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

[Bob_Peters]

bob frost wrote:

Well, Shazam1 and Bob Peters have just posted how they cured their problems

by changing some things, so it can be done!

Bob Frost

What I did was not really a solution, Bob.  Using a matrix profile instead of a LUT was a work-around.

I am now more and more convinced that the problem is with Lightroom since I had no problems with any other application, including Photoshop CS5.

[bob frost]

From: "Bob_Peters

What I did was not really a solution, Bob. Using a matrix profile in

stead of a LUT was a work-around.

It was A solution; perhaps not the ideal one, which would be for LR to

handle ALL types of profile, v2 and V4, matrix and LUT, from ALL

profile-making software, good and bad. But it is well-known that LR is

sensitive to variations in profiles. No idea why.

Glad you've found a way to get LR working smoothly.

bob Frost

[bakubo]

uphotography wrote:

I'll tell you what worked: LR 4.3 RC did. It worked. There is no side reading to this. The same way LR 4.1 RC solved some people's problems, that LR 4.2 RC solved some other people's problems, well, LR 4.3 RC solved MY problems. The sad news is that the final release, LR 4.3 introduced the problems again.

Only Adobe knows what they changed between LR 4.3 RC and LR 4.3, but one thing we know is different is that LR 4.3 RC just had a time limit on use, but LR 4.3 has code for licensing.  Unlikely, but I wonder if when they turned on the licensing code in 4.3 it affects some systems like yours?

[areohbee]

uphotography wrote (paraphrased by Rob):

|> "4.3RC worked, 4.3-final introduced the problems again"

Are we sure its a difference between 4.3RC and 4.3-final? i.e. have they been swapped (re-installed) a few times to confirm it wasn't a fluke?

[bob frost]

From: "Rob Cole

Are we sure its a difference between 4.3RC and 4.3-final? i.e. have they

been swapped (re-installed) a few times to confirm it wasn't a fluke?

Rob's question made me think about the LR prefs files. When you upgrade, LR

often/always cannibalizes the previous prefs file if it is still around. And

that prefs file contains loads of stuff about what LR has done in the past.

Might be worth deleting all old prefs files (LR3 as well, if they are still

there) and starting 4.3-final with a new prefs file. I was amazed when I

looked inside a prefs file; I used to think it just stored my prefs that I

set under Prefs, but it contains all sorts of historical stuff. I think it

is best cleared out now and again.

Bob Frost

[Darren88]

bob frost wrote:

Rob's question made me think about the LR prefs files. When you upgrade, LR

often/always cannibalizes the previous prefs file if it is still around. And

that prefs file contains loads of stuff about what LR has done in the past.

I found that my LR4 agprefs files was 92KB after installing and letting it read the LR3 file.

Renaming all the agprefs files (including an LR2 file despite me never having had LR2) to make it build a new file created one that was around 16KB. 

Once I'd set everything how I liked it the file was still only 58KB.

So over a third of the file LR4 generated initially was rubbish which is quite a substantial proportion.

[Jao vdL]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

[areohbee]

rpavich1234 - congrats.

bob frost wrote:

I think it is best cleared out now and again.

Note: prefs are the primary persistent storage for publishing services and other plugins. Take heed before clearing them out if you use such stuff.

Reminder: You can always rename prefs as a test (close Lightroom first) - if it doesn't improve anything, then rename it back (close Lightroom first).

R

[Darren88]

Rob Cole wrote:

Note: prefs are the primary persistent storage for publishing services and other plugins. Take heed before clearing them out if you use such stuff.

I cleared my preferences and all I lost was things like the view options.

All the important stuff, including publishing services, was in the catalogue.  I had to reinstall the plugins that the publishing services relied on but once I'd done that it was all working as it was before I cleared the preferences files.

[areohbee]

Darren88 wrote:

All the important stuff ... was in the catalogue...

Losing prefs would cost me a few days, and so I would not delete them unless absolutely necessary. YMMV.

But point well taken - much of the publishing service stuff is kept in the catalog (how much depends on the plugin).

Worth noting however: *if* there is no corrupt data in them, they shouldn't affect Lr performance significantly, even if there is a lot of junk in there (ok, startup time a smidgeon, and yeah maybe consume a bit of ram, but otherwise..). It's kinda like the video support - it doesn't slow down photo editing, despite affecting startup time and ram consumption.

Cheers,

Rob

[Darren88]

Out of curiosity - what's the in the preferences files that would cause you to lose days?  Just for future reference incase I happen to end up using any of it.

[areohbee]

I have a number of plugins that use prefs for bookeeping, sometimes just settings I've entered, but also some with a tidbit of info for every photo in the whole catalog. So, I would have to do some whole catalog updates to get back to where I was. - not a lot of man-hours, but a lot of computer-hours.

FYI, if you want to clear preferences (and/or metadata, from the catalog) for plugins that you no longer plan to use, consider the Pretend plugin. - but be careful not to scrub data for plugins you are still using (or might use again in the future...).

~9MB.

R

[bob frost]

From: "Rob Cole

Note: prefs are the primary persistent storage for publishing services and

other plugins. Take heed before clearing them out if you use such stuff.

Aah! I don't use plugins; LR seems to be 'delicate' enough without

subjecting it to code that hasn't been QA tested. Perhaps one day Adobe

could have an approval system for plugins? Like MS and drivers.

So we do need a Prefs cleaner, to take the old rubbish out and just leave

the wanted stuff.

Bob Frost

[Darren88]

It was noise reduction slowing it down so I saw a really pixelated version first, LR3.6 is fine with or without NR applied and other stuff that stresses my PC is fine.

But anyway, I do have the latest drivers.

[Shizam1]

Ah, you know what helps lightroom performance?  Having a healthy RAID array.  Even though it got better after deleting the previews, I thought there was still some disk throughput issue.  I go to the disk manager, and my Raid 1 drives are showing warnings, and need to be "resynchronized".  After about 8 hours of doing that, I'm now getting the great performance I was expecting!

[ronda@gregoriophotography]

I just upgraded to Lightroom 4 last week and I am very unhappy with how slow it is running. What a pain! Should be great software but it is not 😞 I waited this long for Lightroom 4 thinking the problem would have been solved, I was wrong! Lightroom 4 is annoying!

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen · Accepted solution]

It's now impossible to see the wood for the trees in this whopping 43-page long thread.  Many of the original 4.0-4.2 performance issues have since been resolved, and it's impossible to figure out who is still having problems, and what they can try.

I've started a nice clean thread to continue this discussion for 4.3 and later. http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1117506  Thanks to Bob_Peters for the suggestion.  I'm locking this one, otherwise it'll continue to get increasingly unweidly, but please feel free to continue existing discussions on the new thread.