Lightroom 3.3 Performance Feedback

[Tom Hogarty]

Please use this discussion topic for your feedback on Lightroom 3.3 RC and the final Lightroom 3.3 release when it becomes available.  The Lightroom team has tried very hard to extract useful feedback from the following discussion topic but due to the length and amount of chatter we need to start a new, more focused thread.  Please post specifics about your experience and be sure to include information about your hardware configuration.

Regards,

Tom Hogarty

Lightroom Product Manager

[Guest]

Please, please, please fix the problems with the adjustment brush and the spot healing tool. Why has a problem this serious, which makes Lightroom virtually unusable, been allowed to persist over multiple versions? A problem this serious should be at the top of the TODO list. I've had to stop using Lightroom for the immediate future because of this ongoing problem.

[john beardsworth]

Check your graphics drivers are up to date and be more precise about the problems you are encountering. And provide details about your setup, especially the graphics card.

[rrulander]

Prior to upgrading computer during the 2.x era, LR was sluggish in rendering and brushes and gradients were all but unusable.

With my current spec below, I render in about 1.5 sec. The brush, gradient and spot tools respond extremely smoothly regardless of mutiple uses.

Never a slowdow, never a crash.

Photos on system drive, lrcat on system drive, cache on second drive. Cache - 50 GB

System drive is 2X 1TB 7200 Seagates -  RAID 1. Second Drive is 1 TB 7200 Seagate

Graphics card is NVIDIA GTX 275 w/896MB VRAM

Lightroom version: 3.3 [711369]
Operating system: Windows 7 Business Edition
Version: 6.1 [7600]
Application architecture: x64
System architecture: x64
Physical processor count: 8
Processor speed: 3.5 GHz - (2.6 GHz Core i7 920 OC'd to 3.5 GHz)
Built-in memory: 12279.0 MB
Real memory available to Lightroom: 12279.0 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 194.2 MB (1.5%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 206.3 MB
Memory cache size: 79.8 MB
System DPI setting: 96 DPI
Desktop composition enabled: No
Displays: 1) 1680x1050
Application folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.3
Library Path: C:\Users\DAD\Pictures\Lightroom\RR.lrcat
Settings Folder: C:\Users\DAD\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom

[areohbee]

I think its true that Lightroom has to be happy with all the critical devices/drivers in your system, or it won't perform well.

Also, Lightroom is a hungry beast - IF its not getting hung up waiting for drivers..., it can use all the horsepower you throw at it.

Lightroom about 5-10 times faster for me now than a half year ago. Since then I've upgraded my motherboard and drives and Adobe has fixed some things...

Rendering time typically 2-3 seconds per (12MP) photo:

----------------------------------------

Lightroom version: 3.3 [711369]
Operating system: Windows 7 Ultimate Edition
Version: 6.1 [7600]
Application architecture: x64
System architecture: x64
Physical processor count: 4
Processor speed: 3.4 GHz
Built-in memory: 7934.1 MB
Real memory available to Lightroom: 7934.1 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 880.4 MB (11.0%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 885.7 MB
Memory cache size: 942.9 MB
System DPI setting: 96 DPI
Desktop composition enabled: Yes
Displays: 1) 1920x1200, 2) 1920x1200

------------------------------------------------

PS - Mostly only crashes when using FTP'ing plugins, which crash frequently (and not just the ftp'ing plugins written by me ;-}

_R

[Samoreen]

Hi,

Tom Hogarty wrote:

Please use this discussion topic for your feedback on Lightroom 3.3 RC and the final Lightroom 3.3 release when it becomes available.  The Lightroom team has tried very hard to extract useful feedback from the following discussion topic but due to the length and amount of chatter we need to start a new, more focused thread.  Please post specifics about your experience and be sure to include information about your hardware configuration.

So I'm moving to this thread excerpts of reports that I have made in other threads.

I have no performance problems in the Library module. I only have problems when using the local adjustment tools.

I'm running LR 3.3 under XP Pro SP3 32-bit (3GB - fast hard disks with a lot of free space). Dual monitor. Processor: AMB Athlon 64 X2 Dual 2.21 Ghz. NVidia GeForce 9500 GT. Lastest driver installed. NView disabled.

Thanks in advance for your efforts.

---

Hi,

After  installing LR 3.2, the first thing I noticed is that it is much slower than the previous version... But the most terrible novelty of this version is that the Adjustment Brush is going berserk after a while:

• It first slows down to a crawl, so slow that it's almost impossible to work with.
  
• While  working with it after a while, it starts to show random rectangular areas that are copies of other areas of the image that have nothing to do with the area I'm working on. This happens after a brush stroke. The Undo command makes these rectangular "patches" disappear.
  
• From time to time, the whole image is flipped upside down (You can't believe it? Neither could I).
  
• Eventually, just after a brush stroke, the sandclock mouse cursor is displayed and the program freezes (at this time it can be using over 1,5 GB of memory although I'm working on a single, standard EOS 5D image). The only way to stop this madness is to kill the process.
• The Heal/Clone tool also shows a similar misbehavior.

I didn't have these problems with the previous version.

I can now confirm that all these problems are still there in LR 3.3 final.

[Edit] New in 3.3 final: Sometimes during editing (Development module), the LR display becomes totally blank (I'm using the software in a maximized window). Things go back to normal after about 10-15 seconds.

---

Actually, I'm about to abandon LR3 as my main production tool. The performances are acceptable in the rest of the application but using the  adjustment brush has become a nightmare in 3.2 and 3.3. I have read as many forum threads and articles as I could about these performance issues and tried all suggested solutions (be they related to LR itself or to the display driver). No way. I have absolutely no problem in Photoshop CS5, Bibble 5 or DxO. So I doubt that my system is the  culprit.

---

I'm a software professional since PCs exist. I have enough experience to identify software problems when they appear. At least, I'm able to  determine whether I have a hardware problem or if the software I'm using (or writing) is buggy. I have read many reports, many threads, many advice about these performance issues. I'm pretty sure that the problem is LR. I repeat: I do not have any performance issue when editing images in Bibble 5, Photoshop  or DxO Optics Pro. BB5 is at least an order of magnitude faster than LR  when editing images.When I use the Adjustment Brush in Camera Raw, there's absolutely no problem. My hardware is powerful enough and my installation is pretty clean (could it be powerful enough for Camera Raw and not for LR?). My OS is  very stable. I have not seen a BSOD since years and all my applications are running flawlessly on this system (which includes image editing  applications, software development tools, and many others...).

Users having various and very powerful systems (PC or Mac - 64-bit or 32-bit) are reporting the very same problems. Like Bruce, I'm convinced that this is not a hardware resource problem. We didn't have these problems with LR2 and LR3 was supposed to enhance performances. Version after version, it has now become unusable for me.

Drawing the conclusion that since many users don't have any performance issues, the problem must be on the user's side [that is, their system] would be erroneous. The bug is in LR and may or may not appear depending on the circumstances. Any developer knows that a bug may or may not hit a given user depending on how she uses the software. I admit that these bugs are hard to fix. But LR has to be fixed, no doubt.

[DanTull]

I do have a couple of performance issues I'm investigating and the feedback on this thread is providing some useful clues for both confirming the bugs I have somewhat cornered already and guiding further probes to get internally repeatable cases for others.

We fixed a couple of items in 3.3 which alleviated some performance pain points in the interactive performance of dust spotting (and probably local corrections, too, though the bug was noted with dust spotting), but I was pretty sure there was probably more to uncover there. As part of this, I now have better tooling for driving automated abuse scenarios that I'll probably turn specifically to local corrections next.

The issues are exacerbated (though I do not believe entirely exclusive to) the reduced address space of 32-bit (especially XP) processes. Of course, some of the same benchmarks that slowed down on such systems sped up on my other (higher end) test rigs, so we have to be careful to contextualize our fixes so that they help matters for those that need it without hurting those that do not currently see problems.

Cheers -- DT

[George in Seattle]

The below example of my spot removal on a raw image runs excruciatingly slow.  There is an enormous page fault rate during this slowness, all the while memory and processor are going unused.  Anyone can duplicate this problem by slapping about that many dust spots against any uncropped raw image.    Fix this situation, and I will bet the same solution fixes a lot of other problems as well. Thats just my educated hunch.

[Sean McCormack]

That isn't actually a lot of spots. I generally have way more when working on faces. What version of Lightroom/OS etc?

[George in Seattle]

It's LR 3.2 on Windows 7, the above image is slow both on a relatively limited laptop, and a desktop I-7 with 12gb ram.  The size of the spot seems to make a difference, and in all my examples they are relatively large.   It slows way down after 4-5 spots, especially if you start resizing existing spots. --It is often faster to delete and replace a spot instead of resizing it.

In the below example they are even larger (but harder to see) and the goal is different --to actually rearrange large objects with detail and create a work of fiction.  The term "dust spot removal" suggests that this use may not have been tested for.  But it is nonetheless a very cool, albeit slow capability.

[Sean McCormack]

There was a spot related bugfix in 3.3. May be try that before proceeding? Dan stated earlier that there may still be bugs there, but that's a good start.

[areohbee]

George,

I've noticed it takes Lightroom much longer to process large circles than small ones, but on my machine it doesn't depend on the number applied, and it does not consume exceesive ram. It does surprise me that it does not take 100%CPU.

Takes about 3 seconds for a max size circle, and small fraction of a second for a tiny one.

BTW thanks for the idea about using a fatty for repositioning things - I'd never thought about using it that way!

Hope it performs better for you next rev.

Rob

[JW Stephenson]

George,

We appear to be in almost identical situations: laptop and desktop, both W7 and both almost worthless after applying a handfull of spots and absolutely worthless if accidently resizing a spot when trying to add one.  Very frustrating.  I think this behavior showed up with version 3 beta but since I never loaded 2.6 or 2.7 I am not certain.  It was better with 3.2, much better with 3.3RC in that although it still causes extreme sluggishness it only rarely hangs with the "(Not Responding)" window title, and then a little better performance-wise with the final release of 3.3.  As Sean points out, try the final 3.3 release and I hope that works for you.  It did not for me.

I am guessing it is a hardware conflict of some kind, probably graphics card, but can't figure out for the life of me why it does not have the same conflict in 2.5 as with any version of 3 (I keep 2.5 installed for testing).  I filed a bug report with ver 3.0 and Adobe has been very responsive to working on resolving this problem and I, and others I presume, have been providing information as requested.  I have been assured that they are still aware of the issue and will continue to work on it.  Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be that widespread.

If I come up with anything useful in the meantime I will try PM you with details.  Please return the favor if you also come up with a short-term solution as well.

Jeff

[areohbee]

Jeff,

Why not pop a different graphics card in there for a minute, and see...?

Rob

[JW Stephenson]

Rob,

I have but only have ATI cards to swap with currently and they use similar drivers so the problem persists.  I am not quite ready to give concrete evidence as to why I think the graphics card may be the issue as it may simply be the manner in which W7 interfaces with the graphics card as opposed to the card itself.  I really just wanted George to know he is not alone with this problem (but he is lonely) and as far as I can tell Adobe has not yet abandoned the issue at this point.

Jeff

PS - I abandoned my high-powered nVidia card shortly after ver2 with all the problems associated with that card at the time.  If I can find that card again I might give it a try.

[areohbee]

Jeff,

Fair enough.

I have been known to use my local Fry's store to try hardware and then return it (please don't tell anyone). Dunno if that's an option where you live.

I wouldn't be mentioning it except I've a hunch you may be right, in which case you might not have to return it ;-}

If its any consolation, I sympathsize with you and George both...

Cheers,

Rob

[Agnus1]

I am posting to say that I am another user with problems with Lightroom hanging and becoming unresponsive using the spot healing tool. Especially if I forget and try to change the size of the spot after applying it. Definitely a killer if I do that. It becomes particularly bad if I try to use the spot tool on a tiff file after editing in
ANY external application (Nik, OnOne, Photoshop etc).

I am running Win 7, 64 bit, i7, 6gb ram, 500gb free hd space. I do have an ATI Radeon HD3400 graphics card. I was really hopeful that the new 3.3 release would solve the problems I've had with the spot tool. It has made a small difference, but not enough of a difference that I can work the way I need to.

[areohbee]

Given the rumors that it may be a graphics-driver/system/Lightroom interaction, consider trying another card, maybe NVidia - to make sure you get a different driver.

PS - I run ATI HD4290 with win 7/64 (and no problems with spot tool), but system differences that are not evident in the specs may make the difference...

If I had swapped graphics card / driver to no avail, I'd also consider gutting all the rest of the hardware, and processes / services, that aren't essential to running Lightroom, and if it works then work my way up til I found the culprit.

It might be some interaction with security services, or your wacom tablet - as example...

PS - I understand if you don't want to go through the trouble. But sometimes strange problems call for desparate measures, and it can't be the problem if it ain't in the chassis, or on the processes / services list...

Another idea your probably not going to like:

Reinstall the OS on a freshly formatted drive and install Lightroom before anything else. Works? then rebuild your system... (If it still fails at least you know its not due to an application installation).

Rob

[thewhitedog]

@ Rob: No doubt you have far more credibility here than I do. A few weeks ago when I suggested the possibility of hardware as a source of the trouble with Lightroom, I got my virtual a$$ reamed out for my trouble.

It does seem that the problem reports here are predominantly (though by no means exclusively) with Lightroom 3.x running in 64 bit on Windows 7. Given that Win 7 is relatively new, video driver issues seem to me (at the risk of catching more flack) to be a strong candidate - as you have suggested. This is a common problem with just about every dramatic operating system upgrade, including various flavors of OS X. Apple, for one, routinely provides graphics card updates of one kind and another, the latest being just this past week. So I'm not picking on Microsoft when I agree with you about possible driver issues. Windows has to support a much larger range of graphics cards than OS X does; this is not a criticism of Microsoft, just a fact. And it makes Adobe's challenge trying to find the source(s) of reported problems that much more difficult.

Now that I've spoken up again, I expect more criticism. But until someone from Adobe rules out hardware as a source of difficulty, I, for one, will remain unconvinced. The real culprit may be the manufacturers who have often failed to keep drivers for their products up-to-date. This became such a problem on the Mac in recent years that Apple has taken over most of the driver support for the cards designed for their computers. Hardware companies are all too often poor software designers. This is hardly news, and the issue goes far beyond graphics card support.

I hope Adobe doesn't rely solely on users to determine which graphics cards work and which do not. Adobe is in a far better position than their customers are to test the various possible graphics card configurations.

Although hardware incompatibility may be one possible answer, I don't mean to suggest that it is the only one. As Lightroom has grown more powerful it has also become more complex. I don't envy the engineers tasked with sorting out this mess.

In the meantime, for the record, Lightroom 3.3 is running pretty well on my three year old 3GHz quad-core Mac Pro with 8GB of RAM, the latest version of OS X and a (relatively) old ATI Radeon 1900X graphics card with 512MB of DDR2 VRAM in a 16 lane PCIe slot. For what it's worth, Lightroom is running in 64 bit with OS X in 32 bit mode - something, if I'm not mistaken, Windows cannot do.

Further, I've had fewer problems with Lightroom 3.3 stalling out than I did with version 2. This includes changing existing brush sizes with the Spot Removal Tool and adjusting the Gradient tool. The only issue I have is with the adjustment brush indicator color occasionally sticking around until I adjust the image in some way. But my test conditions may differ from those who are having trouble, so I don't presume to draw any general conclusions from my own experience - except that I feel lucky this time around, knock on wood.

[areohbee]

thewhitedog wrote:

@ Rob: No doubt you have far more credibility here than I do.

Some people think I'm an idiot - others give me a little more credit... But there does seem to be a new-kid-on-the-block phenomenon at play here.

Even if Lightroom works on exactly the same hardware that it fails on, that really don't mean squat except you still got a problem if you're the poor beastard with the hardware it fails on. And you still got a problem if you are Adobe and you want it to run on all reasonably healthy hardware...

Some people assume if you say its a hardware problem that you mean: bad card or incompatible hardware/driver..., but the hardware could be fine, and even the driver could be fine, and yet the problem could still be solved by replacing the hardware - because it stirs things up a bit, and maybe changes the order certain things get loaded in...

Thats why I say if Lightroom ain't working on your system, then you've got two choices:

1. Cross your fingers and hope Adobe fixes it, or it goes away by itself (and dont come back).

2. Change your system.

(or dont use Lightroom of course...)

Personally, I changed my motherboard recently and Lightroom is running much better - was it a hardware problem? - I have no idea. Was it a hardware solution - definitely.

Rob

[Samoreen]

Hi,

areohbee wrote:

Some people assume if you say its a hardware problem that you mean: bad card or incompatible hardware/driver..., but the hardware could be fine, and even the driver could be fine, and yet the problem could still be solved by replacing the hardware - because it stirs things up a bit, and maybe changes the order certain things get loaded in...

Based on my experience as a developer, I absolutely agree with this. This is just common sense. Unfortunately some customer support dpts and even some developers have difficulties understanding this (not specific to Adobe, though).

A bug may or may not occur on a given hardware configuration depending on how the software is loaded in memory. For example, a dangling pointer problem may or may not cause an application to crash depending on the (wrong) address it is erroneously pointing to. And this address depends itself on where the program is sitting in memory which in turn depends on how other programs, drivers and services are loaded at startup.

That's why the non-occurence of a bug on a given configuration is not a proof of the non-existence of the bug. An existing bug is not necessarily visible and will not necessarily cause any trouble. Just a matter of luck.

[areohbee]

Samoreen wrote:

...a dangling pointer problem may or may not cause an application to crash depending on the (wrong) address it is erroneously pointing to. And this address depends itself on where the program is sitting in memory which in turn depends on how other programs, drivers and services are loaded at startup.

I call this a "sniper" - just cause they're shootin' doesn't mean they're hittin' anything - but usually means they will eventually...

[thewhitedog]

@ Rob: While it's relatively easy to swap out a motherboard on some PCs, (especially compared to Macs), it's not something everyone is going to be willing or able to do. Graphics cards are easier to deal with, but you still have to be sure the card you're putting in is compatible with the motherboard and the card slot on the motherboard. There are a lot of variables to consider and, again, it's not a job for the feint of hart. For most people, then, they are left to hope that Adobe can fix the problems they're having with Lightroom in the software.

And, while I may be a relative newbie on these Adobe forums (at least as regards the number of posts I've made here), I've been using Adobe products since Photoshop 2.5. And I do Mac tech support for a living. So I'm not exactly wet behind the ears.

Still, the greatest strength of Windows PCs - the variety of options and models available - is also their greatest weakness. This affects Windows as an operating system as well as the software that runs on it. That's why I don't buy into (or at least try not to buy into) the usual anti-Windows attitude so common and so detested among Mac users. Microsoft has an entirely different nut to crack than Apple does. Microsoft exercises very little control over the components its partners put in their PCs; Apple has complete control. Ironically, perhaps, Google has put itself in the same position as Microsoft as far as hardware support is concerned, licensing Android to all comers. This will sell a lot of smartphones and ultimately create a comparable number of headaches.

While Adobe's relationship with Apple has been rocky at times, supporting Apple hardware is a walk in the park compared with Windows PCs. I think the current problems with Lightroom highlight this difficulty. I say this not to apportion blame, but as a simple observation.

On another matter, I never got a satisfactory answer to my question about the relationship between the Lightroom 3 Catalog.lrcat file and the Lightroom 3 Catalog Previews.lrdata file. Perhaps no one knows, but I'm curious; knowing more about these files might help with troubleshooting Lightroom.

[areohbee]

To be clear: I was not recommending everyone with problems change their motherboard. - I'm not sayin' you were sayin' I was sayin' that, I'm just sayin'...

What I would recommend though, is: If its not working the way it is - change something.

While I applaud Jeff Stephenson for solving his problem in a more direct fasion, I also acknowlege that his methods would have been too advanced for most users. And, had he switched to an NVidia card he'd have solved his problem that way (probably) - I'm not saying NVidia is better in general, just in certain cases if you're having certain problems. It may very well be that in other cases, you'd need to switch to an ATI card to solve your problem.

Anyway, had he backed down all his process & services to a bare minimimum he'd have discovered his problem that way too.

Bottom line: Most problems with Lightroom interacting unfavorably with your system can be solved by changing your system - which means changing hardware and/or running processes and services, buying a new computer, re-building the one you have, tweaking settings if you can find the ones to tweak... And, since you can't control Adobe, its the only recourse you have to solving your own problems running Lightroom.

I bet Lightroom would run fine on most systems where its currently having problems, simply by stripping the system to a bare minimum. And, whilst running a bare minimum is not a solution, the real culprits may be found when adding things back in. - I'm talking about the cases where the user has already tried rebooting, re-installing Lightroom, creating a new 1-photo catalog, deleted preferences, previews, and caches, etc. - the things that Lightroom can get foiled by that have nothing to do with system configuration per se.

Please don't misunderstand - I'm not saying Adobe doesn't need to fix some things (right: you shouldn't have to go through all this...) - but until then, unless you prefer complaining over running Lightroom smoothly - take control!

PS - I don't know how to control a Mac system, but on Windows - If you don't know how to control system (software) configuration using built-in tools (e.g. task-manager, running msconfig from the command line, computer management console, reg-edit...), system-mechanic or the like has gathered most of them into a single UI for you.

Personally, I don't investigate the windows/app error logs nearly enough as a troubleshooting aid - a thank you to Jeff for that reminder.

Rob

[thewhitedog]

@ Rob -

Controlling a Mac is relatively easy - for the technically inclined. The Activity Monitor enables you to track and kill troublesome processes, much as the Task Manager does in Windows; you can use the Terminal app to tweak the system, as you do with the Command Line in Windows (using UNIX instead of DOS); there are some built-in UNIX cron scripts that do routine maintenance tasks, assuming your computer is running at 3 AM when they are scheduled to run by default; there is a Console app wherein you can check system and application logs; and you can verify your volumes and repair disk permissions with the Disk Utility app that comes on every Mac. In addition there are a variety of third party utilities that do even more. But most issues won't affect the operation of the average application unless you let things get too far out of whack. OS X has nothing equivalent to the Registry, so the parallels aren't precise. Still, as with every complex machine, any computer, whatever operating system it's using, will benefit from routine maintenance. As with the PC, though, most people don't give a thought to system upkeep until something obvious goes wrong. And, yes, things do go wrong on Macs, too.

I rarely have to use Terminal, though, because there are so many third-party utilities that provide a UI for the most common Terminal operations, including system tweaks and optimizations.

One problem I don't have on my system is Lightroom using only one of my four CPUs, something that has been reported by some PC users. Not being a PC expert, I have no idea what might cause this clearly aberrant behavior. It's tempting to blame Windows, but that't too easy and, in any case, doesn't solve anything. Someone who is more Windows savvy will have to answer that one.

[areohbee]

thewhitedog wrote:

@ Rob -

Controlling a Mac is relatively easy - for the technically inclined...

Thanks doggy (may I call you that?).

One problem I don't have on my system is Lightroom using only one of my four CPUs

I dont have this problem on windows either - wouldn't have a clue why some might..

PS - In addition to the smaller complement of hardware on Macs vs. PCs, another reason Lightroom might (I dont know that it does) work better on Macs is that Adobe is primarily a Mac house. i.e. the developers mostly develop on Macs, then test on Windows to make sure it works there too... (feel free to correct me if this is wrong, its somewhat of an educated guess).

[PS - One data point:  Lightroom runs better on my Mac mini than it did on similar Windows hardware before I upgraded (granted the Mac was a far leaner system) (I should check Windows (Lightroom) on the identical Mac mini hardware (I have a triple-boot config: windows, linux, + mac) - that would be very interesting). But it runs better on the new Windows hardware than the Mac mini, granted the hardware is beefier...]

I know my cross-platform plugins tend to work better on Windows than Mac because I develop them on Windows, and only test briefly on Mac.

Rob