Lightroom 3.3 Performance Feedback

Report · Dec 02, 2010

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

Report · Dec 22, 2010

Hi,

DJ-G wrote:
Just being in the Library loupe doing absolutely nothing I get about 35 registry accesses every 10 seconds.

This one is acknowledged. See above. Quoting Dan Tull:

The first one (10 second poll) is probably a side effect (we do not poll these directly) of LR asking for an enumeration of active volumes (it uses this to update the volume header of the folders panel and update offline status for photos. Explorer checks those keys on its own as part of that operation apparently. LR would probably be better to subscribe to events to keep this up to date instead, though the impact of polling at a 10 second interval probably isn't huge, either.

Report · Dec 22, 2010

Samoreen, the two previous examples were XP, I'm Win 7 64-bit, and I get 35 not 22 accesses on the refresh. It's another data point. I also get the hovering access. I'm going to clean out the registry and see if I get the same results. Did you get rid of the hovering accesses completely?

Report · Dec 22, 2010

Hi,

DJ-G wrote:
I also get the hovering access. I'm going to clean out the registry and see if I get the same results. Did you get rid of the hovering accesses completely?

Yes, totally. Now I just get the 10 second poll which was fully explained by Dan and doesn't do any harm.

Report · Dec 22, 2010

Samoreen wrote:
Hi,
DJ-G wrote:
I also get the hovering access. I'm going to clean out the registry and see if I get the same results. Did you get rid of the hovering accesses completely?
Yes, totally. Now I just get the 10 second poll which was fully explained by Dan and doesn't do any harm.

Samoreen,

It seems you have made great strides in identifying a weakness in windows installations (particulalrly were people have done several upgrades), well done and thanks.

A write up of how to implement the changes you have made would be fantastic for novice users, although a burden on your time I suspect. A more elegant solution of course would be for Adobe to create a registry cleaning script that does it automatically, and removes any stale files from previous obsolete installations from your drive as well.

ADOBE - this is your thread - are you working on it or should we all muddle through following Samoreen's recomendation?

Best Regards

Phil

Report · Dec 22, 2010

Hi Phil,

PhilBurness wrote:
A write up of how to implement the changes you have made would be fantastic for novice users, although a burden on your time I suspect.

Is my answer to JW Stephenson not enough (msg #205 in this thread)? Novice users really needing even more accurate instructions should avoid editing the registry anyway. I'm not sure.

--

Patrick

Report · Dec 22, 2010

Samoreen wrote:
Hi Phil,
PhilBurness wrote:
A write up of how to implement the changes you have made would be fantastic for novice users, although a burden on your time I suspect.
Is my answer to JW Stephenson not enough (msg #205 in this thread)? Novice users really needing even more accurate instructions should avoid editing the registry anyway. I'm not sure.
--
Patrick

Hi Patrick,

I believe it will be enough for many 'seasoned' windows users or old sys-admins, however, many of the Lightroom users are photographers and I feel maybe uncomfortable in editing the registry and deleting redundant files - afterall, many of them may feel that their work is at risk if they make mistakes in the process. Regedit is a powerful tool, and like all tools it can be a terrible weapon in the wrong hands.

My question at the end is more one of "should people wait for an official ADOBE fix, or plough ahead and hope they don't make a mistake somewhere?"

Phil

Report · Dec 22, 2010

PhilBurness wrote:
My question at the end is more one of "should people wait for an official ADOBE fix, or plough ahead and hope they don't make a mistake somewhere?"

Well, while there's no real risk deleting the folders and files I mentioned (provided the catalog is not touched and there's a backup somewhere), removing keys in the registry can be risky if this is done by beginners. In that case, they should either wait for a move from Adobe or request assistance from someone having more experience with Windows.

Writing a cleanup script is clearly the responsibility of Adobe. The uninstaller doesn't do a clean job. It should ask which data the user wants to keep (because he's planning a re-installation) and eliminate the rest of the files and registry keys.

However, there are not that much Lightroom related keys in the registry. One could try to follow the above instructions while skipping the registry cleanup. Maybe this would be enough. From all the Lightroom elements I removed from my system, there's probably only one that was causing trouble. So trying a disk-only cleanup operation can do no harm. The user would just lose time uninstalling and re-installing LR if the operation doesn't succeed.

PS: It's already late in the night on this side of the Big Pond, so I will no longer answer until tomorrow. Good luck.

Report · Dec 22, 2010

I've been following this thread with some interest. Windows uninstall procedures leave a lot to desired - often much registry info left behind which can get in the way of a clean re-install. For Windows users this is a very good uninstall program Revo Uninstaller which I use. This does a very good (not perfect!) job of deleteing registry entries and leftover files. It automaticcaly sest a restore point before proceeding and backs up all changes it makes. I highly recommend it.

Report · Dec 22, 2010

Would you have to have RevoUninstaller monitor the Lightroom installation before it could do a thorough cleanup, or does it have some way of figuring out where the junk is after the fact?

Report · Dec 23, 2010

Would you have to have RevoUninstaller monitor the Lightroom installation before it could do a thorough cleanup, or does it have some way of figuring out where the junk is after the fact?

RevoUninstaller does an after the fact cleanup - that's why it's not always 100% effective. There are programs that will take a before/after snapshot of the registry which one can use to compare and do a cleanup.

Report · Dec 22, 2010

DJ-G,

Did it work for you? I am ready to try it but was hoping to have more data points of success before proceeding.

Jeff

Report · Dec 23, 2010

JW Stephenson wrote:
DJ-G,
Did it work for you? I am ready to try it but was hoping to have more data points of success before proceeding.
Jeff

I'm using Windows 7, and I have just used the standard uninstall to remove Lightroom 2.7 - and it may be perception, but things do look a lot better. I haven't exercised it much, but the work I did do was a lot smoother and things seemed to be more responsive (adjustment brush, gradient tool, spot removal, etc.) even with lens correction on.

I haven't done enything to the registry yet, and may not if further use does not show any worse performance than I've seen so far.

This is one relatively simple thing to try (if you have previous versions installed) and may improve performance. It would be interesting to know if anybody else has a similar experience.

Phil

Report · Dec 23, 2010

Phil,

Last night I used the Revo Uninstall, then also went into the registry and deleted all the keys left, and there were many. Most, if not all, were related to old versions of LR. I didn't count but would assume around 100 or so. I have a W7, 64-bit system.

I booted and reinstalled LR3.3. Unlike Samoreen and now apparently you Phil, I did not gain any performance (in my case measured in the Develop Module, moving from image to image and utilizing the spot healing brush. In fact I went backwards, losing much of the gains I thought I had with the changes I made relative to my video card. In fact, the "(Not Responding)" window titles that seemed to disappear with the first install of v3.3 seems to have reappeared. Uggh. Tells me any gains might be temporary. Hope that is not the case with the two of you.

Back to waiting and hoping I guess.

Jeff

Report · Dec 23, 2010

JW Stephenson wrote:
Tells me any gains might be temporary. Hope that is not the case with the two of you.

Hi,

Not for me. LR continues to work normally without any problem for the moment. Even the spot clone/heal tool is now working in real time. The target area is updated as soon as I move the source area. Before, I had to wait up to 10-15 seconds before the target area was updated.

Report · Dec 22, 2010

Samoreen wrote:
Hi,
DJ-G wrote:
Just being in the Library loupe doing absolutely nothing I get about 35 registry accesses every 10 seconds.
This one is acknowledged. See above. Quoting Dan Tull:

The first one (10 second poll) is probably a side effect (we do not poll these directly) of LR asking for an enumeration of active volumes (it uses this to update the volume header of the folders panel and update offline status for photos. Explorer checks those keys on its own as part of that operation apparently. LR would probably be better to subscribe to events to keep this up to date instead, though the impact of polling at a 10 second interval probably isn't huge, either.

Well, something is happening at an interval basis on a Mac as well. In Library mode, with the mouse "hovering" I'm watching CPU vary from 2% to 8%, when LR minimized, 0% to 4% to the application. Not much, but not sure what it is polling when minimized? Apple apps like Photo Booth go to 0% and even CS5 levels at 1.8% when minimized and stays there??? Using the Activity Monitor as a gauge.

Jay S.

Report · Dec 24, 2010

Hi,

Samoreen wrote:

Well, I bit the bullet and
Made a backup copy of my preference file and of my presets

Uninstalled LR
Thoroughly and manually cleaned up disk and registry by removing every visible trace of LR that I could find.
Re-installed LR 3.3
Re-installed my preference file.
Re-installed my presets
Re-launched LR and selected my main catalog
I didn't change anything to my system settings, to my Startup menu or to anything else. I didn't even rebooted the system.

Something new to report, for what it's worth. I made a Norton Ghost image of my disk before making the above changes. So I'm able to compare the contents of the various Lightroom folders before and after the changes (I could also compare other folders but I don't know where to look). I'm trying to sort out what's really significant and I noticed the following...

As mentioned above, I made a backup of my preference file before uninstalling/re-installing LR and I re-installed this backup after re-installing but before launching LR for the first time. So I started up with exactly the same preference file as before. When comparing the current contents of the this file with the pre-reinstall version, I can see a lot of differences that are due to what I did in LR since its re-installation. But I noticed that the following data have disappeared from the preference file:

    Adobe_pendingBackupPaths = "pendingBackups = {\
}\
",
    Adobe_pendingVacuumPaths = "pendingVacuum = {\
}\
",
    Adobe_successfulUpgrades0200022 = "pickle = {\
    [\"D:\\\\Images\\\\SharedLibrary\\\\SharedLibrary.lrcat\"] = {\
        catalogType = \"lr\",\
        id = \"82F39AC3-7A20-4AEE-BDC4-E38D8A0B4E6A\",\
        upgraded = \"D:\\\\Images\\\\SharedLibrary\\\\SharedLibrary-2.lrcat\",\
    },\
}\
",
    Adobe_successfulUpgrades0300025 = "pickle = {\
    [\"D:\\\\Images\\\\SharedLibrary\\\\SharedLibrary-2.lrcat\"] = {\
        catalogType = \"lr\",\
        id = \"82F39AC3-7A20-4AEE-BDC4-E38D8A0B4E6A\",\
        upgraded = \"D:\\\\Images\\\\SharedLibrary\\\\SharedLibrary-2-2.lrcat\",\
    },\
}\
",

...

firstLaunchHasRun20 = true

There are many other differences but this one doesn't seem to be related to any LR option that I could change since I have re-installed. I don't know whether it's important. If anyone at Adobe wants a copy of both versions of the preference file, just give me an email address.

Beside this, there are differences in the application folder:

In the current (re-installed) version, the Local Adjustment Presets subfolder contains the following templates which were not present before: Burn (Darken).lrtemplate, Dodge (Lighten).lrtemplate, Iris Enhance.lrtemplate, Teeth Whitening.lrtemplate. Soften Skin.lrtemplate is present in both versions.
Similar difference in the Lightroom Presets subfolder for: Burn Full-Sized JPEGs.lrtemplate, Export to DNG.lrtemplate, For E-Mail.lrtemplate (not present before).
Watermarks subfolder now present. Wasn't there before.
Web Templates was present before (although empty) and no longer there.
In the Keyword Sets subfolder I previously had Macro.lrtemplate. It's no longer there.

At least, we can say that upgrading without re-installing doesn't give the same results as uninstalling, cleaning up and re-installing (although 3.3 was installed in a new folder, I insist).

--

Patrick

Report · Dec 20, 2010

Hi,

Samoreen wrote:
The above mentioned registry keys are read each time I'm moving the local adjustement brush cursor. If I stop moving the mouse, LR stops reading these keys. As soon as I start creating new brush strokes, the registry keys are read again.
EDIT: It seems that the problem is not only related to the local adjustment brush. This happens systematically when I hover the image, even when not in local adjustment mode. Please consider that this represents thousands of registry reads within a few seconds.

To make things simpler for those who are less technically oriented : each time you move the mouse over the currently edited image, LR accesses the HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Time Zones registry key and some of its subkeys. It does that for every single move (in developer parlance, for each WM_MOUSEMOVE message), which means that in a few seconds, tens of thousands of registry accesses to these keys are generated. This loads the CPU(s) at 100% even if you are not applying brush strokes. Just hovering the image is enough. Hovering other parts of the LR main window does not generate these registry accesses.

If the CPU is already overloaded when you are merely hovering the image, you can imagine what's happening when it has to additionally process the brush strokes.

Report · Dec 20, 2010

Samoreen wrote:
Hi,

If the CPU is already overloaded when you are merely hovering the image, you can imagine what's happening when it has to additionally process the brush strokes.

As a matter of interest - is Lr set up to write changes to automatically XMP sidecar?

Report · Dec 20, 2010

Ian,

Ian Lyons wrote:

As a matter of interest - is Lr set up to write changes to automatically XMP sidecar?

No. I save the XMP files manually when needed.

Report · Dec 20, 2010

Samoreen wrote:

LR accesses the HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Time Zones registry key and some of its subkeys. It does that for every single [mouse] move.

I made the same test in Camera Raw and I didn't observe the same behavior. Everything is running without a hitch. Now the problem is: what is the connection between a mouse move in Develop mode and the need for LR to get information about my Time Zone settings?

For the moment, I can only imagine one answer: LR is reading the image's metadata all the time. When it reads the image capture date (or any other date/time related information), it needs to interpret these data against the system time zone.

This appears to be a ridiculous idea but I can't see any other explanation about this need to access the Time Zone settings of my system.

Report · Dec 20, 2010

Samoreen wrote:
I made the same test in Camera Raw and I didn't observe the same behavior. Everything is running without a hitch. Now the problem is: what is the connection between a mouse move in Develop mode and the need for LR to get information about my Time Zone settings?

Just wanted to confirm what you are seeing with Camera Raw.

Early on when trying to isolate a spot-healing issue for a bug report filed with Adobe they had me test functionality of Camera Raw outside of LR (in my case, via Photoshop opening a RAW) versus Camera Raw within LR. There is absolutely no lag (on my system) in Camera Raw accessed from CS5 regardless of which tool used and the CPU meter shows random, mutiple uses of the various CPUs. When accessing the same image in LR, even when it loads the first time in Develop Module, one CPU seems to want to be at 100% momentarily causing a lag of a couple of seconds for a relatively untouched image to 10-15 seconds for an image with multiple spots or healing brushes. My graphics card fix described earlier helped tremendously in that the 100% momentary CPU usage is much, much shorter; however, I just last night went back into Camera Raw from within CS5 and was amazed at how much more reponsive it is outside of LR.

The registry key issue is very interesting.

Jeff

Report · Dec 20, 2010

The first one (10 second poll) is probably a side effect (we do not poll these directly) of LR asking for an enumeration of active volumes (it uses this to update the volume header of the folders panel and update offline status for photos. Explorer checks those keys on its own as part of that operation apparently. LR would probably be better to subscribe to events to keep this up to date instead, though the impact of polling at a 10 second interval probably isn't huge, either.

The other one is potentially interesting. I'll have to look to see what call causes that to be hit. Again, LR is definitely not polling the registry itself, but obviously it is doing something which has a registry query as a side effect.

DT

Report · Dec 20, 2010

Dan,

DanTull wrote:
The other one is potentially interesting. I'll have to look to see what call causes that to be hit. Again, LR is definitely not polling the registry itself, but obviously it is doing something which has a registry query as a side effect.

The call comes from substrate.dll (LR) => ValidateLocale (kernel32) => SetClientTimeZoneInformation (kernel32) => ntoskrnl.exe (kernel)

Report · Dec 20, 2010

Samoreen wrote:
Dan,
DanTull wrote:
The other one is potentially interesting. I'll have to look to see what call causes that to be hit. Again, LR is definitely not polling the registry itself, but obviously it is doing something which has a registry query as a side effect.
The call comes from substrate.dll (LR) => ValidateLocale (kernel32) => SetClientTimeZoneInformation (kernel32) => ntoskrnl.exe (kernel)

In case you're curious, have a look at the seventh slide:

http://www.troygaul.com/LrExposedC4.html

Report · Dec 20, 2010

Lee Jay wrote:
In can you're curious, have a look at the seventh slide:
http://www.troygaul.com/LrExposedC4.html

Interesting. Thanks for the pointer.

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Lightroom 3.3 Performance Feedback