is fine.  It's a 500gig 7400rpm HD with about 20% of the space used.  2010 MBP with Intel i5 2.3GHz, 8gigs of RAM.  There's no real reason for the length of time it takes for the modules to load.  And yes, I've even tried doing a clean install of Lion.

[areohbee]

BigCPixelbender wrote:

There's no real reason for the length of time it takes for the modules to load.

I wouldn't be so sure. I mean, it sounds like you're on the "Lr4 is pure yuck" track, but you may be seeing it through yuck colored glasses...

Book module took about 8 seconds to load (the very first time ever). But now after Lr restart it comes up in about 1 second, first time (subsequent times are instantaneous).

[areohbee]

BigCPixelbender wrote:

The disk is fine.

I'm assuming you've double-checked this, as opposed to just assuming.

But, there should be a light-bulb pulsing inside your mind: "something *isn't* fine".

Don't get me wrong: I have no stake in whether you use Lr or switch to another app... (my aim is not "defensive") - the best one to use is the one that runs the best...

If Lr is behaving abnormally, its probably due to a bug in Lr - and I probably have gone on too long about it already - sorry...

The disk I use for templates is the same as system disk, paging disk, temp disk, program disk...(but not catalog disk, and not photo disk) - not high performance... (and medium-powered system), but my book module loads *much* faster than yours. Hmmmmm......

Rob

[RikkFlohr]

I responded in his other thread. It is disk load time to bring the templates into memory from disk.

[areohbee]

Rikk Flohr wrote:

It is disk load time to bring the templates into memory from disk.

Does 25 seconds for first load not sound abnormal to you?

I can load gigabytes in 25 seconds.

[RikkFlohr]

Just measuring bit-throughput, it is slow. But how many templates have to be loaded (many files take longer than one file) and what has to be done with them?  It is 300 mb of data read from disk in descrete chunks.

In the other thread I reported 8 seconds for the first load of Book. 

After killing Lightroom and letting memory relax, Book takes 2 seconds to load on a subsequent load of LR

in the same session going to develop and back to book takes less than a second.

8 Seconds VS 25  on similar RPM disks (yet different data buses) is a breeze. I would be cheesed at 25 seconds but I don't notice 8.

[SeanMcCormack]

First time with Book on an old (2.5 Ghz Core 2 Duo) MBP took over 25 secs to load, but subsequent loads are 2-3 secs. Now I have run Book on this catalog before-it lives on a FW800 external, but not this machine. 25 secs everytime would be painful.

[RikkFlohr]

I have a 2009  2.4 GHZ Core Duo MB (the month before they turned my model into a MBP) with 4 GB of RAM catalog on local drive. Load time for book is 15 seconds initially. 2 seconds subsequently.

[DavePinMinn]

Going back to Rikk's reply of 8 seconds to load Book...

I never use the book module, so I"ve not tried to load it previously.  But, just for fun I just fired it up from Develop......  And started counting seconds on the wall clock...  I kid you not, and I'm not exaggerating........  It took almost 40 SECONDS for the thing to load and display...  So, whatever's going on with the 25 seconds, I"m seeing it too.  Once it loaded, I could go back and forth between Book and Develop in a second, but the initial load was incredibly slow.

And I'm not using the batch file to start things...  During that 40 seconds I watched CPU 0,2, and 4, and they were very busy, although aggregate Usage was in the 25% range (which I presume wants to check all 8 threads, of which I"m only using 3)...

Does the book module take a long time for the initial load for other PC users?

[RikkFlohr]

8 Seconds on my speedy new PC. 15 on my 3-year old MB 13inch.  In any case, 25-40 seconds seems like something is going awry.

[areohbee]

davepinminn wrote:

...It took almost 40 SECONDS for the thing to load and display...

I postulate this is abnormal performance, and indicative of some problem. Does anybody disagree?

PS - after loading, switching to the book module is almost instantaneous for me.

[DavePinMinn]

Yes, once it loaded I could switch into and out of the Book module as quickly as any other.  It was only the initial load that was incredibly slow.

I also shut down LR, restarted it, and went back into Book, and it only took a second or 2...

It does load a lot of SOMETHING 'cause memory usage jumped from what it was initially (I didn't look) to right around 4.5 GB, of which lightroom.exe is just under 2GB.  So something is doing a lot of something.  Again, I don't use Book, so I'm not sure if there's some bizarre thing mine is doing by default...

Rikk, on your speedy new PC are you loading everything from SSDs?  'Cause otherwise, presuming we're all using 7200 rpm SATA drives, once the CPU hands a request off to the disk, everything goes on hold until the data comes back, so I'm not sure why there's such a drastic performance difference... 

When you jump from Library to Develop, and start walking through RAW images, do you have a feel for approximately how long the "Loading" stays on?  'Cause that's one area I see as extremely slow compared to V3.  And my RAW files are just 12 megapixel D300 files.

[RikkFlohr]

No SSDs on my machine.  I am waiting for larger capacity.

1-2 seconds loading for uncached images Library to Develop Canon 5DMKII files.

[areohbee]

davepinminn wrote:

When you jump from Library to Develop, and start walking through RAW images, do you have a feel for approximately how long the "Loading" stays on?  'Cause that's one area I see as extremely slow compared to V3.  And my RAW files are just 12 megapixel D300 files.

It takes about 2-4 seconds for me, depending on editing (D300 raws), which is a little slower than Lr3 (which is to be expected due to CA, NR, & PV), but not a lot slower (win7/64, AMD).

Note: I have turned loading indicator off, since I can start editing after about 1 second.

PS - I have catalog & previews on SSD, and separate (plain vanilla internal) hard disks for system (including Lr program) and data (photo files).

[DavePinMinn]

Yup, that's about the times I'm seeing for D300 .dng files........

My perception is that it's SIGNIFICANTLY slower - taking at LEAST twice as long to finish loading as V3, but even if it's only 25% slower, that's a lot.

[areohbee]

davepinminn wrote:

...even if it's only 25% slower, that's a lot.

As a point of reference, very rough guestimate for me: PV2010 is 10-15% slower, and PV2012 is 25-50% slower. Significant, to be sure, but not extreme. And, I consider this "normal" performance.

I see some people reporting >100% slower - that's extreme (and abnormal). Anyway, I think it's worth keeping in mind whether we're talking about normal slowness vs. abnormal slowness.

Lr4's auto CA is more CPU intensive, as is defringe, and NR and such are being applied at all magnifications now - time is the cost: this should be expected. Personally, I'd like to see some optimization, but my point is that it's normal...

And, PV2012 is more sophisticated, and takes more CPU - expect PV2012 to be signficantly slower compared to PV2010. But if it's too much slower - you got a bugaboo problem.

davepinminn wrote:

Yup, that's about the times I'm seeing for D300 .dng files........

taking at LEAST twice as long to finish loading as V3

Anyway, if Lr4 is over twice as slow as Lr3, then you have abnormal Lr4 performance. However, the times I quoted for D300 raws (2-4 seconds), which you say are over double what you saw in Lr3, are not anywhere near double for me. Are you saying that you were able to render D300 raws in less than 1-2 seconds in Lr3? - not me, maybe I had abnormal Lr3 performance and didn't even know it...

Rob