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

[Guest]

trshaner wrote:

uphotography wrote:

Todd,

So, basically, what  do you suggest would be the new use of Lightroom 4? Catalogue your photos? Design Blurb books? Make slideshows?

This was strictly a suggestion for "minimizing post processing" work in LR. I'm not saying anyone should stop shooting raw files.

I sure you could think of many benefits of shooting raw + JPEG if you were opened minded. Give it a try.

I started shooting RAW + Jpeg. It didn't fit my workflow/work method. The only time where it might be useful to me is when shooting a wedding where I need to have a slideshow ready to play during the reception.

There are situations where I shoot just jpeg and that is when I am "happy" with what I'm getting and it is mainly limited to photos made to have a "record" or proof of being there.

If the way to be open minded is to shoot jpeg (or jpeg+raw) then I am not. Funny enough I thought that to be an artist you had to be very open minded and creative. Well, I just found out I am not because I only shoot RAW when trying to create.

I am not ready to discuss LR 4.3 because I haven't used it long enough as to find whether it keeps the same problems or not. It is exporting faster and it is a bit more smooth using the sliders but that is the case after using it for very short sessions (<20 mins) and the worse started to show on previous versions after 20 mins. That being said, it will keep bothering me when the suggestions made to "improve" our situation is to sacrifice quality and our final product. It is not the solution. It won't be the solution and it cannot be the solution to do so.

I will use the auto industry analogy one more time because people seem to have a "selective" thinking when it comes to the same problem. (Sometimes it is ok and sometimes it is not, depending on who is affected and who is the "affecter"). Imagine you buy a ferrari and then you find out that the car would make some weird noises and sometimes even blow up a tire or two if going past 100km/hr. Would you accept as a solution (to improve your situation) a suggestion of simply driving your ferrari below 100km/hr all the time? I didn't think so. So why do I have to loose one of the big advantages of Lightroom 4 which is a great 2012PV (or for what is worth, not take proper advantage of it) because of shooting Jpeg?

Yes, it will make your processing shorter only if you are after getting the image that was on the screen of your camera. But the shortest way between the moment and the image in your head (your vision) is RAW. Otherwise we are just monkeys pressing shutters where the monkey with the biggest toys win.

[bmphotography1]

I completely agree with pretty much everything Uphoto has said here. Quite apart from that, the assertion that we must change our workflow and even creative style in order to accomodate the shortcomings of Lightroom completely defeats the purpose.

Picture style is nor an answer for me at all, commercial photographers have there own style and consistency is across a delivered set is critical. I cant mix up picture style with my own style and I cant go back undo picture style to impose my own style upon a jpg because its baked. "yeah sorry the tonality jumps about a bit on your wedding but Lightroom is really hard to use right now' just doesnt cut it with the people that pay me > $4k to shoot a wedding. Besides, DPP can retrospectively apply any picture style to any RAW you shoot which makes RAW + JPG a waste of space. Post work, look and feel are a fact of life these days - its not just about composition anymore. A shot needs tpo be fully finished and whilst we do all we can in camera, many of us have a brand that is based on what we do with that shot as a 'canvas'.

I currently have some $30k+ in equipment, why would I do that to have > half of the information thrown away for the sake of a $200 peic of software. I do my own NR, I'm better at it than the camera. If I need more DR in a shot, I will get it at the time with muli exposure or tone-map later.

To me this conversation is reminiscent of all of the people that cried 'user error, get over it' when the MkIII AF issue blew up.

The image below was taken two stops under, I saw it happen while I was getting some gear out of the bag, just garabbed and shot. in JPG it would not have been recoverable

This image uses extreme localised NR and highlight recovery that would not have been possible with jpg:

[rpavich1234]

I hate to beat a dead horse but the last two posters hit the nail squarely on the head; homerun, bingo...hey-o!

This is the crux of it.

[Todd Shaner]

I think we all agree that for the pro photographer making a living creating fine-art quality images, raw is the fastest way to get there. Of course you still may find "other uses" for shooting raw + JPEG as uphotography outlined.

My original reply here was to provide an alternative (JPEG or raw + JPEG) to A C G concerning moving to another raw processor (AftershotPro?) that appeared to have less capability than LR4. Many LR users in this forum are NOT fine art professional photographers and maybe even just rank amateur hobbyists on a very limited budget. For users in this group with LR4 performance issues, shooting raw + JPEG may provide a way to work more productively in LR until they obtain a faster system and/or Adobe resolves some of these issues.

[bmphotography1]

Todd, thanks for clarifying. I had made an unfounded and obviously incorrect assumption that the demograhic of this forum was actually the other way round.

Ben

[areohbee]

It's a common cause for conflict in these forums:

Users with troubles are directing their feedback to Adobe, but Adobe doesn't respond, but other users do: with brain-storming ideas and work-around suggestions, which are not intended to minimize original posters plight, or dilute, or whatever - but the suggestions often serve to further aggravate original posters or their like-minded brethren/sistren, since what they really want is a native solution from Adobe - not some hair-brained scheme/plugin... .

In my opinion, Lightroom has a long list of short-comings (as well as "long-going" strengths, so to speak). Best we can do is let Adobe know about them, and deal/cope in the mean time...

Just an observation - my .02...

Cheers,

Rob

[Todd Shaner]

bmphotography wrote:

Well I have tried pretty much everything from a hardware standpoint. Played with RAM latencies, spent money on better RAM, spent money on better cooler to OC higher. Spent money an SSD. Nothing. Tried a clean install on a clean OS both Win 7 and Mountain Lion

As soon as I start using the noise sliders it all just turns to glue.

Have you tried LR4.3 RC on both your Win 7 and Mountain Lion OSX Mac system? Their is no mention of "speed issues" under LR4.3 RC Bugs Corrected, but at least one forum member here has stated it provides better processor utilization on Win 7.

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom4-3/

Adobe provides release candidates so users with problems can test them and see if it resolves their issues. Adobe also request you share your feedback in this forum concerning your results.

[bmphotography1]

I have treid LR 4.3 on 64bit Windows 4.5Ghz. New i7 iMac with ML + older i5 MBP and still have the issue. Not yet checked win LR 4.3 but no reason yet to assume its different.

BUT...

I did just discover something interesting. I tried the noise sliders with all the others adjustments off and the noise sliders were pretty much immediate. OK but operationally of little use. I then tried other sliders and the effect on the noise sliders was not too bad until I adjusted highlight or shadow. Adding as much as +/-1 to the shadow or highlight sliders caused immediate slowdown on the noise sliders and rendered them very hard to use.

I hope adobe dev's see this, it may provide a clue. If anyone knows one of them, can you please point them to this post?

Thanks

Ben

[Todd Shaner]

bmphotography wrote:

I have treid LR 4.3 on big mac + MBP and still have the issue. Not yet checked win LR 4.3 but no reason yet to assume its different.

As I said at least one LR forum member here has stated there is better processor utilization on Win 7. Since you are experiencing issues on both platforms it would be very helpful if you also tried LR4.3 RC on your Win 7 system and let us (and Adobe) know your results.....for better or worse...or nothing.

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4837109#4837109

Thanks!

[bmphotography1]

Yes I have, I went back and edited the post. It was 4.3 on all platforms. I concur that 4.3 on the Windows platform is ever so slightly snappier but not enough to make me want to switch back.

[Todd Shaner]

Much appreciated, thank you. There is a known issue with processor core and hyper-threading utilization on Mac OSX platforms and some Win 7 platforms. It appears to be related to the specific processor used, with high performance quad-core and six-core processors the most prevalent. My modest i7-860 quad-core system with  a single 1920 x 1080 display works flawlessly with no lag or speed issues.

High display resolution such as 2560 x 1600 and Mac Retina displays are also known  to make LR sluggish. The current solution for this is to use a smaller Loupe view by dragging the side and/or top and bottom panels to make the  image smaller.

[bmphotography1]

Yeah I figured this one out a while ago. I reduced the view as much as I physcially could in order to gain  better real-time experience. Resolution was the first thing I tried - if I drop my video resolution down to 1920 x 1080 I still get the same issue (native is 2560x1440).

I am using a 2600K i7 overclocked. Is there a current Ivybridge or SandyBridge board/cpu combo that you know works well? I'd even go SB-E 2011 if I had too but that seems to be contrary to what you are saying about high end chips....I just have to have a solution. I love the new shadow/highlight sliders and converting my 5D3 files out to DNG is going to be a pain so I would really rather not go back to 3.6.

I can also confirm a similar thing on my wifes C2D, as soon as the shadow/highlight goes on, the experience is quite negative.

[Todd Shaner]

That's the problem, not ALL systems wih a given processor are running slow. Here's some forum members with your i7-2600k that are running fine:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4251012#4251012

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4261889#4261889

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4264818#4264818

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4279620#4279620

...and some with i7-2600K processor NOT running well:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4266183#4266183

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4288547#4288547

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4322021#4322021

Does anyone monitoring this post have a high-performance Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge processor based system that is running well?

[bmphotography1]

Thanks very much for your efforts, very kind.

I think it comes down to exact specs now, i.e. MB model & revision, RAM type. It has to be down to more than just the CPU if there is such a variety of experiences and has to be down to the implementation of the chipset on the MB. None of the above posts indicate precisely which board they are using, I will need to contact the members in question.

My MB is

Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3.

i7 2600K at 4.5GHz, water cooled, nowhere near max temp

16GB Ripjaws Z2133 with tightened timings have

Tried Ripjaws X, same.

2 x Radeon 6850 Gigabyte OC version (tried with one card out, still the same)

Samsung 830 SSD

Bunch of WD Blacks and stuff.

Again, thanks.

[Todd Shaner]

bmphotography wrote:

My MB is

Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3.

i7 2600K at 4.5GHz, water cooled, nowhere near max temp

I know you say the system is no where near max temp, but I'm wondering if this may be a part of the problem. Try running the system completely "untweaked" with over-clocking, etc. turned off, so the system is running fully within Intel's specs, including power supply voltages. I worked for a memory manufacturer and motherboard manufacturer under the Intel Embedded Alliance program from 2002–2011, so very familiar with processor, RAM, motherboard, compatibility issues.

[bmphotography1]

Yes I have done this too, ran it completely as stock and the same. In fact the OC doesnt give a drastic improvement to the problems I have complained about but it has made other aspects of the system great: PS CS6 - uh wow, obscenely fast.

Ive pretty much covered every base here....turned HT on/off, disabled cores, disabled stepping, turned off every non essential service on MB such as USB, network, blah , blah , blah

[Todd Shaner]

OK good, so we can rule that out. If you haven't done so already try disconnecting all USB, FireWire, and other external devices that aren't needed to run LR, including external drives, phones, and any other portable devices.

If still no joy and you're game to trying other things, I'd try 'Selective Startup' to see if you can pinpoint any background applications that are affecting LR.

http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/disable-startup-items-services-windows.html

[bmphotography1]

Its a vanilla install of windows. It has nothing else installed except Steam which is started manually. All external devices are out already and the hubs are turned off on the MB. FW is off. Its all off.

[Todd Shaner]

If it were me I'd do a full uninstall of both Steam and LR4, reinstall LR4.3 RC, create a new catalog, import a few hundred images, and test it.

Your current catalog and previews will not be removed by the uninstall and remain on the hard drive. At any point you can uninstall LR 4.3 RC, reinstall 4.2, and reassociate your original catalog(s) by double-clcking on the 'catalogname' .lrcat file.

http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/preference-file-locations-lightroom-4.html

[bmphotography1]

Also, trshaner, how does post 33 & 34 fit in with what you are saying about 6 core boxes?

http://www.lightroomforums.net/showthread.php?16148-Building-a-computer-specifically-for-LR&p=113363...

...ot trying to be antagonistic here - I just need a solution 🙂

ps, uninstalling steam is a huge drama, the likelihood of it being this is too remote. There are no running services associated with it.

[Todd Shaner]

bmphotography wrote:

Also, trshaner, how does post 33 & 34 fit in with what you are saying about 6 core boxes?

http://www.lightroomforums.net/showthread.php?16148-Building-a-compute r-specifically-for-LR&p=11336...

...ot trying to be antagonistic here - I just need a solution 🙂

There have been numerous LR forum members that have reported on this post (and others) that their six-core processor based systems with SSDs have performance issues, some even with dual Xeon server processors. You can use the LR Forum 'Ask A Question' search engine to find them.

I'm not surprised no one has responded to my request in post #1528:

Does anyone monitoring this post have a high-performance Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge processor based system that is running well?

I'm pretty much "burned-out" on trying to help people with LR4 performance issues, not to mention recovering from the damage done by Hurricane Sandy.  My guess is most of the LR forum members that could help you are starting to feel the same way. I suggest posting this question in the new LR4.3 RC thread here:

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1097184?tstart=60

bmphotography wrote:

ps, uninstalling steam is a huge drama, the likelihood of it being this is too remote. There are no running services associated with it.

This is a perfect example why LR forum members like me are getting burned out helping others with LR4 issues. Why is uninstalling the Steam gaming application a "huge issue" and why would you presume the simple LR4.3 RC “test” using a new catalog outlined in post #1534 isn't worth your time? How much time & money is it going to take you to build a new system, and what if it performs no better?

Do you get my point? Adobe pays me nothing and I'm a professional with over 45-years of computing technology industry experience (20-years Hardware Engineering + 25-years Product Marketing). I'm also not too proud to tell you I was known at my company as the "go-to guy” when no one else had a solution to a perplexing hardware design issue. “Pay your money and take your choice!”

[bob frost]

From: "trshaner

*Does anyone monitoring this post have a high-performance Sandy Bridge or

Ivy Bridge processor based system that is running well?*

Yes, i7-3930K on Intel DX79SI, with 16GB ram (LR only uses about 4 at max),

separate SSDs for system/LRcat & previews, nefs on 2TB internal HDD. I turn

HToff and LR uses all six cores during rendering.

No problems in my normal work, but I don't need to use lens corrections

(profiles and chromatic aberration) very often, neither do I need to use

luminance noise reduction very often (mainly in old images). These are the

three big offenders in the slowdown of LR4.

Bob Frost

[glugglug]

This really is the most bizarre of problems. I am running LR4.2 on a 5 year old Core Duo 3Ghz with 4Gb of RAM. After initial problems LR sorted itself out and runs very nicely and responsively, no different from LR3. The only concession I have to 'modernity' is an SSD for the system and program files.

In France, I run it on a more up to date machine  with an i3 processor and 8GB and it runs very quickly. Both machines on Win7.

Computer Shopper mag in the UK ran reviews of graphics software and singled out LR4 as not only the best of the bunch but also specifically noted its responsiveness.

I run all normal services on my machines including Windows indexing, ColorMunki monitor control. I can run Photoshop, Lightroom and Sony Vegas concurrently without any problem.

I have followed this thread from the beginning in an attempt to spot something, any common thread that I might pick up by chance. But there is nothing.

The only way I can see this being solved is getting together two identical machines, one with the LR problem and one without and examining the functioning of the two machines in minute detail. There has to be a reason.................

[bmphotography1]

I expressed an opinion and for this you feel the need to patronise me? Thats quite unfair and has escalated this conversation out of the realm of good detetctivce work and into sabre-rattling. Nothing in my post should have illicited that. In actual fact you asked me if I was 'game to try x,y,z'. I have spent a lot of time and money on this, Adobe does not pay me either.

I have made a vanilla installation of Win7, its easier than reinstalling steam  - no difference. I also used vanilla installations of MacOS 10.6.8 and 10.8.2 that I use as test environments (its easier to access these). No Dice.

I have 3 seperate hardware platforms running 2 seperate OSes of different iterations the bug exists in all environments. Its not removing steam, its putting it back thats the issue and on balance, in my opinion this was looking at the wrong tree. focussing on hardware behaviour, in particluar thread priority and scaling is a more productive use of time.

Sorry to hear about your storm troubles. We had a big one here in queensland a couple of years ago, everyone in Australia held their breath but luckily because the population density is relatively low, it was quite easy to get evacuate ahead of schedule. The emergency services also basically said that emergency calls would not be responded to so get out now, which probably gave people some motivation. There was immense property damage and the nations 'salad bowl' got destroyed with an area the almost twice the size of Texas going underwater. 2 Years later and the recovery is still goin on - Australias banana industry is only just recovering. Thankfully there were zero fatalities but I do sympathise with the terror of the event. Just afterwards hundreds of people found out they were not insured against storm surge. Some fast brushwork and barricading stopped us (further south) from being flooded by an ancilliary weather system but just after the strom passed all the kids were going up and down the street on surf boards. Bizarre. I get the impression that there is something of a 'blitz mentality' in NY which is a good thing.

[Todd Shaner]

bmphotography wrote:

I expressed an opinion and for this you feel the need to patronise me? Thats quite unfair and has escalated this conversation out of the realm of good detetctivce work and into sabre-rattling. Nothing in my post should have illicited that. In actual fact youasked me if I was 'game to try x,y,z'. I have spent a lot of time and money on this, Adobe does not pay me either.

This is also one of the problems with trying to resolve "complicated" technology issues via forum postings......no real-time ability to interact. I stated in another post here that I would love to get my hands a badly behaving system and offered to travel to any New Jersey forum member's home or business office to assist.....but not one taker to date!

My point was that I've provided "suggestions" to numerous LR forum posters and in many cases get a similar "rebuff" of "That can't be the cause, "I don't have the time or patience, or simply NO REPLY. I apologize if you felt I was patronizing, as that was and is not my intent.

bmphotography wrote:

I have made a vanilla installation of Win7, its easier than reinstalling steam  - no difference. I also used vanilla installations of MacOS 10.6.8 and 10.8.2 that I use as test environments (its easier to access these). No Dice.

I have 3 seperate hardware platforms running 2 seperate OSes of different iterations the bug exists in all environments. Its not removing steam, its putting it back thats the issue and on balance, in my opinion this was looking at the wrong tree. focussing on hardware behaviour, in particluar thread priority and scaling is a more productive use of time.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "vanilla installation of Win 7, did you actually try a "fresh install" using LR4.3 RC, with a "new" catalog, and newly imported images for testing on a Win 7 system without Steam installed? The devil is in the details and again we have no realtime way of communicating, especially if you live in Queensland, Australia (+15 Hr. ET). There is a known issue with some Mac platforms concerning core and thread utilization and I don't think LR4.3 RC fixes it, so I'd stay focused on Win 7 for now. This is the i7-860, 12GB system I'm using with no major issues HP Pavilion Elite HPE-150t CTO. It uses a MS-7613 (Iona-GL8E) motherboard manufactured by Gigabyte.

We were hit pretty bad by Hurricane Sandy in the NJ/NY shore areas. It's the worst storm that I've seen in 66 years living in NJ. I live three miles from Belmar, NJ, but on the 2nd highest point on the Eastern Seaboard so no flooding.  Here are some before/after aerial shots of New York and New Jersey areas hit by Hurricane Sandy. Mouse-over the images to see Before and After views.

http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/news/weeklynews/nov12/ngs-sandy-imagery.html

Please feel free to send me a PM if you would like to continue troubleshooting further via personal email. I'm now retired and available most anytime during the day (ET).