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

[terry275]

Not sure if this is the place to raise this one but when sychronising in the develop module only the exposure setting for say 100 images only the first 6-12 are changed.  When synchronising CHECK ALL is used then the exposure is changed on all the images?

[snapdance]

After installing LR 4.1 RC, found that everything that was terribly slow is a little less slow. In Debelop, adjustments to eith Noise sliders cause LR to hang up for 3-5 seconds. The great respionsioveness of all the sliders I'm accustomed to in LR 3.x is gone. On importing RAW, thumbnail previews appear very slowly; exports take longer. Copyu and paste settings takes longer. We've gone backwards. Help! This is my livelihood. Thanks.

[Guest]

Lightroom 4.1 made a lttle improvement on my computer! Blending out the Filmstrip helps, but i still wished a little bit more performance!

There is one very strange issue i found. working on 5dmkII, 7d and 1dmkIV files is quite fast now with 4.1 not perfrect but fast. i downloaded quite a lot 5dmkIII raw files from iso 100 till iso 25000. i imported these raw files in lr 4.1 rc1 and they qre much much much more sluggish than 1dmkIV, 5dmkII and 7d files. very strnage cause 5dmkIII files are not larger than 5dmkII files and do not have so mcuh more megapixels. whats the problem? i will have my 5dmkIII in 2 weeks and hey man.....this is pretty bad. working with 5dmkII ok, working with 5dmkIII BAD. Please fix that QUICK adobe or you would make my experience about the new cam very BAD *g* go go go 🙂

king regards chris!

[Ronald N. Tan]

Here is a question to anyone, past posters and new posters. On my system, I have one GPU driving out 2 monitors—the main screen via DVI (digital) and the secondary via VGA (analog). To re-summarize my system configuration:

Windows 7 Home Premium x64 @ Core i5 750 2.67 GHz

nVIDIA GeForce GT 430 (with 96 CUDA Cores and 1 GB of memory)

16 GB DDR3 SDRAM

7200 RPM hard drives (C and D internal, AHCI configuration)

Comments:

I have the latest drivers installed for all hardware on my system.

I don't have many simultaneous programs concurrently running when I am working on Lightroom 4.1 RC (maybe I'll have Photoshop CS5 opened).

LR is installed on my C-drive with a dedicated cache, allocated 50 GBs on the D-drive.

[Redacted]: My catalog size is small. I have the "sessions" workflow. Each of my catalogged session is NO MORE than 200 frames from my Canon 7D. This is a workflow I adopted from coming from PhaseONE CaptureONE PRO. For example, if I am shooting for Client ABC tomorrw, that shoot would be catalogged in itself and the final archive size will not go pass beyond 200 images. Does that make sense?

What I've Done:

The impeding performance problems I experience happens when I activate the dual-monitor option within LR (pressing F11 key). I normally like to have my 2nd screen show thumbs and grids while my main screen shows the main panels and the image I am working on. I even tried moving my main screen (with working panels) over to second screen and moving the grid display onto my main screen—essentially swapping the panels while the main screen is connected DVI and the second screen is still on VGA.

I deleted the cache files via the "Purge Cache" command.

I also deleted the ...Previews.lrdata file and did not notive significance improvement in performance.

Results:

During my normal usage of LR 4.1 RC, I experience instabilities. For example, when I copy settings from one RAW file and applying to a certain consecutive sequence, sometimes my LR would crash and sometimes it would work. There is that "randomness" in behavior. This was the norm. The problem when away when I depressed F11 to turn the 2nd monitor off and only have LR using one screen; however the stability problems came back and persistent. I do not know how else I could objectively quantify to assist the development team hunt this bug down to extirpate it completely. Sidesteping from stabilities issues, I could also detect and experience slider lags. Grabbing the sliders is at times insensitive. I have to truly target the center of the knob for my mouse to grab the slider so I could adjust settings.

[Guest]

Ok, so I downloaded and installed Lightroom 4.1 RC since it was impossible to work with LR 4.0.

I've seen that many claim that slider lag and speed problem (specially when using a second monitor) are gone in LR 4.1 RC. Well, I agee with that... partially.

These are my findings:

LR 4.1 RC does indeed solves the speed and lag time when using a second monitor... but only for a "short time". I cannot edit a whole wedding without LR 4.1 going nuts, slow, irresponsive and plainly doing things that I cannot even find the logic behind.

When using Survey on a second monitor, the first 100 photos (in sets of 6-9) are ok. From then on, it takes sometimes iterally minutes to get to do its fancy reordering when a photo is deleted or even to delete a photo from the surveyed group.

When moving to the Develop module, the first time takes a bit longer, as expected, and then further changes to the Develop module go fast. Actually as fast or faster than 3.6. BUT after some time, it becomes a nightmare again to move to the Develop module AND back to the Catalog module.

I have found that sometimes, after all the crazyness start, sometimes a black rectangle appears as a background to my photo info in Loupe mode. At the beginning, the black goes away after some time, but I've got to points where it just stays there.

Generating previews under some circumstances is slower than you can imagine.

Toggling the second monitor on/off with F11 works... sometimes... Sometimes LR decides that I need my second monitor and brings it up, sometimes, for no apparent reason, it turns it off.

And now moving on to Photoshop. I have CS5 which until I installed ACR 6.7 was amazing! CS5 + LR3.6. Great combination. CS5 + ACR 6.7 + LR 4.0 (4.1) Makes me want to stop with photography or simply go back to film and not work behind the computer anymore. Yes, it is that bad on this end.

I have noticed that Photoshop has started to be unstable, to the point that I close the program and it leaves a process running behind taking care of 6 (yes, six) Gb of my physical memory. I would say that that is a pretty big chunk of memorey use for a "quick launch" executable.

LR keeps craving memory and resources, specially CPU, even when doing practically nothing. And it has also decided that it is on trial now... Apparently the money and license from Adobe LR4.0 is not good enough for LR4.1.

Last but not least, actually, this is probably one of the MOST CRITICAL points is that any image sent to Photoshop and back to LR, even without any editing (just DNG - TIFF conversion) results in an image where many things change in a quite obvious way. Brightness, contrast, and much more! (In B&W it even looks like a filter was applied so sometimes the oranges get dark and the blues lighter). I mean, consistency should be priority number one and this is far from acceptable.

I mean, this is not me using a third party program that might not work very well with Photoshop, or... whatever, this is Adobe Photoshop Lightroom with Adobe Photoshop...

Adobe, get your act together. Stop with the bells and whistles (like Blurb for LR) and work on the core that we ALL need.

Thanks,

If you want more details on how I use LR / Photoshop or system configuration, please let me know.

Cheers,

p.s. I have a pretty solid system with an intel i7 3+ GHz, 12 GB RAM, 1 GB Video on Card, Can't remember what card I have right now but I remember it was one of the best when I bought it. All HDs are eSata at 7200 rpm. 64 Bit OS. and some more bells and whistles.

[terry275]

I currently have an open service ticket on many of the points you mention and they are now referring this upward to the technical section.  I think they are very aware of the problems but not enough people are registering their problems through the adobe siite. As previous contributors have said.  Register the problems with Adobe however minor they may seem.  Enough people registering the same problems will get action taken.

[Guest]

I don’t mind alerting them to the problem. In fact I searched the Adobe website for some time trying to find a place that I could log the issue with them. The only support pages I could find made it very clear that I would be paying for any support issues I had. I was rather disgusted at the thought of paying for Lightroom and then paying for support for non-functional software.

If they would like more people to log the issue then I believe they should make support more available to their own customers. The only reason I sought out this message board was because support is fee-based and therefore unreachable.

Geoff

[MarceloTrad]

I've also downloaded 4.1 RC and I'm running it!

Tethered Capture is terrible slow and I have to restart the program a lot

when it freezes everything once every 30min of work. Not intense work but

when taking 1 photo every 30s!

Not that Lr 3.6 was perfect on tethered. Only Capture One and Nikon Capture

software runs perfectly smooth.

Everything slows down a ton when using on tethered and is just impossible

to work.

I did not notice more then 20% improvement on overall speed on 4.1 RC and

I'm hoping when 4.1 finaly comes out it will solve more issues and speed up

more. Otherwise I'm gonna return my licence and just stick with 3.6!

The new functions do not justify the slowness at all!

Marcelo Trad

[andreas603]

+1 for Marcelo's post... I am dumbfounded as to how Adobe can release such a product and ask people to pay for it....$99 or not...its still a fair bit of money and an *expectation* based on the Adobe brand reputation.  LR is simply a DOG...and not just 4 or worse 4.1 "RC"...in particular for tethering.... I downloaded Capture One demo and tested tethering yesterday on both LR 3.6, 4.1 RC and CO v6....wired and wireless via Eye fi using my Canon 5D Mark III as well as Mark II...First, to be fair, neither program recognizes my new Mark III yet when tethered via USB...that will surely be rectified..however when transferring wirelessly, there is an OCEAN of difference in performace btwn the two programs....  Small example to illustrate:  Using only Large JPGs, Tethered directly with a Mark II, the shot appears in CO in about 2 seconds in full resolution...same exact computer but using either LR 3.6 or 4.1 it takes 7, nearly 8 seconds...thats THREE TO FOUR TIMES SLOWER in LR... When you're in the event business (or any high speed shoot like a modeling shoot, etc) this is a KILLER.  Using my Mark III via eye fi its about 2 seconds longer with both programs due to the wireless transfer lag.... but to be most illustrative as possible... Capture One with wireless transfer via Eye fi is 4 seconds and LR is 10 seconds...****So Capture One with wireless transfer is twice as fast as tethered USB transfer with LR!!*****  If you're doing an event shoot with a line of people  you can process twice as many wirelessly or 3 times wired...thats potentially 3 times more income in the same period of time than when using LR.

Not withstanding the other performance issue that continues to dog LR 4.1 RC related to develop slider, sluggish controls, etc, I can't see how a professional shooter who relies on speed of ingest can seriously buy or use LR.  I have no experience with Aperture but I'd sure like to know how fast that is.... Fact remains that CO is still much pricier than LR or Aperture but for a professional, paying a couple extra hunded buck for *speed* is recovered in about 2 hours of working with CO!  Im going to also assume that CO product marketing folks are also monitoring forums like these and are seriously considering lowering their price  (personally I think it would be a smart move while Adobe is quite vulnerable).... One has to ask of LR is being positioned more for casual consumer use than professional with this latest release and poor tethering performance.

END OF RANT.

[MarceloTrad]

Thank's Andreas for your post!

I wish Adobe would read all this since is their forum, but I've heard that

this is not happening right now!

Best

Marcelo Trad

[kwdaves]

Bug and Feature Request Form

[dorin_nicolaescu]

That one is outdated.

Use this:

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/products/photoshop_family_photoshop_lightroom

[bmphotography1]

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.

Very poor work Adobe. It is hugely frustrating and I am struggling to find the motivation to complete assingments because the once awesome tool that was the mainstay of my workflow has been pretty much crippled.

Fed up, really really fed up and miserable about this. I just dont have time to do your product testing for you, none of us do.

[A_C_G]

Bm, you say "Fed up, really really fed up and miserable about this. I just dont have time to do your product testing for you, none of us do."

Read post 1505.

Not a guaranteed solution - but an alternative way of spending your time.

Tony

[bmphotography1]

Thanks Tony,

Its been under consideration for a while but I find the noise management and colour slightly better in LR. Every time a new C1 comes out I give it a run but the thing that really trips me up is the workflow but I expect I can live with that... I certainly cant live with the solution I have now.

If I just knew what hardware to get I would get it 🙂

[Keith Reeder]

Read my post in this thread, in response to Rob asking about Capture One Pro 7.

The grass isn't always greener on the other side: Cap One Pro 7 is less responsive on my machine than Lr 4, by a country mile - it really is unusably bad.

[A_C_G]

To the last two posts.

1505 said "looked at another suite of software not even mentioned by Mr Reeder"

If I did not make it clear enough I'll say it now.

I am not using C1.

Tony

[Keith Reeder]

Yeah, thanks for that "clarification", Tony - but I wasn't responding to you.

[A_C_G]

About ten days ago I wrote saying I was learning to use an alternative. This is not to encourage people to migrate from LR if it is working well for them.

They would be silly to do so. But as an alternative to knocking the proverbial head against the proverbial brick wall this may be a better way forward. However I do say 'may' and not 'will'.

Three folders of shots processed by my new software. All from a GH2.

A conventional one:-

http://www.tonygamble.org/Embroidery%202012/index.htm

A quirky one with a £15 lens:-

http://www.tonygamble.org/Autumn_Leaves_Berries_2012/index.htm

A mix including some fairly high ASA ones:-

http://www.tonygamble.org/Sound_of_Mus_Prod_wk_backstage/index.htm

If you think they are rubbish then read no further.

What was satisfying is that such a high percentage were useable with next to no tweaking. In other words using the base algorithms of the program.

My email is in my profile if you are interested. Do not PM here as I rarely have the need to look in as I no longer use LR.

Tony

[areohbee]

A C G wrote:

About ten days ago I wrote saying I was learning to use an alternative.

Three folders of shots processed by my new software.

You tease! - I think it's time you came clean and revealed your mysterious tool... .

Rob

[bmphotography1]

So Tony, what you are saying is that the amount of processing you did was virtually nun?

I reckon I know what it is....

[Keith Reeder]

A C G wrote:

About ten days ago I wrote saying I was learning to use an alternative.

AfterShot Pro, judging by the poor white balance and all the blown highlights, both of which failings ASP excels at.

[Todd Shaner]

A C G wrote:

About ten days ago I wrote saying I was learning to use an alternative. This is not to encourage people to migrate from LR if it is working well for them.

......

What was satisfying is that such a high percentage were useable with next to no tweaking. In other words using the base algorithms of the program.

Tony

The linked images look very similar to the JPEG output from my Canon DSLRs, and yes I mean with next to no tweaking (i.e. Exposure only).  I mean no offense and certainly agree the images Tony posted work very well for web viewing. Shooting JPEG is an even simpler alternative if your objective is to "minimize" post-processing, especially for work that is destined primarily for the Web or small prints.

Perhaps we should all take a little harder look at Tony's example and the suggestion that for many purposes shooting JPEG or Raw+JPEG might make more sense. With in-camera noise-reduction applied to JPEG images you can usually leave LR's NR set to 0, which will greatly increase LR4's performance.

Below is an image shot using a Canon 5D MKII at ISO 400, Raw+JPEG, Camera Standard settings, and sRGB profile.

Exposure +.5, 20, -40, +40, +15, -15 Blacks          Exposure +.5 (all others at 0)

I'm using a custom ColorChecker Passport profile with the raw image, so close to perfect color balance. At 1:1 view the JPEG is slightly less sharp and lower in noise than the processed raw image, but certainly more than acceptable for most purposes.

With the JPEG image adjusted using LR settings Exposure +.66, 0, -35, +35, +12, -18 Blacks, Vibrance 25, Sharpening 50, .8, 35, 0 it looks virtually identical to the processed raw image.

The "side-benefit" of shooting JPEG is that you now get to use all of those fancy picture styles, shooting modes, creative settings, dynamic range extenders, high ISO noise reduction, etc. that only work with JPEG images. And by shooting Raw + JPEG you can "maximize" creative usage of your images pronto!

Cheers,

Todd

[Guest]

trshaner wrote:

...

The "side-benefit" of shooting JPEG is that you now get to use all of those fancy picture styles, shooting modes, creative settings, dynamic range extenders, high ISO noise reduction, etc. that only work with JPEG images. And by shooting Raw + JPEG you can "maximize" creative usage of your images pronto!

Cheers,

Todd

Todd,

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

I understand that many photographers do "as-is" photography where the white balance is set to resemble the real color temperature. But I don't like the idea of my cameras deciding when my highlights need to be blown or when I need more details in the shadows or limiting me to shoot over 200 ISO only or even worse, doing the sharpening for me without really pondering what the content of the image is.

By doing so, we can also stop using Lightroom altogether and start using Bridge alone with an occasional trip to PS, any of the free movie makers for our slideshows (WindowsMovie Maker is definitely better than LR regarding this and it is free and I have my own way to do galleries not involving the web gallery. (An area that I wished Adobe would have put more emphasis on, but that is just personal preference)

I base my work on creativity, part of which happens during the session and part during the postprocessing. I need to have as much control over my images as possible so I need to shoot RAW (most of the time).

Many of the images I have created for my clients would have not been possible had I used Jpeg.

I do agree that for web usage and being carefull and for a given sector in photography (less demanding on "artistic" view -like sport photography or journalism), it won't make a big deal but that is not the main target of my images. They are meant to be printed and many are enlarged quite a bit. I hope this doesn't end up in another estimation saying than only 4% of the photographers need to shoot in RAW so we can also disregard this 4% the same way Adobe "should" disregard the "4%" that have problems with LR. Following this train of thinking in the future we won't need our cameras to shoot RAW and film would have been extinct a long time ago. This approach only leads to attract consumers and not professionals and last time I check Lightroom is sold as a tool for professional photographers (or at least capable of satisfying the professional photographer's needs)

I am one of the users with an extreme case of persistent Lightroomitis and recently installed LR 4.3 hoping for a . I haven't experienced the problems I had before BUT I haven't worked with it for sessions longer than 20-30 mins (which is when LR seems to start getting really unstable).

I have had a couple of occasions where LR doesn't start (starts opening and never makes it, launching it again will sucessfully open it) and only once I saw the discouraging black rectangles. I say discouraging because that is one of the first symptoms that it will show the problems again. I actually have a long editing session today and tomorrow and this will be my real test on whether my problems got solved or not with the last update. Fingers crossed.

[Todd Shaner]

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.