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]

I've installed the released version and although I haven't put it through a lot at this time, I can say that the issues I was seeing with 4.0 and the RC2 have been fixed.  More testing is needed but for now all looks good. 

Issues were:

Performance - much better

Print templates not changing w/o restart of LR - fixed

Printer profiles not being able to be selected - fixed

Like I said, more testing is needed but for now, it seems to be running fine and fast.

[glugglug]

You have plenty of full backups don't you? So no matter what you do you don't lose anything, therefore no need to be anxious.

If it goes wrong, just revert back to the original catalog/ previews etc and carry on as before.

[Guest]

From 4.1 RC just install the new version. It will uninstall the previous

version. No need to do anything with the catalog or previews.

The only thing I had to do was to setup the custom 3D settings for my video

card (nVidia) because the new version installs into a new location.

Geoff

Sent from my iPhone

[areohbee]

A "Thank You" to Adobe for doing such a good job in 4.1 of fixing most of the critical issues affecting performance. - I was imagining this dragging out for another 2 or 3 dot revs .

Kudos!

Rob

[Guest]

Rob Cole wrote:

A "Thank You" to Adobe for doing such a good job in 4.1 of fixing most of the critical issues affecting performance. - I was imagining this dragging out for another 2 or 3 dot revs .

Kudos!

Rob

I am happy it worked for you. I still have lag problems. It's not as bad as before but it is still far from being good. Even with images that have 1:1 previews, zooming is painful. Cropping, (straightening actually), moving grad filters, previewing presets and many others are very slow. If before I had to restart LR every 10 photos, now I can go to 50, maybe 75, but it is still a pain. With LR 3.6 I could edit for days (just leaving computer on standby with LR opened) and it would be perfect.

But I am happy many others solved their problem.

[Ashvin_Ghisyawan]

I had the same problem on LR4. My LR4 was extremely slow.

What I did was to made a new catalog on each import en to update my catalogs. LR4 feels a lot faster now!

Kind regards,

Ashvin

www.totaalfotografie.nl

[Guest]

Switching back to 2010 process seems to be working for me.

[Guest]

I helped a friend who had this problem on 2 Macs. After a clean-up the problem was gone on both. I used Onyx for this. Just run "Automation" with all checks. I think the problem has something to do with Privileges and/or cach-files. Maybe there's a similar solution for PC.

[Guest]

I have extensive performance issues, too.

i7-2720QM

8GB RAM

SSD

Nvidia NVS4200M

Just generally everything is super slow, a problem I had not experienced in LR3. I can even bring LR to a complete hold/not responding state. The strange thing is that LR does not use up neither my CPU power nor RAM. Seems like LR most of the time limits itself to only a single thread of my quad core CPU and only uses about 1.5 Gb of my RAM.

I tried a lot to resolve these issues, including a fresh install, use of DNG instead of RAW, delete all my previews or preferences, not writing to XMP, etc... No solution.

Also interesting: Performance seems to drop the longer you run LR. For example, when I generate the 1:1 previews for ~3000 files, it takes for the first 200 images only about 1-2 seconds each. By the time it reaches file 600 the speed is down to 30 seconds per image. And the speed gets slower and slower, so that this particular process of preview generation that should have taken about 1 hour in the end never completes - even within days.

Once I restart LR, things are again much faster - for maybe 30 minutes...

I also ran several benchmarks on my machine, all suggesting that it works fine. Photoshop and Illustrator CS5 are fast, too. I also tried AfterShot Pro. Very fast. No lags whatsoever.

This suggests to me a serious bug in LR 4.1.

Any advice is appreciated.

[Lou Dina]

chrphoto,

I have had performance problems too. I'm using a Mac Pro, 8-core dual 2.26Ghz processor, 16 GB RAM, 240 GB SSD for my OS and Programs, and I was using a dedicated HD for data and another dedicated HD for Scratch space and cache. I keep my catalog and previews on my data drive, and cache on the Scratch drive.

Yesterday I installed a RAID-0 HD array in my computer dedicated to data. I'm using two 2TB, 64MB cache, 7200 rpm drives in the array. A RAID "0" array shares read/write duty, so half the data writes to one drive and half to the other drive. This usually means doubling the speed, since only half the data needs to be written to each drive. The new drives are faster with more cache, so my benchmark testing shows this array to average between 2.5X – 3.5X faster than my previous data drive.

Anyway, some previous posters had mentioned that disk access speed was a big factor in LR4 performance, so I wanted to try it. My LR4 performance went from mediocre to fairly snappy after making just this one change, so I would have to agree that disk speed is very important. Everything else was left the same. In my opinion, it should be faster than it is with my system, but it is more than adequate now, and certainly much faster than before installing the array. I'd even say it is fairly quick most of the time, even in the Develop module. I agree that Adobe probably has some problems with coding, cache/memory management, algorithms or something, so those issues still need to be addressed. Once they are fixed, this thing should scream. After all, Adobe Camera Raw is very fast and it is the same raw processing engine.

I'm not suggesting you buy a RAID for your computer, but I did want to share my results about disk speed and LR4 performance. I'm not sure one size fits all, especially with LR!!

[KentuckyStudio]

I am experiencing significant performance issues running 4.1 in PV2012.  Change to PV2010 and boom everything is fast as can be again. 

The thing is I have turned previews down to Low, tried DNG over RAW, our data is on a local RAID array, programs and cache is on a Raptor drive, 6 GB of RAM Win 7 machine.

Perhaps the Lightroom people are only testing this on SSD disks in a 8 drive RAID 0 array?  There has to be some way to mitigate the issues with writing and reading if that is the problem. 

[SavagePhoto-lItHqa]

SOLUTION - at least for me (this is a repost from my other post - sharing with whomever I can)

You gave me a great IDEA  - I opened LR4.1 and then in task manger and messed with the affinity settings - I found that if I set it to only use 0,2,4 that LR performed MUCH faster. Then I set the Priority to High and now it is mostly usable for editing.

Setting affinity back to normal - Lightroom is SLOW again.

I made a Bat file  with this line

start "lightroom" /high /affinity 15 "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4\lightroom.exe"

It runs Lightroom at high priority and on core 0,2,4 on my 8 core system. Seems lightroom doesnt like to run hyperthreaded (if thats the right term" . Granted this still seems more sluggish than LR 3X but since I like and use the new features in 4x it will just have to do.

FYI any three from core 0,2,4,6 work four slows things down again and no combination of 1,3,5,7 seems to work in fact seems to make things worce. Mixing main with hyperthreads also does not seem to work.

FYI asus g73, 16 ram, 2 disk one devoted to LR. Installed every version from 2x including the beta of 4. Upgraded beta to full version and also upgraded catologue.

I hope this helps you

[bob frost]

Interesting! I don't use hyperthreading at all, because it sometime slows things down, and some software doesn't use it, and it produces more heat in the cpu, without much if any benefit. Try just using your main cores, and turn hyperthreading off in your bios.

Bob Frost

[steve@steveanchell.com]

I have been following this thread with great interest.  I see that literally hundreds of users are complaining about LR 4 being slow, and every once in a while someone pops up and says they're all smoking crack, there is no problem with LR 4 processing speed.

The fact is, there is.  The fact that everyone on this forum has to scramble to find a "fix" for the problem is a shame.  If Adobe wants LR to be taken seriously then they should be working 24/7 to fix the problem.  Otherwise, I would recommend Mac users, at least, to consider switching to Aperture.

As it is, I am telling all my students that the only thing LR 4 has over LR 3 is a Book module (how many of the Forum users really take advantage of the GPS module in their daily work, I wonder), and an improved Basic module in Develop.  The rest is mostly smoke and mirrors. 

My suggestiion is that rather than beating our heads against the wall looking for a work-around we need to boycott LR 4 and call or send an e-mail to Adobe complaining about the problem.  If every one on this forum were to do this perhaps Adobe would hire some real programmers and fix the problem.

I hope someone at Adobe is listening...

Steve Anchell

[Keith Reeder]

"Literally hundreds"? A few dozen, maybe.

And "If Adobe wants to be taken seriously...": really?

The reason that "everyone on this forum" isn't going to start giving Adobe grief about Lr 4's performance is that for most of us it's fine.

Finally, this comment:

"As it is, I am telling all my students that the only thing LR 4 has over LR 3 is a Book module (how many of the Forum users really take advantage of the GPS module in their daily work, I wonder), and an improved Basic module in Develop.  The rest is mostly smoke and mirrors".

You're doing your students a criminal disservice telling them that: if you can't see the vast improvement in PV2012 over PV2010, you really need to take a long, hard look at yourself.

[Amdir]

Keith_Reeder, your answer only makes me think that you aren't too informed in the matter and that you are defending Lightroom only based on your own experience. I love Adobe, but the performance of LR4 is unacceptable. The majority of LR4's users are having performance problems in relation to how LR3 performed and that's an apparent problem based on the numbers who have posted about this issue. Read this forum and other places on the internet and you will see.

And yes, if Adobe wants Lightroom to be able to be the leader with Lightroom as the number 1 RAW image editor they will have to do better than this. I've used Lightroom for years and it has always been the best without a hint of doubt. Now, with these performance issues I'm thinking about going over to AfterShot Pro or Aperture. They at least are fast and I can't let my workflow suffer because Adobe can't get their program to work properly. I hate to say it, because I'm very loytal to Adobe. I really hope Adobe will get this program to work properly but I'm starting to have doubts since they aren't even mentioning or admitting the issues anywhere. They can't ignore this many users. It's very unlike Adobe.

[rpavich1234]

Lol..MOST of us?

Not even close. I've read post after post after post for two months about how bad LR4 is...and myself included....somebody needs to read this thread and start counting replies

[sparksdjs]

I'm another user with unacceptable performance issues.  I am also now using PV2010 as PV2012 is unusable for me.

If I could, I would get a refund on the ver 4 update.  I feel like Adobe has ripped me off for $90.

Dave

[fliplip1]

Good post Keith, at least somebody has their feet firmly on the ground.

It make me laugh when people play the "fan" or "fanboy" card, just because others dont have the same problems as they do. People generally post in support forums when they are having issues. I dout very much that the amount of posts is a majority of LR4 owners. Im sure those who know its "most" can produce the figures to back this up?

Im not disagreeing with the fact that there is an issue for some, but out of the 15-20 people i personally know that uses LR4, i was the only one with real speed issues and the amount of posts on other forums with people raving about this version makes me wonder just how small the "majority" is.

I think its expected that newer, more powerful software will be a bit slower than previous versions, so a slight slowdown form LR3 is to be expected IMO.

[steve@steveanchell.com]

It is good that you find this funny.  There are many people, some of us professional photographers, who are experiencing a serious problem using LR4 and your input, and that of Keith, is that for most users everything is fine.  You don't know that.  I receive one to two e-mails per week from students and people I have never heard of asking if the problems of speed with LR 4 are real, or informing me that they have a speed issue and don't know what to do. 

The reason I receive these e-mails is that I write about digital for Rangefinder and Photo Technique magazines, and until recently, Shutterbug.  I teach photography for Oregon State University.  I have used LR since version 1.  I have gone on record as saying, in writing, that LR is the only program a photographer needs.  Until now.  If you wish to accuse me of being a disgruntled quack go ahead, but it doesn't solve the problem.

In my earlier post I suggested that everyone on this forum go to feedback.photoshop.com and inform Adobe directly that we, or at least some of us, are experiencing a problem.  I then did that myself.  In response I received an e-mail from an Adobe moderator (I assume) telling me there isn't a problem and chastising me for wishing to vent.  He then went on to suggest I check out another forum in which people are complaining, and others are valiantly defending Adobe.  The link to my exchange is: 

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/do_not_upgrade_to_lr4_until_speed_issues_are_r...

I suggest that EVERYONE on this foruim who is experiencing a problem follow this link, sign in, and say nothing more than that they, too, are experiencing a problem with speed.  If everyone does it just once then perhaps then we can get an actual count of how many there are, with the yardstick used in advertising, that the average number of respondants is approximately 3% of those with similar concerns.

[fliplip1]

If you read my post i said the comments about calling someone a fan, just because they dont have any problems was funny, not the situation. I can sympathise with those experiencing slow issues.

As ive already said, i had to upgrade most of my PC to see LR4 running as it should so im not denying there are issues, just that not everyone or "most" are having them like some of the hysterical posts around the net are implying.

My guess (based on just reading a lot of threads) is that if Adobe are saying there isnt a big problem then maybe its really not that widespread compared to the number of computers running LR4. I would imagine a lot of peopel (like myself) still use older PCs, they just might not have the horsepower for PV2012 and this could account for some of the slowdowns. I do realise that those with a lot more than me also have issues.

I really do hope you and the others get a fix for this soon, but name calling those that dont have this issue, or stating "facts" without proof as Amdir posted will not get anyone anywhere.

[steve@steveanchell.com]

I sincerely apologize if I were too aggressive in my response to you.  However, many of the users of this forum are frustrated and there is a sense that there are those who are not sensitive to their frustration.  Perhaps Amdir used a poor choice of words.  Instead of "fan" of Adobe he should have said something like "an apoligist."  As I said, what is needed in this exchange is not to be told that those experiencing this problem don't know what they are doing (I am convinced that there are many on this forum who do know what they are doing).  Instead we should try to support one another with positive suggestions or reassurances that the problem can and will be fixed.

As I stated above, Adobe's response to me was to send me to yet another Adobe Forum where there are just as many photographers with the same problem.  In my opinion, if only one user reported this issue, Adobe should be looking into resolving it for them.

As far as hardware, the fact is, even the least expensive discount laptop from online stores such as Tiger Direct, is faster and bundled with more RAM than most computers of only a few years ago. LR 4 should run as fast, or faster, than LR 3 on these new generation computers, regardless. Users should not be required to find work-around solutions of any kind. 

As far as being a fan of Adobe, I have attended cocktail parties with key people from Adobe, been included in phone conferences discussing LR in it's early stages, and I speak with their PR firm on a regular basis. The people who work at Adobe are simply the best in the industry.  I couldn't be a bigger "fan" of the Adobe company.  That doesn't mean their program is functioning properly and being a "fan" doesn't mean I will roll over and not say anything.  It also doesn't mean I won't start looking at other programs if they can't fix the problem.

[fliplip1]

No need to apologize Steve, you didn't come across as aggressive, just that you missed what i meant with my comment.

I guess as i have no issues with LR4 now i really should unsubscribe now.

Good luck to everyone who is having issue, hope its sorted soon.

[steve@steveanchell.com]

BTW Keith, please try to refrain from making snide personal comments, on this and all forums.  Thank you.

[TKAnthony]

I took your suggestion, Steve, and re-posted by recent comment in the Photoshop.com forums to here.  It follows below:

= = =

As for the respondent who dared say there are few problems with LR 4.x and that most users see none, well, NOT SO FAST!

    LR4.1 works well for a rare FEW, IF ANY, working pros!

Working Pro?  I don't mean a pro who qualifies by selling a picture.  My 89 year old mother could qualify that way.  By "Working" Pro, I mean :

1. Uses digital management on a daily basis

2. Uses LR for DM many hours at a time

3. Accesses, reviews, tags, and tweaks 100's of images per session.

4. Works with large RAW, TIFF or minimally compressed JPEGs

5. Images are 10-100+ megapixels each

6. Has at least 100,000 Images catalogued. 

7. Uses upper-range PC (not a Cray weather forecaster):  Ex, quad core, 1+ TB of eSata DASD, modern GPU with 1+ GB of DDRAM.

8. Routinely updates OS and defrags disks.

9. Has no time or money for insane super-tweaks like gamer's who spend a year of net income on a single graphics card.

E.g., my lowly outfit is as follows:

Cameras: D300, D800, etc.

Images: RAW(NEF), TIFF, or Max-Q JPEG's

CPU: Higher end Intel Quad Core, 3.6 Ghz,, 8GB RAM

DASD: 3 internal Sata drives (2+ TB)

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate, 64 bit, up-to-date

GPU: 2 Upper-Mid graphic cards in a dual GPU "Cross Fire" config.

Heavy pros and art houses would have far larger stats.  Ex: I only have 40,000 RAW/TIFF images of 12-50 MB and it's already a nightmare to use LR 4.1 for production work.

As a lone graphics program designer, I would test LR with at least 500k RAW images.  I fully expect Adobe, with a staff of more than 1 and a HUGE dev budget, to test a far larger test bed with many more complexities..

So, let us put things in perspective.  When someone says they find LR is "OK" or better, it begs the questions:

1. How long have they used it with their current catalog

2. Do they have at least 100k images in their catalog

3. How large are their images

4. Are the images RAW/TIFF?  (standard for working pro shops)  

5. How many images do they fondle, tag and tweak per session?

6. How many hours do the spend in one LR session?

So, I must totally concur with the user who reports terrible performance.  I do not know of any pro users or shops who think the latest v4.1 is acceptable. They all say it is, at best, "just usable".  To be "slower than 3.6" is simply terrible for the leading product of its genre.  Especially when we are forced to use it to be compatible with the latest RAW files.

Example 1 Issue:

Use LR for 2+ hours browsing about my 40k image catalog.

Select an image then move to select another.

1st image not selected for several seconds as I try to select another.

I end up selecting, w-a-i-t-i-n-g ...... then selecting another.

LR is obviously grinding to a halt as it futilely tries to update everything.

All I did was simply select an image. No mods. No tagging yet.

Just trying to select several non-adjacent images.

That is simply unworkable.

Example 2 Issue:

Imported 100 new RAW NEF's into my 40k image catalogue.

Started reviewing them, clicking forward and back.

Tagging images with 1-20 of my very large master tag list.

In slide sort browse mode, select 4 images to tag.

LT took 2-8 secs to refresh tag panel with current tags of images.

Clicked a new tag, then waited 2-8 secs for check marks to show.

Repeat that 100 times. That's 10-15 minutes of waiting!

Example 3 Issue:

With all images rendered at 1:1, switching images in sorter mode, still took 2-8 seconds for everything to update.  In Loupe mode (at standard or 1:1 view), the previously rendered images took 2-8 secs to rendered fully. 

My Perspective:

I have been a professional programmer, program/system designer, real-time systems programmer, IT support director, and a digital artist in various forms for as long as programmable computers have existed. Adobe bills LR as a professional image workflow manager and it's feature set lends credence to that perception. There is no argument about its intent. 

As such, we have to critique it as a professional product that an active pro or imaging house can depend on with its business life.  There is no way that can be said at this point, by any stretch of the imagination.

Some basic math:

What does a pro work flow and environment look like?  A single pro or shop probably shoots at least 200 days a year which is only 54% of the time.  An outfit  with more than photog shoots many more project days.   If a single photog shoots only 100 shots per project day (that's only 3 rolls in old expensive film terms), that's 20,000 images/year.  Making the ridiculous assumption of no dupes or edited versions over a small 3-year work window, that's easily 60,000 images! 

A real world scenario could easily be 2-5 times that so let's just say at least 100,000 images as a crude minimum test case.  At 20MP/image, that roughly 2 TB for the files alone.  That would easily double for edited versions, caches, 1:1 previews.

Perhaps the biggest impediment to enthusiasm over LR is the arrogance that Adobe repeatedly projects by either not responding, issuing platitudes, or, worst of all, denigrating those who really do use the product and find it unusable for a production work flow. 

I'd have long ago fired the manager responsible for green-lighting this 4.x series.   Been there. Done that.

Bottom line:

LR 4.1 still has SEVERE issues with: speed, image navigation, has very bad programming of mouse and click interrupts, and the updating of the tag/info panels after tagging or navigating images.  Things are even worse in the Develop module.

It is clear to coders like myself, that there are, indeed, severe coding issues, the catalog database interface/SDK has performance issues, and the design of the GUI info panel updates is clearly deficient. 

E.g., for me, 4.1 ran so-so immediately after the upgrade.  Compared to the 4.0 debacle, that seemed "OK".  I noticed several others reported the same.  However, after another 2-3 weeks, we started finding it was, again, slowing to a crawl, like 4.0 was famous for.  It just takes a bit longer for us.

To a programmer, these are really OBVIOUS tells pointing to Memory, Cache, GUI, and DB Management issues.  More specifically, the increasing slow down points to defects in the memory and DB cache management code.  The overall slowness from the get-go points to a deficiency in intermediate memory and DB caching of data. I leave it to those who are paid with access to the code to expound further. 

That's my take and opinion, having spent 1k+ hours with 3.x and 4.6.  If 3.6 supported D800 NEF's I'd have wasted a month of work and gone back to 3.6.  After a month of additional catalog work, it's too late now so, like many others, I'm between the proverbial "rock and hard place".

Having to put up with a product because there is no immediate alternative is not a good place for a product to be. 

Thanks for listening.