Skip to main content
Participant
July 8, 2024
Question

Importing images slow

  • July 8, 2024
  • 5 replies
  • 2395 views

By now, I know I'm not the only one having issues with Lightroom Classic v.13. I have waited patiently to update the app, hoping that Adobe fixes it, but with the new 13.4, it's even worse. What used to take me 5 minutes is now taking me hours.

 

- Importing Images is incredibly slow

- creating smart previews is impossible

- syncing adjustments takes forever

- forget to upload anything to the cloud; it will just never finish uploading.

 

I own a Mac studio with an M1 Ultra chip, and I had never had an issue with Lightroom before the update. In fact, I was having the best experience until this update.

 

Adobe, Fix this. Everyone else I know is moving over to capture one because of this, and If this isn't fixed soon, I will have to join them.

 

If this has anything to do with Adobe using AI, someone please tell me how to opt out of it.

5 replies

Participant
January 31, 2025

I've lost allmy images with the LRC update. I hadto spend2 hours on the phone with a cust serv rep who managed tofish them from somedeep water in the compjuter. Howeverf, they were unusaabe--could not edit nor print, they were there but not there. because the image had been replaced or the source is different or someother arcane bullsh**. I was a happy LR user for years--but losing my25K images ruined my interest. Ansdity just happened again as I was looking over my images.

Has anyone else lost their library bec these morons couldn't leave well enough alone? Has anyone found  a good replacement for this morceu de merde of what was once a great and fun editing program?

Legend
February 1, 2025

@JEANLUC93793610 

Your question is unrelated to the topic of this thread "Importing Images Slow". Please start a new thread and politely describe your problem from the beginning. People will be happy to help you in the new thread.

Participant
July 29, 2024

UPDATE

 

I'm still having issues with my M1 Ultra Mac Studio, but I started a new catalog on my M1 Max Macbook Pro, and everything seems to be working excellent. I am wondering if the issue is related to having a more extensive Catalog.

 

If you're a photographer who likes to use the same catalog for clients over numerous years, the same catalog the whole year, or if you're like me and always use the same catalog, are you having issues with LRC being sluggish?

Legend
July 29, 2024

I would say that if I would make a list of the top 35 causes of slowness in LrC, size of catalog is not on the list. Many photographers have huge catalogs over 500,000 image, over 1,000,000 images with no slowness.

Known Participant
July 10, 2024

Same behavior for me on Windows ... incredibly slow !

 

Fotosetbyjames
Known Participant
July 11, 2024

Same, everything is slow, importing, rating, syncing edits. Clicking a button can take over 1 minute or more just to get any response or action. 

GoldingD
Legend
July 8, 2024
  • Up top right, your Cloud Icon. Is anything still syncing to the cloud. LrC 13.3 introduced a nightmare on how LrC syncs to the Cloud. No bug fix (yet). Some find letting LrC run overnight allows LrC to finish that sync, and then LrC behaves.
  • In your copy of the Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop App, the Cloud button, any sync going on? (see above)
  • The hard rive your catalog is on. How much free space in percent. Looking for at least 20% free, some say 25%.

 

 

 

Legend
July 8, 2024

If this has anything to do with Adobe using AI, someone please tell me how to opt out of it.


Disable your GPU. Preferences->Performance->Use Graphics Processor should be set to OFF. Of course this will make some things slower, and has nothing to do with your importing problems, nothing to do with cloud problems. Why don't you describe these problems in detail and provide us with your hardware setup? (Help->System Info, down to the GPU information, we don't need and don't want anything after that).

Participant
July 10, 2024

I went ahead and changed this from Auto to Off. To test if this worked, I created some smart previews, and it seemed to be working slowly, but the previews slowed down, being generated even more after about 50 images.

 

To describe my issues in more detail, I will say that everything slowed down after being asked to update the catalog. I have since tried to optimize my catalog, and I was just shown a window that says, "This may take a few minutes" for 16+ hours before I had to force quit.

 

- Importing images takes a long time. I am importing them from a hard drive with a Thunderbolt 4 wire and not making copies. (I also have previews set to minimal)

 - Building Smart Previews takes even longer than importing the images, probably 4 hours for 700 images. This seems crazy because smart previews are supposed to be easier to work with.

- When making adjustments to photos, if you move to the next image and then switch back, the settings get reset. I have found that I have to give it a few minutes before the adjustments are locked in. This makes Lightroom almost impossible to use now and has added probably a whole day to my workflow.

- Lastly, my cloud has not been updated since I created the new catalog, probably almost two months now before syncing would be fairly quick and easy to use.

 

Attached is my system info while still building the smart previews.

 

One thing that I did notice was the number of plugins, and I wonder if the plugins could be slowing things down.

 

Thanks in advance.

GoldingD
Legend
July 10, 2024

 

Library Path: /Users/martindepict/Dropbox (Depict)/personal/Lightroom-Catalog/MD_LR_Cat_Sync/MD_LR_Cat_May2024.lrcat

 

  • So, is your catalog actually on DropBox?
  • Some issue, you may want to search in the community.
  • And what about the photos? Also on DropBox?
  • Same thing, some issue, search the community.