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

[SavagePhoto-lItHqa]

When I was developing/troubleshooting this bat I found that the affinity was most important. On my system I have 4 acutal cores and 4 hyperthread. If I use ANY hyperthread performance dies. If I use all 4 main cores performance slows. By setting it to use only 3 main core and then setting the priority to high windows does a nice job of leaving LR alone and running most everything else on the remaining main and Hyper cores. My results were undenyable that LR has issues with hyperthreading at least on my intel chip and asus motherboard.

[Bob_Peters]

SavagePhoto wrote:

When I was developing/troubleshooting this bat I found that the affinity was most important. On my system I have 4 acutal cores and 4 hyperthread. If I use ANY hyperthread performance dies. If I use all 4 main cores performance slows. By setting it to use only 3 main core and then setting the priority to high windows does a nice job of leaving LR alone and running most everything else on the remaining main and Hyper cores. My results were undenyable that LR has issues with hyperthreading at least on my intel chip and asus motherboard.

I hope you have forwarded this information to the Lightroom team.  I'm on a MacBook Pro and haven't yet found the tools to disable specific cores or hyper-threading.

[SavagePhoto-lItHqa]

Agree!!!!!

Only think that KILLS me is that there is only one tool keeping me in LR over Capture One and that is the brush masking.... There are many other ways to do use this but I use this A LOT and no other process seems as seamless. Unfortunatly on PC there isnt another Raw app that does this as well. However the final results are better with the free Raw Therapy and Capture One.

[areohbee]

SavagePhoto wrote:

...there is only one tool keeping me in LR over Capture One and that is the brush masking....

I rarely use the brush masking. The one thing that keeps me using Lr over C1 is the quality of results (ok 2 things: I depend heavily on Lr plugins).

[areohbee]

SavagePhoto wrote:

My results were undenyable that LR has issues with hyperthreading at least on my intel chip and asus motherboard.

I hear ya. My ASUS+AMD board has no such problems (M4A89GTD): all cores shoot through the roof when doing something that warrants multiple cores. - mostly speedy too (some things are slow due to Lr s/w design...).

I've never heard of any other problems with AMD chips, but maybe that's because so few people seem to be running them.

My Advice: Get an AMD chip!!!

Rob

[bob frost]

From: "SavagePhoto

My results were undenyable that LR has issues with hyperthreading at least

on my intel chip and asus motherboard.

No difference between hyperthreading enabled and disabled on my Intel i7

3939 on Intel mobo. LR is fast with both.

Has anyone with problems tried running the latest version of Intel's INF

program, that tells the chipset how to communicate with the various bits of

the computer? Some of these problems seem like internal communication

problems. And loading the latest Bios for your mobo would be a good idea;

that also cures bugs in internal communications.

Just a thought!

Bob Frost

[areohbee]

Great idea Bob.

[Another_Photographer-qoO2PF]

I've never used Book, but I tried it today.  It took 4 seconds to get into the Book module (or at least until I get an error message saying there were too many images or something).  It took a similar amount of time to get into Develop Mode.

It seems like there are two kinds of people in the world.  Those that think 4 seconds is great (the "Modals") and those that think 4 seconds stinks (the "Nonmodals").

The Modals have bought into Adobe's thinking.  They dutifully work in one Module for hours, then they move to the next Module, and the next Module.  They don't move back and forth much if at all.  They are deadly efficient.  They are communists.  Kidding.

The Nonmodals crave freedom.  When they read about "photo-centric workflow" in the marketing literature, they thought it meant I can do what I want when I want to the photo.  Awesome!  I can look at a bunch of photos, increase the contrast in one, make one black and white, print one, look for all of my Tahiti shots, make a book, print a photo in any order I want. 

No!  To all you Nonmodals out there, this is not Lightroom.  Lightroom was written by the Modals for the Modals.  Some Nonmodal ideas creep in here and there (such as Collections being included in Develop Mode), which confuses the issue.  But at the end of the rainbow, Lightroom is a Modal program at heart.  For the Nonmodals, if it took 1 second to switch from Library to Develop, that would be too much.  In fact even the act of switching is counterproductive and creativity-inhibiting. 

My advice to Nonmodals (you know who you are): learn to love it, live with it or go elsewhere.

I confess to being a Nonmodal.  I cannot efficiently and mercilessly go through a thousand photos adding keywords and ratings before trying to "Develop" the best one I see.  Ok, maybe I am a Seminonmodal because sometimes I try to pick out the best 12 pictures before I start developing.  But deep down I want to jump around.  That is how my creative energy flows.

Modals are just as valid as Nonmodals, but whenever attacking or defending Lightroom, we all need to recognize that it is not a swiss army knife.  It is a tool for Modals to get their work done, and us Nonmodals have to bear it because there is no competition that does the same stuff.

I've read that Aperture is Nonmodal, but that doesn't help PC users much because it is written for Apple and probably has other issues any way.

Apart from the Modality issue, I do think that Adobe purposely skruwed with users by releasing what was essentially a beta product and then FORCED users to upgrade because it dropped support for the latest cameras (Nikon D800 and Nikon D4) in LR3.  I mean come on, even the biggest fanboys and girls can see that, can't you?  Btw, if they hadn't pulled that stunt, there would be a lot less complaining because many people who didn't like LR4 for any reason would have stuck with LR3 for a short while until it got ironed out.

[quenton8]

I and many others don't consider 4 sec acceptable for moving around lightroom.

First hit on Book or first hit on Develop? it has work to do -- when do you want it to do it??  After that I am sub-second in moving from module to module.

I also tried starting LR and going to Develop just under 4 sec -- from then on its fine -- I have no problem with that.

Now I understand others don't have the subsequent sub-second invocations -- that would be a problem.

[Another_Photographer-qoO2PF]

I want it to do the work before I click on Develop so that when I do click on Deveop it's seamless.

Alternatively, I don't want there to be a Develop Module at all.  It can be done that way.

Or they could be clever about it and instead of giving me the ^... I mean the hourglass when I click on the Develop Module, they can make me think I'm already in the Develop Module.  Realistically, I am not going to do anything in the first 4 seconds any way.  So why not make me think I'm already in instead of freezing the computer for 4 seconds?  You'd think with 6 cores and 64 GB of RAM they can figure out a way to improve the user experience?

But if you're a modal thinker it doesn't matter.  What's four seconds if you've just spent 12 hours in Library and now you're to spend another 12 hours in Develop?  Just don't go back and forth and the world is good.

I was playing around with a MBP at the Apple store the other day.  I was flipping through photos on the default photo program.  It feels snappy.  LR doesn't feel snappy even when flipping through JPGs in the Library Mode.  It's the Modal thinking taken to another level.  When you're looking at a photo, boom you're looking at that photo.  Flipping to another photo, well the program has to do a lot of work for that to happen.  Even if true, why not preload the adjacent photos?  Today's machines can have up to 64 Gig, you can preload a couple of JPG previews without a problem.  But to LR the user experience doesn't matter because they're catering to Modals, i.e. people who have to go through thousands of photos to meet a deadline not people who want to enjoy the experience, i.e Nonmodals.

Try flipping through photos with the mouse wheel, (ii) the arrow keys and (iii) with the pointer.  Oddly enough, three very different feels.  They all stink, but one is worse than the others.  Have they thought about the user experience?

At the end of the day, it's a Modal program at a very deep level and Nonmodals will never be comfortable with it but we have very little choice.

[Charles Putnam]

Aperture is extremely quick on my older MBP (2010 with i5 2.3GHz, 8 gigs of RAM).  Lightroom on the other hand.....  The main advantage that LR4 has is the updated Develop module and PV 2012.  From an organizational standpoint, Aperture organizes by project - extremely easy to understand/follow/get stuff done.

[areohbee]

If Lightroom was designed from the ground up to be what it is, we wouldn't see the seam between library & develop. It exists, because Lightroom was designed to share ACR with Photoshop.

[Bob_Peters]

Rob Cole wrote:

If Lightroom was designed from the ground up to be what it is, we wouldn't see the seam between library & develop. It exists, because Lightroom was designed to share ACR with Photoshop.

Rob,

Are you saying Lightroom is modal because it "shares" the raw pipeline with Photoshop?  Sorry, but I

don't think that makes any sense.

And please clarify that first sentence.

[areohbee]

As it stands, Lightroom must be able to plug in new versions of ACR released for Photoshop. That's a constraint. Without that constraint, the Lightroom team would be free to redesign Lightroom to eliminate the seam (e.g. common image view).

I really don't know enough about the internals to provide details - call it a hunch...

[Another_Photographer-qoO2PF]

I have no idea whether you're right about your hunch Rob, but what I had always read on the boards is that Adobe has an idea about how photographers should progress through the editing process.

It's a little bizarre that a software programmer decides that while I'm rating a photo I need one set of truncated developing tools on hand, but when I'm "developing" a photo I need the full set of developing tools.  What if I want to xyz while rating photos? 

Noooooooooooooo! That will slow you down and you won't meet your deadline, sonny.  Sorry.  You must rate before you develop, ok?  Trust us, it's for your OWN good.  When you're a grown up you'll understand.

They're essentially big-brothering, micromanaging, and helicopter parenting us.  Works for some folks, but not for others. 

And this has contributed to at least some of their woes.  They've got two rendering pipelines, so apparently they haven't had time to finetune EITHER one of them for speed.  And they haven't figured out how to elegently transition from one rendering engine to the other.  For some people it's too slow, for other people too jarring. 

And for some people it's pointless even when it works because we haven't adopted their workflow.

If it were me I'd nuke the Library and redesign Develop into a kickarse Working Module.

But that ain't going to happen, so I take a deep breath and enjoy working my photos under the watchful gaze of helicopter Ma-dobe.

[Bob_Peters]

Rob Cole wrote:

As it stands, Lightroom must be able to plug in new versions of ACR released for Photoshop. That's a constraint. Without that constraint, the Lightroom team would be free to redesign Lightroom to eliminate the seam (e.g. common image view).

I really don't know enough about the internals to provide details - call it a hunch...

I don't buy that "hunch" and here is why:  If you zoom to 1:1 in the Library module and the 1:1 preview doesn't yet exist then the image must be rendered from the raw data.  That requires acess through what you appear to be thinking of as the "modal barrier".

[areohbee]

My hunch, continued...

I suspect the rigid workflow model was developed by the marketing department, not the Lightroom design team.

I postulate that Lr design was governed by ACR constraint, then Adobe said: "how are we going to sell this thing?"

Again, sheer speculation on my part...

Rob

[areohbee]

It seems to me that the design of Lightroom is optimized for internal considerations, not useability - but I could be wrong.

[Bob_Peters]

Rob Cole wrote:

It seems to me that the design of Lightroom is optimized for internal considerations, not useability - but I could be wrong.

You're tap dancing

[john beardsworth]

Rather than blundering on about marketing departments or nonmodals and  modals, use Google and look up the interviews Phil Clevenger did about the UI design.

[areohbee]

I am confessedly biased. It seems that a less modal design could be used with equal success by those who prefer to do all one thing then another, yet the reverse of that is not true.

[Another_Photographer-qoO2PF]

Rob Cole wrote:

a less modal design could be used with equal success by those who prefer to do all one thing then another, yet the reverse of that is not true.

Very well put Rob. 

John--When I have a moment I will look up this dude's inteviews to find out why he made a UI that doesn't work for me.  It will be interesting to see how badly you had misrepresented his ideas in the past .

All-after 77 pages of discussion, is there any consensus on how to make LR4 perform well for the unfortunate number for whom it does not perform well?

[areohbee]

Phil Clevenger would be a fool if he said: "Lightroom design kinda sucks for the user, but it makes it easier for us to offer Lightroom without redesigning ACR/Photoshop" even if it was the truth.

Moral of the story: Just because Adobe is serving cool-aid, doesn't mean you have to drink it.

Disclaimer: I have not seen the interview...

Rob

[john beardsworth]

Look up the interviews and keep the conspiracy theorizing where it belomgs. All this modularity discussion is pretty irrelevant to this thread.

[areohbee]

Another Photographer wrote:

Rob Cole wrote:

a less modal design could be used with equal success by those who prefer to do all one thing then another, yet the reverse of that is not true.

Very well put Rob.

Thanks - every now and then I get "a little wood on the ball" .

Another Photographer wrote:

All-after 77 pages of discussion, is there any consensus on how to make LR4 perform well for the unfortunate number for whom it does not perform well?

Dunno 'bout consensus, but in a nutshell:

1. Know whether your box is executing it normally or not (some slowerness is normal, some not...). - if not:

2. Try to get your box into a condition that doesn't trip up Lr4.1. If unsuccessful:

3. Wait for Lr4.2. If still unsuccesful, consider an alternative product.

Note: Some people who have trouble with Lightroom, do NOT have trouble with ACR. One approach for the interim is to use Photoshop/ACR/Bridge for now, and resume with Lightroom once it's working better for you. Of course this assumes you have it to use...

Rob