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]

SavagePhoto wrote:

Since light room is entirely unusable for me...

Best software to use is one that runs well on your machine. - If I couldn't get Lightroom to run well, I'd sure find something else that did. Best o' luck...

SavagePhoto wrote:

... I don't tend to shoot so poorly that I need "recovery" heroics....

If you don't shoot high ISO, you can get some good results in C1. It's noise reduction is way inferior to Lightroom, to be sure, but if you don't need it, then you don't need it...

I'll be curious to hear how you're feeling about it in a year from now.

My sense of C1's support for DSLRs is that it's primarily a vehicle for enticing people to buy PhaseOne cameras and lenses.

Let's see: $150 per software, and $50,000+ per camera/lenses...

Maybe I'm wrong.

Cheers,

Rob

[SavagePhoto-lItHqa]

Rob - thank you for not calling me a whiner.

NR is not a strength of C1 but be assured it has other strengths that LR does not. As you know I have spent months and thousands of photos making this choice. Often staying up late reprocessing entire sessions in multiple applications. If I ever do need the adobe engine I have access to that via ACR. 

About P1 wanting to make money. I am sure that is true of adobe as well. But it doesn't matter to me if P1 wants me to buy their hardware as long as their software works for me.

I cannot read the future so I may one day need to change software processers again but obviously that's how I found lightroom from my previous program.

Ultimately my clients choose what I use and their feedback weighed heavily (the clients who know quality work nearly always chose the C1 images even over ACR and LR)

[areohbee]

SavagePhoto wrote:
Rob - thank you for not calling me a whiner.

I do my share of complaining .

...there is more than one way to get the job done...

[A_C_G]

"you can get some good results in C1"

1,370 messages posted and still people have problems with LR.

Surely the way forward is to use this thread to direct people to products that do seem to work for pros.

I'm happy to try C1 (again). Over my twelve years of digital work with RAWs I have tried most. I migrated from Bibble to LR when Bibble seemed to have lost its way. I'm happy to move again.

Instead of moaning about Adobe's apparent lack of concern why don't we help each other by suggesting other suites of software?

Tony

[Keith Reeder]

A C G wrote:

Instead of moaning about Adobe's apparent lack of concern why don't we help each other by suggesting other suites of software?

You can't possibly think that's appropriate on an Adobe-hosted Lightroom user forum - talk about biting the hand!

But since you ask: in all-round IQ terms, in noise handling terms, and in terms of how it handles highlights and shadows, Lr is unequalled: by Bibble (which was - by any measure - crap, and which its successor AfterShot Pro barely improves on - unless bright pink highlights, crappy white balance and awful demosaicing are the look you're after); by Capture One, which is nice enough as far as its colour rendition is concerned (no, to be fair, Cap One's colours are great) but - as the link to forum.phaseone.com I posted above indicates - has plenty of problems too, not least the "chequerboard" demosaic artifact, which I first posted about on the Phase One forum almost two years ago; and it's NR, which is dismally unsubtle and inept compared to Lr's. And God help you if you have difficult highlights to recover - Cap One doesn't have highlight "recovery", it just has a curve that makes highlights grey.

It's "Shadows" tool is pretty poor too...

Just for the avoidance of any doubt about whether the grass is really greener over in Phase One land, here are the current "active topics" - that's better than Lr, is it?

(I've used Bibble/ASP since 2006 and Cap One  since version 3, so I do know what I'm talking about).

DXO? Pretty good - but slow and clunky (slower on my PC than Lr), and not capable of anything that Lr can't do as well as or better.

I can also discuss Raw Therapee, Photivo, Nama5, Photo Ninja, Cyberlink PhotoDirector, Canon DPP, and - probably - any other converter you can care to mention, if it runs on Windows; and guess what? Lr's the best of the lot, all told: and on my machine it runs just fine...

I'm completely "converter agnostic" (I don't waste time endlessly complaining on forums if I can't find one that satisfies my needs, I simply try elsewhere. I learned many moons ago there's no one single "do it all" converter) and for years - until Lr3 - I wouldn't touch Lr with a long stick because I couldn't stand the IQ from its old demosaicing algorithm. But how things have changed...

On the basis of years of having tried every "serious" converter that I could find, I'm telling you now: warts an' all, Lr now the best all-rounder of the bunch, and by a wide margin. I still use Capture One on "easy" (low - 1600 and lower - ISO, well-behaved light) images, because I like its colour rendition; but as soon as there's any "heavy lifting" work to do on a file, it's Lr all the way.

If you can find better, you know what to do - but prepare to have your eyes opened.

[areohbee]

Keith,

I agree with all, except:

I think DxO's lens corrections are better than Lightroom's, at least for some aspects of some of my lenses, e.g. vignette correction for my Nikon 18-200.

Lightroom 4: far from perfect, but still best of the bunch - *if* you can get it running well on your machine.

Cheers,

Rob

[Guest]

Keith,

If you write a "review" of your experience with the mentioned processors I would be a happy reader.

This particular thread is (mainly) divided in two groups of people:

1- People with serious problems with LR 4.x, and

2- People that keep asking what the specs of your computer are and recommend over and over the same things.

Of course, there is a small subgroup of people that have problems with LR but not the "real one" and they sometimes find help in the recommendations from group 2.

In general people from group 1are growing more and more upset with Adobe for its lack of response while many from group 2 keep trying to push the bad performance of LR 4.x on the user itself (from group 1) since Adobe, of course, is perfect.

Now, to not make it too extensive. I am also looking at alternatives and I have read with a lot of interest what you mentioned about some of the best know Lightroom alternatives.

I tried Corel Aftershoot and while I was not completely happy with interface and workflow it did help me with one sensible decision: Stopping converting my RAW images to DNG. Don't get more tied to Adobe than you need to be.

I tried many others (Phocus-free, C1-trial) and several other's ranging from commercial to freeware. There are two that caught my attention and, if you have any experience with them, I would like to hear it. Specially compared to Lightroom.

1- (you mentioned it before) Photo Director (commercial license)

2- Dark Table (freeware). Unfortunately this one is available on "anything" except for Windows, but I wouldn't mind installing Ubuntu to run this one. Do you know it? Have you tried this one even when it doesn't run on Windows?

I am looking with interest at this part of the discussion in the thread where you can compare other softwares to LR.

I do want to say something though. Let's say that indeed LR has the best IQ, NR, etc... of them all... To me, and my clients, what's the use of that if I can barely work with it?

Right now, LR is almost as good as Dark Table... I cannot run either of them on my system!

Cheers,

Keith_Reeder wrote:

A C G wrote:

Instead of moaning about Adobe's apparent lack of concern why don't we help each other by suggesting other suites of software?

You can't possibly think that's appropriate on an Adobe-hosted Lightroom user forum - talk about biting the hand!

But since you ask: in all-round IQ terms, in noise handling terms, and in terms of how it handles highlights and shadows, Lr is unequalled: by Bibble (which was - by any measure - crap, and which its successor AfterShot Pro barely improves on - unless bright pink highlights, crappy white balance and awful demosaicing are the look you're after); by Capture One, which is nice enough as far as its colour rendition is concerned (no, to be fair, Cap One's colours are great) but - as the link to forum.phaseone.com I posted above indicates - has plenty of problems too, not least the "chequerboard" demosaic artifact, which I first posted about on the Phase One forum almost two years ago; and it's NR, which is dismally unsubtle and inept compared to Lr's. And God help you if you have difficult highlights to recover - Cap One doesn't have highlight "recovery", it just has a curve that makes highlights grey.

It's "Shadows" tool is pretty poor too...

Just for the avoidance of any doubt about whether the grass is really greener over in Phase One land, here are the current "active topics" - that's better than Lr, is it?

(I've used Bibble/ASP since 2006 and Cap One  since version 3, so I do know what I'm talking about).

DXO? Pretty good - but slow and clunky (slower on my PC than Lr), and not capable of anything that Lr can't do as well as or better.

I can also discuss Raw Therapee, Photivo, Nama5, Photo Ninja, Cyberlink PhotoDirector, Canon DPP, and - probably - any other converter you can care to mention, if it runs on Windows; and guess what? Lr's the best of the lot, all told: and on my machine it runs just fine...

I'm completely "converter agnostic" (I don't waste time endlessly complaining on forums if I can't find one that satisfies my needs, I simply try elsewhere. I learned many moons ago there's no one single "do it all" converter) and for years - until Lr3 - I wouldn't touch Lr with a long stick because I couldn't stand the IQ from its old demosaicing algorithm. But how things have changed...

On the basis of years of having tried every "serious" converter that I could find, I'm telling you now: warts an' all, Lr now the best all-rounder of the bunch, and by a wide margin. I still use Capture One on "easy" (low - 1600 and lower - ISO, well-behaved light) images, because I like its colour rendition; but as soon as there's any "heavy lifting" work to do on a file, it's Lr all the way.

If you can find better, you know what to do - but prepare to have your eyes opened.

[areohbee]

uphotography wrote:

many from group 2 keep trying to push the bad performance of LR 4.x on the user itself (from group 1) since Adobe, of course, is perfect.

Suggesting that you may be able to get it running well on your system if you do some things, does not mean Lightroom doesn't have problems. The name of the game, should you choose to play it, is to remove stumbling blocks, if possible.

Try to understand:

* Systems are not necessarily the cause of system-dependent problems, but

* system-dependent problems may be worked around by modifying the system.

- that's different than saying the system is the cause of the problems.

What's obvious:

* Adobe knows Lightroom has problems.

* Adobe is working on them.

Why is it obvious?

- Because each release fixes some or all of the problems some people were having. Unfortunately, it's a one-release-at-a-time kinda thang...

Rob

[Guest]

Rob, the way I see it is like this:

Lightroom 4.x can perform poorly due to (in general) 2 reasons:

1- Lightroom problems (have to be solved by Adobe tweaking the code and what not...)

2- System optimization (has to be solved by the user by tweaking some things on the system)

IMO, this thread was created by somebody with problem 1. What happened is that many people falling in the second group end up here because their LR is running slow (compare to 3.x maybe) but they are not really experiencing the problems that people from group 1 have. That's the reason I shared the video, to show "what slow is".

Of course, people from group 2 can help from removing those "stumbling blocks". People from group 1, like me, won't see a big difference, or any difference at all and yes, I have tried them all... including removing modules from LR. All I have left is buy a new "Adobe" computer where LR runs perfect... Maybe it will come with Adobe OS and Adobe Internet Browser too...

The reason I think sometimes we are blindly swinging the air is because there is absolutely no way you, or anybody for what matters, can know what can be "upsetting" LR just by posting a couple of specs from our computers. The fact that both Macs and PCs are having problems gives a huge hint that it is more serious than increasing the cache.

I really don't want to go over the whole thing again... 35 pages and close to 1400 posts of exactly the same.

I almost feel like every 2 pages everything starts again... it's a vicious cycle where we are all wasting energy instead of putting a bit of pressure on Adobe to get this fix... It's been over half a year right?

I don't know what the last release fixed for you, but it didn't fixed ANY of the problems I have with LR 4.

I still:

- Can't work (properly) with 2 monitors

- Importing/Exporting takes ages to complete (same camera and files than with LR 3.x)

- Sticky sliders (adjustments take a bit before showing up)

- Long "loading..." times

And everything gets worse after 10-25 mins of work.

So yes, they are solving some problems, but apparently not the big ones. If you look at the changes in RC2 is almost like they are giving the "final touches" to a finished product when what I have running here is far from it.

Again... This is not the direction I want to go... I am tired of the "rinse and repeat" that's going on here. I just came back because of the new/(re)fresh(ing) information from Keith and Savage Photo.

I know that you've been trying to help out quite a bit but I think it is time Adobe takes responsibility and do their job by not only fixing the problem but by also having a decent support and customer service instead of trying to relay "free customer service" that members are willing to give.

Anyway...

Rob Cole wrote:

uphotography wrote:

many from group 2 keep trying to push the bad performance of LR 4.x on the user itself (from group 1) since Adobe, of course, is perfect.

Suggesting that you may be able to get it running well on your system if you do some things, does not mean Lightroom doesn't have problems. The name of the game, should you choose to play it, is to remove stumbling blocks, if possible.

Try to understand:

* Systems are not necessarily the cause of system-dependent problems, but

* system-dependent problems may be worked around by modifying the system.

- that's different than saying the system is the cause of the problems.

What's obvious:

* Adobe knows Lightroom has problems.

* Adobe is working on them.

Why is it obvious?

- Because each release fixes some or all of the problems some people were having. Unfortunately, it's a one-release-at-a-time kinda thang...

Rob

[areohbee]

In the interest of not beating a dead horse, I'll just say:

If you feel like you've tried everything (you haven't), and it's performance is still unacceptable, it may be time to move on...

Best o' luck,

Rob

[LynneHarty]

Can someone tell me how to get out of this discussion? I have searched and can't figure it out. Too many emails. Thanks.

[areohbee]

Click 'Stop email notifications' - upper right-hand corner of this page, under 'Actions'.

[LynneHarty]

I don't see actions, just "new, your stuff, history, browse"...

[areohbee]

A little more right, and a little more down.

?

[LynneHarty]

Thank you! Some how I had blinders on that part of the page.

[Guest]

Rob Cole wrote:

In the interest of not beating a dead horse, I'll just say:

If you feel like you've tried everything (you haven't), and it's performance is still unacceptable, it may be time to move on...

Best o' luck,

Rob

To light up the mood (of my posts 😞

You know what is the only way I have to speed up Lightroom?

.

.

.

Throwing the computer down the window!

Sorry... That's an old one...

You are right... I haven't tried everything:

- I haven't (and won't) format my system (W7 64b)

- I haven't bought a new PC (although... again... 24 Gb Ram, i7Core @ 3 GHz, 1 Gb VRam, RAID and dedicated HDs I don't think I need a new PC... do you?

Regarding the rest of the solutions suggested here and in other forums, yes I have tried them all.

[Guest]

Adobe... seriously?

I am about to think that you guys are doing it on purpose. Lightroom 4.2 is even worse than 4.2 RC (and I thought that was not possible).

I'll walk you through my brand new LR 4.2 update.

- An update is available

- Download

- Install

- Run

- "This program is not responding. We are generating an error log.... blah blah"

- Program closes

- I post and upset answer in this thread

I try to run it again, and again, and again... nothing happens. It just doesn't open and there is no "lost thread" in there.

10 mins later (I haven't changed anything on the computer, browser still opened and the same folders opened) LR 4.2 opens like nothing happened before.

- *Sigh* Delete the post in this thread.

- 10 mins later (I was just looking for some photos I needed) I clsoe LR 4.2

- 10 mins after that, I close all programs (getting ready for a serious editing time with LR) and try to run it

- Get a cryptic error message:

Adobe: I am flabergasted. What's next? What's in store for LR 4.3? 5.0? Are you gonna set my PC on fire? format all my HDs? Is this how Computers take over the world? Is T-800 comming? Do we need the Avengers to fix the mess (that LR is?) Did you lose a bet? Help me understand!

Help me out. I have never, ever seen such display of ... of... I don't even know how to call it without starting offending. But can anybody help me understand what the h... is going on there?

Sincerely,

a flabergasted, attonished, disgrunted, annoyed, upset, perplexed, shocked and not amuzed *user*.

[dorin_nicolaescu]

Try to trash the prefs, start a fresh catalog.

2012/10/3 uphotography <forums@adobe.com>

**

Re: Experiencing performance related issues in Lightroom 4.x created

by uphotography <http://forums.adobe.com/people/uphotography> in *Photoshop

Lightroom* - View the full discussion<http://forums.adobe.com/message/4745424#4745424

[EO1-ip1WbI]

With LR 4.x, it seems the faster your computer, the slower it runs. Just look (as an example) of all the users running Win 7 64-bit with huge amounts of RAM, solid state drives and super fast CPUs having serious performance issues with LR 4.x.

My specs are as follows, and LR 4.x runs so poorly that I am actively looking at alternatives.

Lightroom version: 4.2 [850741]

Operating system: Windows 7 Business Edition

Version: 6.1 [7601]

Application architecture: x64

System architecture: x64

Physical processor count: 6

Processor speed: 3.2 GHz

Built-in memory: 16333.0 MB

Real memory available to Lightroom: 16333.0 MB

Real memory used by Lightroom: 417.6 MB (2.5%)

Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 437.7 MB

Memory cache size: 112.3 MB

System DPI setting: 96 DPI

Desktop composition enabled: Yes

Displays: 1) 1920x1080

[Ashvin_Ghisyawan]

LR4 seems to be a little bit faster after I upgrade my ram from 8 to 16gb. But it's still too slow. I you use a mac, try Aperture 3. Aperture is a lot faster than LR4. Another great tool is Photo Mechanic. One of the most fastest Raw processing software I've ever seen!

Kind regards,

Bruidsfotograaf Ashvin

http://www.totaalfotografie.nl

[SavagePhoto-lItHqa]

FYI subjective noise test

Programs used

DSO

C1 6

Lr  4

DSO + topaz

C1 + topaz

Lr  4 + topaz

Used

Canon 5D M2 iso 1600

Under exposed by 2 stops

Wedding dance with subject including near pure black  clothing and near pure white clothing

Set one Processed  In all three to as similar look as possible before any NR with emphasis on maintaining highlights and secondly keeping details in the shadows

Set two ran set1 threw topaz doing very best to  keep details as universal while eliminating as much noise as possible

Set three... with same intent .... used each programs NR and saved

Set four... ran set 3 threw topaz

Had other people pick their favorite photos with no prompting. They had no idea what the test involved beside " which photos do you find most pleasing.?"

First losers

All 3 set 1

Next losers

All 3 set 4

Last two standing

C1 from set 2 and 3

Noise was still visible in both of these  but viewers still found them most pleasing.

Third place

Dxo set 2

Fourth place

Lr  set 3

With as much integrity as possible I tried my very best to make this test fair.BUT

Because both processing and "liking" are so subjective I suggest you try this for yourself.

I ran this test NOT to find which programs were best at NR but rather which process produced more "pleasing" images.

[SavagePhoto-lItHqa]

** Typing on phone so can't edit post .... spell check ....... DSO = DXO

[Guest]

That is great info...

Wedding season is almost over for me, so I guess I will take some time and run some experiments myself.

After that.. I'll need to work on "convert" my presets to other programs and check out the result!

SavagePhoto wrote:

FYI subjective noise test

Programs used

DSO

C1 6

Lr  4

DSO + topaz

C1 + topaz

Lr  4 + topaz

Used

Canon 5D M2 iso 1600

Under exposed by 2 stops

Wedding dance with subject including near pure black  clothing and near pure white clothing

Set one Processed  In all three to as similar look as possible before any NR with emphasis on maintaining highlights and secondly keeping details in the shadows

Set two ran set1 threw topaz doing very best to  keep details as universal while eliminating as much noise as possible

Set three... with same intent .... used each programs NR and saved

Set four... ran set 3 threw topaz

Had other people pick their favorite photos with no prompting. They had no idea what the test involved beside " which photos do you find most pleasing.?"

First losers

All 3 set 1

Next losers

All 3 set 4

Last two standing

C1 from set 2 and 3

Noise was still visible in both of these  but viewers still found them most pleasing.

Third place

Dxo set 2

Fourth place

Lr  set 3

With as much integrity as possible I tried my very best to make this test fair.BUT

Because both processing and "liking" are so subjective I suggest you try this for yourself.

I ran this test NOT to find which programs were best at NR but rather which process produced more "pleasing" images.

[James Atwood]

I've finally solved the Lightroom 4 develop module speed issues! The answer was right under my nose all along.. spend thousands of dollars!! I can't believe I didn't think of that earlier. It now runs great with the following:

- Intel Core i7 3930K 6-core sandy bridge CPU on the new LGA2011 fitting, with a basic overclock to 4.2ghz

- Antec Kuhler 920 liquid cpu cooler

- Rampage IV extreme motherboard, featuring lga2011 fitting and 8 slots for ram

- 32gb of ram

- AMD Radeon HD 6950 gpu, which allows me to connect my 4 monitors simultaneously

- One OCZ Vertex 4 SSD drive with windows 7 64-bit installed on it

- One OCZ Vertex 4 SSD drive with my catalog on it

Remember, AHCI or RAID mode must be configured in bios before you install windows to take advantage of the 6gb/s SSD drive connectors!

[Scholle Images]

Hey all, Mike here. New to the forum, and recently became aware of LR4 performance issues only by reading about them.

I downloaded LR4 trial from adobe a couple weeks ago onto my aging Intel Core2 Quad Q6700 at 2.66 GHz. It's Win 7 with 4 gig RAM, onboard Intel Q35 graphics chipset, and running 32-bit.

I hate to say it, but it's running flawlessly so far, and the sliders work in real-time with no lag. I exported 200 NEF files to JPG in about 13-14 minutes last night after applying user presets to them.

Now the reason for this is NOT to brag. I have read on some other forums that there are other "old" dual and quad core intel boxes that run this software fine. I don't know why, and I don't know if it's all of them. I read somewhere else that one person identified it as anything other than ATI graphics cards that are slowing it - but I don't think that's the case.

Why am I saying all this? Because I actually cancelled an order for an iMac after reading about all these performance issues. Yes, I was excited to to have a new 27" i5, but now it's not going to happen. I'll buy another drive for my existing system and likely purchase LR4 to continue using it on a 3 or 4 year old system.

I *want* Adobe to fix it because I'd love to be able to justify the new iMac. And since I've experienced LR4.1 without any issues, I know it's possible. There has to be a common component (hardware) for why so many are having this problem.  (IMHO)