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

[ebrslong]

I have been fighting an issue with the Export module causing LR 4 to crash,  and in the ptocess of trying to figure out if it was me or them, I did some experimentation, which is directly related to the concerns many have stated about LR4 performacne.

I had no problems with LR 4 performance at all.  I was using the 64 Bit version, and it just worked great, and there was no impact on sstem performance, including cursor response. 

When I started getting the export crashes, and couldn't get them to stop, I installed the 32 bit LR 4 as well as the 64 bit version.  The irst thing I noticed was that the 32 Bit version is a terrible CPU hog,  During any exports, the CPU - all 4 cores - ran at 100% for a minutes at a time, dopping occasionally to lower CPU usage.  Didn't matter if I was using the jfriedl plug-ins for Photobucket and facebook, or did a Hard Drive export; the CPU Usage pattern was the same; indicating he problem was with the rendering engine as it was converting the photos from Raw to jpg files.

Just on a whim, i retried the 64 bit version -  wonder of wonders - i was once again able to export with the 64 Bit version.  I rechecked how it performed on the same exports.  Much faster, with no major CPU hogging, no impact on cursor movement, and only occasional high CP{U usage - about one second per photo, adn then not over 80%.

Certainly, at least part of the performance imapcts I saw was from running 32 bit executables in a 64 bit environment.  However, I think there may also be an issue with the 32 bit version causing excessive periods of high CPU usage.

I will continue to use the 64 bit version everywhere I can, and if the problem with theexport module reappears, i will jump over to the 32 bit version for taht function. 

[hillrg]

clvrmnky wrote:

The great majority of users are not having problems described here. Adobe is looking into the clearest reports they have, and have already issued a statement that may help some people experiencing specific performance issues. I'm sure there will be more to follow.

I would suggest this is an unwarranted assumption on your part.  Perhaps the great majority of users simply put up with the problems or just decide to ditch LR?  This is the nightmare for any service related business - no feedback.  I am a good example - I am having many of the performance issues after using v 1-3 without issues.  I have a ton of experience with LR and have reviewed all the performance enhancement options.  However, I have not commented until now, just waiting for something to happen, or revert to 3.6.  I have to disable the detail panel to get any reasonable slider performance.

As Joema3 said:

I fail to grasp why makers of specialize image browsing/catalogging software don't prioritize fluid, responsive, lag-free image browsing.  If you're dealing with ingesting and culling thousands of images -- despite whatever else the software does -- it must be fast for next/prev browsing.

Adobe really needs to figure this out.  I would like the option to review the embedded jpg images for culling aka the import module.  Problem with the import module pulling embedded jpg from a flash card just cannot keep up - although photo mechanic can...

Seems a shame to me that I prefer to use a third party image browser to cull instead of LR.  When I show LR to others it is a little embarrassing to say "you just have to wait for all the previews to be built - should be done in 15-20 minutes...".  Then I'll delete all the ones I imported but don't want.  I usually get a raised eyebrow about then, especially from picassa or photo mechanic users.

[A_C_G]

"Seems a shame to me that I prefer to use a third party image browser to cull instead of LR"

Touche. I do all my sorting using BreezeBrowser which was the RAW converter I bought when I first converted to digital in 2002.

Likewise the creation of my web folders. BB is so much faster.

Tony

[Guest]

I agree: how can someone know that "the vast majority" of Adobe users are not having this problem? Just because only a fraction of them decided to post about it doesn't mean tha those are the only ones having it.

I upgraded to LR4, and to be honest, I regreat it. The improved Development module doen't justify the lack of responsiveness and slowness I am experiencing. It is a price way to high to have a few improvements. (Meaning, I do value my time and I cannot/don't feel like spending 10x the time to do a similar job in LR4 than I did in LR3)

If I recall correctly, a request made when LR4 was being developed was "Increase the speed of the Develop Module" -both switching to and working in. Well, it almosts feel like a joke when what happened is actually the opposite. I cannot believe that Adobe didn't notice this problem before.

Btw, as it was suggested (and I tried it) working with a second monitor or not will greatly impact on LR4. Who are they programming this for? Professional photographers? Most of us work with 2 monitors.

The specs on my Computer are:

RAM: 12 GB

Video RAM: 1 GB (on video card)

Dedicated Scratch HD

Raid - Only for Photos and Catalog

Dedicated HD To System and software.

All HDs are eSATA

Intel Core i7 at 3.07 GHz

64 Bit Operating System. Windows 7

No, LR4 is not suppose to be slow on a system like that. Photoshop flies, LR3 works good. (Even with 100+MB TIFF file on develop module with the Brush AND 2 monitors)

I am really dissapointed. If this would be a "tangible" good, I would be returning it to the Store.

Just thought of something: So, LR4 was supposed to be a Ferrari, the only problem is that if someone sits on the passanger sit, then it cannot go faster than 80 km/hr

Cheers,

[Guest]

uphotography wrote:

I agree: how can someone know that "the vast majority" of Adobe users are not having this problem? Just because only a fraction of them decided to post about it doesn't mean tha those are the only ones having it.

I upgraded to LR4, and to be honest, I regreat it. The improved Development module doen't justify the lack of responsiveness and slowness I am experiencing. It is a price way to high to have a few improvements. (Meaning, I do value my time and I cannot/don't feel like spending 10x the time to do a similar job in LR4 than I did in LR3)

If I recall correctly, a request made when LR4 was being developed was "Increase the speed of the Develop Module" -both switching to and working in. Well, it almosts feel like a joke when what happened is actually the opposite. I cannot believe that Adobe didn't notice this problem before.

Btw, as it was suggested (and I tried it) working with a second monitor or not will greatly impact on LR4. Who are they programming this for? Professional photographers? Most of us work with 2 monitors.

The specs on my Computer are:

RAM: 12 GB

Video RAM: 1 GB (on video card)

Dedicated Scratch HD

Raid - Only for Photos and Catalog

Dedicated HD To System and software.

All HDs are eSATA

Intel Core i7 at 3.07 GHz

64 Bit Operating System. Windows 7

No, LR4 is not suppose to be slow on a system like that. Photoshop flies, LR3 works good. (Even with 100+MB TIFF file on develop module with the Brush AND 2 monitors)

I am really dissapointed. If this would be a "tangible" good, I would be returning it to the Store.

Just thought of something: So, LR4 was supposed to be a Ferrari, the only problem is that if someone sits on the passanger sit, then it cannot go faster than 80 km/hr

Cheers,

And how do you know that a majority has performance problems?

Really, such comments do not help at all. Adobe works on the problems and the most serious ones have already been fixed in LR 4.1 RC.

Lightroom 4.1 is fast (even faster than 4.0), no slider lags whatsoever. It is not related to machine power and probably more related to the plethora of PC configurations out there in reality, including peripheral stuff such as RAID systems, network drives and so on. Not possible to catch all problems during beta testing. You have to test drive the software before deciding if it works in YOUR production environment.

[Guest]

tgutgu said:

And how do you know that a majority has performance problems?

Really, such comments do not help at all. Adobe works on the problems and the most serious ones have already been fixed in LR 4.1 RC.

Lightroom 4.1 is fast (even faster than 4.0), no slider lags whatsoever. It is not related to machine power and probably more related to the plethora of PC configurations out there in reality, including peripheral stuff such as RAID systems, network drives and so on. Not possible to catch all problems during beta testing. You have to test drive the software before deciding if it works in YOUR production environment.

But you've just made a blanket satement by claiming "Lightroom 4.1 is fast (even faster than 4.0), no slider lags whatsoever". yet you're complaining about the statements of others.

Lightroom 4 and 4.1 certainly has slider lags here

[Guest]

How do I quote someone? Doesnt 'appear to be working. I clicked on 'reply' in the bottom corner of someone's post above,and my last post was the result ... no quote.

ETA: OK tried manually quotign and the BBCODE doesnt' work. Hmmmm

[dorin_nicolaescu]

Quote button in message editor.

În data de 01.04.2012 01:54, "John Spacey" <forums@adobe.com> a scris:

**

Re: Lightroom 4 is slow created by John Spacey<http://forums.adobe.com/people/John+Spacey>in

Photoshop Lightroom - View the full discussion<http://forums.adobe.com/message/4305110#4305110

[TR3znor]

So... in the end I'm going back to LR 3.6. Unfortunately LR 4.1 performance doesn't satisfy me. I'm not going to switch to single screen while working on LR.

[Guest]

Just installed and tried photoshop cs6 beta. i tried the new adobe camaera raw with x64 bit and hey man, this thing is FAST. compared to lr4 adobe camera raw is nearly as twice so fast than lightroom. unbelievable. for now camera raw is my preferred raw engine. amazing. can not belive they use the same engine. happy now with adobe camera raw, still very sad about lightroom.

chris!

[MarceloTrad]

I´m dealing with a lot of slowness and freeze up performance (if you could call it performance) in LR4...Just wonder: what are these guys doing over there at Adobe Labs? Too much Facebook for them maybe?

Because I´m trying hard to work here and make a livin out of photography.

Have said that, I have a Q6600 quad core with Nvidia GTX8800 +8gb ram and no antivirus or other program that would slow down my performance (just work computer only)...also have a raid 0 with two 7200rpm disks.

Noticed that no matter if I put pictures on external e-sata disk and import and use it from there or on my hard drive, still slow.

When I try to use with a Bamboo Connect.........just terrible!

I felt like setting my whole table on fire after trying to edit a catalog with no more than 50 pictures on it...ajusts on the sliders are imprecise as they are so slow!

I noticed a increase in my work hors more than 30% definately...

Gave away my LR3 and I´m almoast calling Adobe and returning my LR4 and using LR3 until they come up with a solution...

Maybe the price droped and quality of the programers also droped this time...

Sorry Adobe, but I´m realy desapointed with this problems.

[Jao vdL]

When I try to use with a Bamboo Connect.........just terrible!

Sounds like the tablet bugs are still there. A quick google reveals this: http://www.lightroomforums.net/showthread.php?14184-Wacom-Bamboo-Pen-problem

I don't use one of these but Lightroom has a long history of really really badly interfering with drivers from wacom tablets. Some people can get this to work apparently but it is all very precarious. You often have to make absolutely sure you're running the very latest drivers for the tablet.

[MarceloTrad]

Yeap!

I´m running the latest drivers and of course the latest software...It´s

just a pain.

Other programs like Photoshop, Bridge, end even Capture One or Nikon

Software does not lag at all with Wacom tablets.

They actualy tend to guet better as new versions are released. Even Windows

is getting faster...Vista was terrible, 7 is great, 8 seems to be even

better and faster.

I´m hoping they come outr with a solution to this Lr4 issues soon.

Oh, I was editing a video footage on Lr4. Ok got to love this possability.

I "saved" the metadata a couple of times (always do that to make sure) and

deleated everything since I was moving the whole project to a new laptop

computer. Surprise surprise...none of the cliping/rating/color tag came

with it!

Asked the question to Adobe and they said that Lr4 does not save metadata

for video files.

So let´s think about this: one of the Lr4 and Lr in general greatest

features is the ability of doing this sort of thing, tag rate and so on.

And you can see videos but canot do any taging.

Thanks for leting us know ahead of time Adobe, you just could save me more

than 12 hours of work.

So I found a way of bypass this...just do your cliping and rating and save

a catalog after just fot that job or the way you like better.

Oh well I might sound like a complainer but I´m not...just had too many

disapointment with Lr4 and need to let it out!

😃

Marcelo Trad

[tfitz100]

I'm wondering something. Do the users seeing 100% spike in CPU, who have multi-core/cpu systems see the spikes in ALL of those cores/cpus or a single core/cpu? I am now wondering if this is actually a process/thread scheduling problem that show's itself only under certain conditions in LR4.

The reason I ask thiis is because I DO see a slowdown when I use the Adjustment brush with Tint (no idea why it's just this), but when this does happen, I see 1 single core spike and the rest are relatively idle, almost zero really. However, when I perform other functions, it appears that the other cores raise up slightly when I peform adjustments, but not 1 single core as in the adjustment brush case.

I would be interested to see the results of what is happening to other users when they see the slowdown: What is happening in each core/cpu (depending on your system)?

[Guest]

My Core 2 extreme system with multiple cores spikes to almost 100%, hitting

all cores.

Sent from my iPhone

[joema3]

gadgetgeek wrote:

My Core 2 extreme system with multiple cores spikes to almost 100%, hitting

all cores.

BTW, taking 100% CPU is not by itself wrong or bad. In general you want all available CPU resources used to get the job done faster. If all cores are at 100% and it's still slow, that's bad. Alternatively if it's CPU-bound (not disk or I/O-bound), slow, yet all cores are *not* being used, that's bad. It indicates available CPU assets are not being used, typically because the app is poorly multi-threaded. In that case you often see a single CPU pegged, but an aggregate CPU meter averaging all cores shows a lower percentage. In general recent upper-echelon Adobe apps use multiple threads/cores pretty well, esp. Premiere Pro/Photoshop CS5 and later. I don't know what happened to LR4.

[Guest]

My point is that it takes 100% of the CPU, leaving few if any resources for

things like moving the mouse. The previous version did not take that amount

of CPU power to make an adjustment. The time it takes to complete the

adjustment is also very high, taking another second after moving a slider

to see the change on the screen. What is frustrating is trying to make a

precise adjustment and having to wait another second to see the effect.

That is unacceptable.

Can't wait to see what the update at the end of the week will do!

Geoff

Sent from my iPhone

[paul-w]

Not sure if this is slightly off topic but I've just checked my preferences file having followed most of the suggestions above and I went to check the location of the Camera RAW cache which I'd set up to go to a location on a different drive to program and photos. Nothing has been written to the cache since I installed the trial on the 17th of March.

I'm working with .dng and .jpg files at the moment and have been since I installed LR4.

My question - has anyone else checked if the LR cache is being written to?

Message was edited by: paul-w

[Jim Wilde]

paul-w wrote:

My question - has anyone else checked if the LR cache is being written to?

Yes, I have....and it is. Although much smaller entries compared with LR2 cache entries. If you are using DNG are you also using the new Fast Load Data feature, as that will have an impact on the ACR cache.

Some discussion about the ACR cache wrt LR4 in this thread: http://forums.adobe.com/message/4284553#4284553

[paul-w]

Had a read of that Jim thanks very much.

Just created 140 1:1 previews of 7.5Mb .dng files and still the LR cache I created isn't being written to, not even an index.dat file.

From my reading of the other thread I should have seen some change even if I'm using the Fast Load Data feature, shouldn't I?

Still off to bed now I'll have another look in the morning.

[kiddid]

Giant Company selling/charging user for it's beta software, user should have protection from this kind of transaction..

[joshnl77]

Just to throw in my own observations after having used the trial version for about 2.5 weeks now:

The library module is fine. Once the previews have been generated, everything is snappy enough.

Switching to the develop module usually takes a few seconds when it's the first time after starting up the software; but after that, it's a relatively smooth transition (although sometimes switching back to library module is a bit choppy).

In the develop module, things are generally okay, except in the following conditions: (a) heavy use of the brush tool and (b) working on high ISO images (i.e. in the range of 3200). I haven't done too, too much with the brush tool in LR4 yet, but I can say that, very reproducibly, as soon as I start working on a high ISO image, the program comes to a crawl - it's virtually unusable, and would be absolutely unusable in a situation where high productivity is needed. When I say that it comes to a crawl, I mean switching from image to image in the develop module, using pretty much any slider, zooming in and out, applying sharpening/NR, applying lens correction, using curves, etc. As soon as I switch back to a low ISO image (400 or lower), it's all good again.

In the case of all images (regardless of ISO), sharpening/NR are much, much slower than they were in LR3.6. In LR3.6, switching on and off the "details" (using the toggle switch) results in an almost instantaneous change. In the case of LR4, it generally takes a good 5 seconds or so for the effect to kick in (making it very difficult to judge the before and after).

BTW, all this was done on a fresh catalog, created in LR4. However, LR3.6 is also installed on my system, and I did have the LR4 beta on there as well (but I uninstalled this before installing the full trial version).

In terms of my system specs:

i7-950 OC'ed to ~3.4GHz; 12GB RAM (rated 1600MHz; set at 1500MHz); AMD Radeon HD6870; LR catalog and photos on caviar black 1TB; cache on a separate black caviar 1TB; LR itself installed on my C drive, which is a Vertex 2 120GB SSD; running two, sometimes three monitors (but LR only running on one, i.e. not using second or third monitor); Win7 x64

Camera specs: Canon 7D, using RAW files

To be fair, another thing to point out is that it's not as if LR3 was always problem-free for me. Especially in earlier versions, it had it's slow moments (this problem seems to have improved in more recent version of LR3); but not nearly as bad as LR4 is.

Hope this helps in terms of solving this issue, which is very significant for some.

[joshnl77]

Just tried LR4.1RC. No improvement. Not even a slight one.

[A_C_G]

Foregive me if this link has been posted here.

For safety I will risk repetition:-

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom_4_update_from_the_team_update_schedu...

Tony

[TR3znor]

Hi All,

I've exactly the same problems with LR4 performance as most of you (dual screen users).

My hardware:

AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2 @ 3.8

16GB of 1600MHz RAM

HDD - WD20EARS couple of times 😉 (unfortunately not SSD)

GIGABYTE GT240 1GB

But there is one significant difference. As RAW (NEF) files from my D90 and D700 are rendering smoothly without any lags, RAWs from D70 (while working on dual screen ONLY) are just killing my CPU. I've 1-2s lag every 5s. It's horrible! And quite hard to explain. Any ideas maybe?

Cheers,

TR3znor