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

[PhilBurness]

We have to remember Wirths law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law - "Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster".

While processing technology improves expenentially, the 'bloat' in software expands to take advantage of it. As Jamie Zawinski said "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can".

Basically software businesses will continue to add 'features' to maintain or gain a competitive edge on their rivals and hence software will continue to bloat or be replaced by something new.

As far as hardware is concerned, if you are a computing 'power user' (i.e. somebody who uses the computer for more than just 'word or excel' and you want to keep up to date with software then really you should budget to upgrade / replace your equipment every 3-4years, or 2-3 years if you can afford it.

Phil

[Guest]

Yes, the link between hardware and software is often not understood - and not always as clear to define as Joe Public thinks.

What i find interesting is that computers built under a closed system, like that used by Apple, should suffer in any where near the same way it does under an open system as used with MS Windows.

Basically, these computers are all built to a same standard and desing and should all work the same, and yet they don't. That's a puzzle i don't understand!

As for updating computers - i bought this over 2 years ago and it was top of the range then. My next machine will also be top of the range - purely because i'm accepting of the way software develops and demands more of resources as features are added.

[thewhitedog]

I think the automobile can provide a good analogy with computers that may be somewhat easier to understand. Cars of the same model and with the same features roll off the assembly line every day. They eventually end up on car dealers's lots, where they may be further customized to a buyer's specifications. Then they are purchased by individual users. From the moment they are driven off the lot they begin to age differently, depending on how they are used and maintained. Some people take good care of their cars with regular tune-ups and other routine maintenance. Others are less careful. Some people drive their vehicles only moderate distances; others commute many miles every day. So cars built on the same day to the same specs will begin to fail at different times, whether you measure that time in years on the road or in miles driven. Computers are not that much different. People use them and look after them with varying degrees of care or carelessness. It's only natural that their experiences with their computers will differ, just as they do with their automobiles.

Of course, cars and computers are subject to different variables, but the results are much the same. Ultimately it's the human factors that determine their useful lifespans. Then, too, computers, like automobiles, may be affected by human error at different points in the manufacturing process. But whether it's a design flaw, a failure in manufacturing quality control, or some other mistake or oversight, ultimately human error is at the root of just about every mechanical failure that ever befalls our machines.

So, even though Macs are manufactured in a so-called closed system, once they are in the hands of users their fates will vary, often dramatically. The value of generic PCs is harder to track because they are built in so many different configurations. And the quality of the components that go into these configuration also varies widely. Yet, the same general rule of thumb applies to both Macs and PCs: You get what you pay for.

Like Pic4 I prefer to buy a high-end computer (a Mac in my case) because I can usually squeeze more life out of it - and it can be upgraded to meet the growing demands of the software I use. I consider my Mac Pro to be an investment, not an extravagance. Still, as the saying goes, YMMV.

[PhilBurness]

Well - did I speak too soon....

Part way through a previous answer to this thread ( I didn't get it finished because.... ), my system crashed!!

the only significant thing I had been doing with it earlier was editing about 30 photo's in Lightroom 3.4 - strange that..

It's the first time I've used lightroom 3.4 heavily (? editing 30 photo's ?) since upgradeing the graphics card. The work I had been doing was:

Import of about 80 images (.NEF raw images, previously uploaded from the camera to the hard drive)

General metadata editing and synchronizing.

Creating some collections and adding images to them.

General exposure changes with adjustments to blacks, recovery, and fill light.

Minor adjustment brush changes (localised exposure changes and clarity changes)

Some small spot removals (no more than 3-4 per image and not all images)

switching to photoshop for some content aware fill mods (only 2 images)

One image with lens correction

switching to photoshop for 3-4 images for high-pass sharpening.

Exporting 4-5 images to jpeg

Publishing 4-5 images to Flickr

Lightroom was open for about 3 - 4 hours, and was open when I started to respond to this thread as the system crashed....

I'm not saying the problem definetely is lightroom - but I believe it to be suspicious that this is the first time my machine has crashed in a long time - the last being after using Lightroom for a similar period of time....

Phil

[areohbee]

The recent graphics card change could have something to do with the crash too - doncha think?

(so far I have had no more crashes with Lr3.4 than 3.4RC or 3.3...)

[web-weaver]

Yes, rob, could be.

It seems sometimes the graphics acceleration is a bit too "ravenous" for the taste of the OS.

This happened on my system and a Windows message advised me to decrease the 'hardware acceleration" of the card.

WW

[areohbee]

web-weaver wrote:

...This happened on my system and a Windows message advised me to decrease the 'hardware acceleration" of the card.

So, did you? And, did it help (e.g. performance or reliability)? Did it hurt (e.g. performance)?

[web-weaver]

Rob Cole wrote:

"So, did you? And, did it help (e.g. performance or reliability)? Did it hurt (e.g. performance)?"

Yes I did. The 'hardware acceleration" slider had been all the way to the max.

I took it down to a middle value (50%). I also un-checked "Enable Write Combining".

At first I did not notice anything different but then did a Impromptu Slideshow in LR 3.4 (final) and noticed that the transitions between siles was not going smoothly but in several "steps" that made the transition somewhat "jerking".

I put the "garphics acceleration" up a notch and the transition between slides was much better.

In Win XP you'll find the graphics acceleration in >Control panel >Display >Settings Tab >Advanced >Troubleshoot Tab.

WW

[PhilBurness]

Rob,

I may have thought so if I hadn't had similar crashes prior to upgrading the card (The reason for upgrading the card is given in a previous message in this thread).

Of course, it could be coincidence... and probably a hardware problem on my machine (along with many others on this list), but for some reason I don't think so... Call it intuition, call it 25+ years of working with computer systems in a real-time, mission critical environment; but a random crash that only happens after extensive (listen to me - 3-4 hours extensive - Paaa,,,) use of Lightroom which until upgrading the graphics card showed obvious discomfort in it's basic design performance...

Back to the drawing board me thinks....

Phil

[areohbee]

Fair enough. I really dont have a clue...

[PhilBurness]

areohbee wrote:

Fair enough. I really dont have a clue...

Well I wouldn't go that far....

I am not completely convinced the performance issues are just bugs - Adobe, may be lacking in resources according to some, but for sure this thread will be watched by their competitors who will be making mileage out of the bad PR - not something Adobe will tolerate for too long. It's the image of the company, not just the product that gets tarnished. So ultimately it is in their interests to identify the source of the problem and eliminate or advertise their findings if it's outside of their control to fix (i.e. a windows OS or driver problem).

The problem I face in diagnosing where the problem may be is that I have even less resources than Adobe, plus a full time alternative job to do and family commitments....

Until I can get some repeatability in the problem, it's incredibly difficult to pinpoint where the issue may be - and I can't even put debug code in the source to try and trap any code violations.. very frustrating..

Phil

[areohbee]

Dan Tull (of Adobe) issued a note recently about command line switches, one of which would dump debug info from Lightroom, if I remember correctly. cant find it at the moment (twas on this forum I think).

I think its fair to call the *worst* performance problems bugs, since they are only experienced by some people (who "shouldn't" experience them). There are also other performance issues (less severe) that are more ubiquitous (probably not bugs).

For me: Lightroom is fast in all of the important ways, *except* develop mode switching, which insists on rendering nearly from scratch each time (unless cached in ram, acr disk cache is of marginal value), *and* switching in library too if preview is stale, since lib previews are not generated in the background when image changed in develop mode (or any other mode).

If Lightroom tagged changed files for re-rendering of lib previews in background, (and did that at a lower priority which interfered with nothing), and invented a more effective acr cache for develop mode rendering, or at least left the lib preview up for a while instead of the less-desirable acr initial rendering, I would be happy as a pig in mud with Lightroom performance. - This just one idea which wouldn't require any redesigning...

My preferred solution would be an integration of lib+dev such that no preview regeneration would be required after editing, since all view modes would share the same rendering(s), but I realize this may not happen come Lr4, yet hopefully improved performance in this area *will* happen.

[DdeGannes]

I have been following this thread since it originated. However I am not sure what is being discussed at this point in time is it LR 3.3 Performance Feedback or has it moved to LR 3.4 Performance Feedback. If the latter then maybe someone with the ability should change the Topic header. If the latter then the thread should be closed, since Adobe is certainly not trying to correct bugs in LR 3.3 since the new release 3.4.

[areohbee]

Related question: Which 3.3 performance-related bugs were fixed by 3.4?

[DdeGannes]

Understood but the LR engineers will not be working with LR 3.3 to solve those uncorrected bugs. What they now need to know is what bugs are still present in LR 3.4 and what new bugs have been created by the update. The issue should now be "Lightroom 3.4 Performance Feedback".

No need to receive further feedback from users of LR 3.3.

[thewhitedog]

@ Rob: There was a long list of fixes in the release notes, but I don't remember reading much of anything about performance. While I haven't tested every aspect of the app in version 3.4, I notice that the Adjustment Brush still stalls out after applying a few corrections to a dozen or so images. And, of course, they didn't fix the slider issue I reported, but they are working on that now, according to posts from Becky on the thread I started on the subject, http://forums.adobe.com/message/3605190#3605190. Though I started the thread in reference to the Lightroom 3.4 RC, the bug was not fixed in the 3.4 final, so the discussion has continued since the 3.4 release.

I suggest that someone still experiencing serious performance issues in the 3.4 final start a thread on that topic, with as specific a focus as possible. While the subject of this thread has been performance, that's a pretty general topic and it's proven impossible to narrow it down. If you want attention on a specific issue, I recommend you start a thread with a narrower subject than just "performance." I suspect it would be more productive. I mentioned the slider problem I was having on this thread but got little response until I started a thread of my own with that as the topic. Others, I think, have had similar experiences.

The advantage of a general discussion like this one is that it can cover a lot of different issues in one place. That's also its biggest weakness.

[areohbee]

Tackling things one at a time probably makes more sense, at least when the symptoms are consistent...

Regardless, the "3.3" in the title sure does sound like a built-in expiration - maybe Tom or one of his agents will return to this forum to advise us...

[BartBB]

@Rob, do you know if the switches Dan mentioned are documented anywhere.

I'm having a customer with a Mac Pro, 12 CPU system, 14 GB memory, fast SSD for LR-catalog and quite often his LR grinds to a halt while importing images. Seems like it is somewhere memory related as he sees it only happening when all free memory is been used up.

[areohbee]

Hi BartBB,

The switch that I use is '-tracebacks' which dumps debug output to a debugger. Its the only one I know of.

I don't believe they are documented anywhere, yet. Dan Tull was pondering the idea though...

John Ellis uses a command that can reveal them, unfortunately I forgot what it was.

Rob

[thewhitedog]

I agree, the graphics card upgrade is a prime candidate. I've had Lightroom stall out on me - even the latest, 3.4, which seems not to have improved performance much, if at all. A simple restart of the app is all I need to get back to work. But I've never had Lightroom crash my system. On rare occasions Photoshop will hang so that I have to force quit it, but, again, it doesn't take down the computer. Admittedly we are working on different computers with different operating systems, so this could have some bearing, particularly for older versions of Windows. But in my experience the most common cause of a system freeze or crash (kernel panic on the Mac) is an IO problem of some kind. This can destabilize the system in ways you don't even notice till things stop working. Incompatible or marginally compatible video cards are also a common cause of system instability. Unfortunately such issues are hard to pinpoint, let alone resolve. A good way to test the graphics card would be to stress it by playing a processor intensive game or running a movie or other long video in full screen mode. Running Lightroom and Photoshop together could be problematic if you don't have enough RAM. I know you've posted your system specs but I don't recall them at the moment, so I'm just tossing out ideas. Windows 7 should be able to handle multi-tasking just fine, though the CPU could impose some restraints. Also, some folks have found that turning off multi-threading in the CPU can help performance in Lightroom - though I don't know how to do it on Windows and as far as I know it cannot be done on the Mac.

[Guest]

@ PhilBurness

It would help if you defined what you mean by "crashed."  If it is a Windows machine, did the application crash and (if so) what was the recorded error message.  If (again) a Windows machine and it blue screened, what message and/or code was provided. If you didn't record the message(s), check the error in Event Viewer. As often as not (in my experience) blue screens are either driver errors or memory issues.  You also can have memory issues that only crop up when using memory intensive applications.  I've got two sticks of 4 GB DDR3 1333 mhz RAM sitting on my desk next to my laptop. One works fine, the other crashes the machine immediately, and if both are installed with the bad one in the second slot, the machine crashes only when heavily utlized.  Of course, if it is a machine running XP, people really need to accept the fact that Adobe is obviously developing its software for the Vista/7 kernel and "compatible" is (unfortunately) often a somewhat subjective assessment.  If it is a Mac, I am not qualified to comment....

Stephen

[hamish niven]

Flipping great ain't it?!

Hardware software users components and then cups of coffee or beer splashed on the keypads or grubby fingers interacting with the mouse

Good luck adobe

hamish NIVEN photography on the move

[PhilBurness]

Oh no....

Did I open the gate?

Phil

[Guest]

@ PhilBurness

I don't know what gates you think you have opened.  What I can say is that it is even money you are describing a driver issue or even a hardware issue that Lightroom is capable of triggering.  Personally, I would upload the dump file from the crash to the people over at Windows Seven Forums.  Some of the people over there are better than the Microsoft people at explaining crashes.  If it is an application causing the problem (ie., Lightroom) some of them can also give a clue on that front as well.  FWIW, there are also a couple other sites with resident geeks with nothing better to do with their time then track this sort of stuff.

BTW, you also did make one major system change recently that has caused minor issues with badly designed drivers. You upgraded to SP 1.  Lightroom is a notoriously heavy user of resources and such programs are far more likely to trigger underling issues than other programs.  Lightroom 3.4, which runs great (and fast) on my primary machine is one of the only things I run that can really put a strain on the I5 processor.  Addressing that issue, from my perspective, is the probably the biggest problem with Lightroom since Version 1 and still remains unresolved.

Stephen

[GaryRowe-gcvt07]

For what it's worth, LR's performance on my 6-core 6GB Win7x64 is usually fairly OK for me (except for when it's not, and being bolshie ;-), but yesterday I was burning a DVD in a seperate app and LR just *stopped* - in the Library, the thumbnails disappeared and it was totally unresponsive! The behaviour was totally recreatable.

Does this happen for anyone else?

Gary