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

[DdeGannes]

Is this happening in LR 3.4?

[GaryRowe-gcvt07]

Yes, 3.4 final.

[thewhitedog]

I can't help wondering if it's not a Windows problem. Have you turned off Hyper Threading? That's a know issue with Lightroom. Also, be sure to file a bug report with Adobe. They seem to take those more seriously than random reports on this blog. Better yet, start your own thread on this issue. If it's reproducible, there should be others with the same problem and they will eventually find your thread and chime in. This thread has gotten rather unwieldy and I'm not sure it does much good any more.

[DdeGannes]

Also there is the fact that DVD burning from LR is not supported in Win 64bit. Maybe the fact that another program is doing the DVR burning, having LR open or being  used is cauing some conflict in Win 64 bit?  Just a thought.

[PhilBurness]

@swyost

The gate reference is not related to you or your responses.

The SP1 installation is relatively new - I had the same issues prior to it's installation. It may well exacerbate the problem, but it is not the root cause.

So the history to date is thus -

Prior to lightroom 3.0 final release (i.e. from LR1.0 to LR3.0Beta) I had absolutely no issues - although prior to LR3.0beta I was running 32 bit on Windows XP (but exactly the same hardware platform). I can't remember exactly when LR3.0 final was released, but I upgraded to it almost immediately (while on XP) and instantly noticed the performance issues (i.e. ridiculously slow operation of the adjustment brush, issues with cloning (maybe 2-3 minutes for an adjustment to appear), constant screen flickering between Library / Develop / Print modules, and occassional crashes (physical reboot - screen would flicker, then go blank and system would reboot).

I reported via this forum the experience I was having and I got some *heavy* response defending LR3.0 and citing hardware problems, albeit my hardware was 100% exactly as it had been in LR3.0beta, so the changes incorporated in LR3.0 final are either;

o bugs (which are apparent on my (and other peoples) set up, and I include in here the ability or not to work with multiple vendors drivers and hardware just as photoshop and many other applications do),

o Hardware problems that have developed at virtually the same timeas the LR3.0 final release,

o LR3.0 final to LR3.4 is stressing the hardware (OS) and exposing weakspots causing failures

o My personal installation (along with several other users)

So what have I done to try and rectify the problem-

o identified that I am not alone in my concerns about the reliability of LR3.x and others are suffering similar problems

o moved from XP 32bit (with all it's service packs and updates) to Win 7 64 bit (just in case it was an OS issue) £100+several hours

o upgraded steadily from LR3.0 final to LR3.4 final (ignoring the Beta releases) (just in case Adobe found and fixed something) +several hours

o swapped my RAM & run memtest86+ with no errors (just in case it was my RAM) £60+several hours

o isolated all but essential applications from running while running LR / Photoshop (just in case it's interaction) +several hours

o moved from an onboard graphics adapter to PCI express, increasing graphics RAM and updating graphics drivers (just in case it's a graphics capacity or driver issue) £30+several hours

o installed all OS updates and service packs (just in case there is anything nasty introduced by Microsoft) +several hours

o defraged hard drive (desperation)

o removed all USB devices (when loading images I use the Nikon transfer utility to move the images from camera to fixed HD, then import into LR from fixed HD) (just in case LR is polling USB devices that are not connected and timing out)

o exported and re-imported catalog (last time was at LR3.2, although I may try this again) +hours

o split the catalog in case there is a corruption in a part of the database (I now have a pre2011 and a 2011+ catalog), made no difference so reverted back to the combined catalog as easier for workflow. +hours

o disconnected the machine from the internet and switched off virus protection for a while (no actual blue screen during this period, but no change to the performance either. Only noticable change to the performance was the change in graphics adapter)

So as you can see, I have not been idle in trying to get a more reliable working system. I am fairly confident that my actual hardware is sound, and am a competent computer professional, I accept there maybe driver issues but why these are only apparent when running LR is unnerving - what low-level calls are Adobe using in LR (but presumably not in CS5 / Flash / etc.) and why? The fact that I run Win 7 64 bit, Virtualbox with OpenSuSe Linux 11,  and iTunes together should certainly stress the machine as much as LR on it's own - yet, I only experience the problem when running LR...

The open gate comment is in response to the 'grubby fingers' reference earlier and the 'flood' of abuse I received when LR3.0 final was released and I dare mention the fact that it might not be Adobe's best to date. I basically left the forum for several months because of this. There seems to be several camps on this forum

1) It's definetely not Adobe's problem, works fine for me and it's a hardware issue on your machine and we will give you abuse if you dare mention it,

2) There may be some performance issues in LR experienced by a 'number' of users and we'll try and offer advise or compare notes,

3) LR3.x sucks and when you mention an issue we'll blow it out of proportion and hang Adobe's ass.

Personally I'm only interested in the second camp (which is why I believe Adobe started this thread) - I just want LR3.x to perform 'adequately' on my basic, standard, Windows machine (as LR2.7 did, and interestingly, Adobe has not changed the minimum machine specification between LR2.x and LR3.x), which is not unreasonable.

Phil

[PhilBurness]

OK - It crashed again today (Blue screen - same as mentioned before) - LR open for about 3hrs.

On the MS website it has pointed to 3 updates for ATI Radeon 5540 - (my New graphics adapter), Viewsonic monitor (my monitor), and ie 8 (my browser). Not too much information on the fixes but I've downloaded them, installed them and will see what happens over the next few days....

Phil

[PhilBurness]

One other thing of interest - even when LR is idle (open but not being used, it's memory usage increases.

On opening LR the sysinfo indicated 4.5% of used mem, during the time it took me to write the last post it had increased to 5.9% - And I haven't done anything....

Phil

[PhilBurness]

@swyost

My comments are through frustration, not through a need for explaining in great detail the symptoms which have been done many times previously... Although I'm sure there are plenty of people who are keen to know the details so here they are:

Problem report is:-

Problem signature

Problem Event Name: BlueScreen

OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1

Locale ID: 2057

Extra information about the problem

              BCCode: d1

BCP1: FFFFF80502C91D70

BCP2: 0000000000000009

BCP3: 0000000000000008

BCP4: FFFFF80502C91D70

OS Version: 6_1_7601

Service Pack: 1_0

Product: 256_1

I have run MemTest86+ which has not identified any errors in RAM.

I have removed / cleaned and reseated the RAM, and previously (circa LR3.2 swapped them out)

System Info is:

Lightroom version: 3.4 [742960]
Operating system: Windows 7 Ultimate Edition
Version: 6.1 [7601]
Application architecture: x64
System architecture: x64
Physical processor count: 2
Processor speed: 2.5 GHz
Built-in memory: 4094.4 MB
Real memory available to Lightroom: 4094.4 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 197.4 MB (4.8%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 188.6 MB
Memory cache size: 72.3 MB
System DPI setting: 96 DPI
Desktop composition enabled: Yes
Displays: 1) 1920x1080
Serial Number:

Application folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.4
Library Path: C:\Users\xxx\Pictures\Lightroom3.2\LR3.2-20100903\LR3.2-20100903.lrcat
Settings Folder: C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom

All connectors within the machine have been tested and are seated correctly and securely - all drivers are up to date and the machine is running in a cool room with a fairly steady ambient temperature of about 17 - 20 DegC. All fans are operating correctly.

I often run OpenSuSe Linux in VirtualBox as I also develop software in this environment. I do not use VirtualBox at the same time as Lightroom or Photoshop, although I will often have photoshop open at the same time as Lightroom.

I do not switch my machine off during night time - it stays running 24 / 7 for most of the year.

The *only* consistency is that the machine has only ever bluescreened after some LR activity, and only after upgrading from LR3.0Beta to LR3.0 final and above.

Phil

[Rancher53]

I would have to agree with you 100%, but that is no reason for a professional company making professional software to integrate "upgrades" to there software that is buggy or not 100% reliable.   This is not a cheap software as CS5 Bridge works great compared to older versions I find some thing are done better using bridge even though Lightroom  try's to emulate these functions. I do really like Lightroom 3.3 yes I have not upgraded to .4 as it seems when I jump on the upgrade path to quick its a problem. I am not in a position to upgrade lightroom via a paid up-grade just to get some of these issues working properly.

Which seems to be Adobes MO. Not totally blaming Adobe as other software manufactures do the something but they seem to fix the issues before the next big upgrade cycle. What I am trying to get at its not right for Adobe to not polish off in a working order the functions it already integrated  into Lightroom before a paid for upgrade comes about. I do understand when a new function or hopefully a faster more efficient upgrade comes out , which would be worth the upgrade price Like the support for 64 bit multi core utilization, nice jump in performance.

Yes I also  cringing when Adobe try's to put to many functions in a piece of "software designed to speed up workflow", Bloated yes killed allot of programs as being practical.

Problem is if they don't offer something else they can't  charge for  upgrade, That is why they sent out a questionnaire to see if you would in essence rent the software from a year to year stand point, cripes no, That is what they want but would be a deal killer for me with any software, maybe its time Adobe down sized its work force instead of bloating software for profit. Yes that is not PC but think about it, we our now talking about Cloud computing which would mean the power needed for almost all software has reached its apex in general terms. Software needs to be efficient and solid, competion is going to be who has the most seamless working software for the money out their not the most complicated or buggy, as far as straight viewer Idimager is allot quicker than LR but does not have the "polished" functions as LR started off more as a stream line viewer, hence people bring up that LR 2.0 seemed faster, which I know nothing about,  Adobe has done a great job but is there a

point when the 18 month upgrade cycle is going to or is a detriment?

In this discussion, Adobe Yes needs to focus on Performance and seamlessness of LR, that is all I want , no more functions .

[thewhitedog]

@ Rancher53: Lightroom 3.4 is an update, not an upgrade, and is free for anyone who owns Lightroom 3.

[Guest]

Rancher53 wrote:

I would have to agree with you 100%, but that is no reason for a professional company making professional software to integrate "upgrades" to there software that is buggy or not 100% reliable.   This is not a cheap software as CS5 Bridge works great compared to older versions I find some thing are done better using bridge even though Lightroom  try's to emulate these functions. I do really like Lightroom 3.3 yes I have not upgraded to .4 as it seems when I jump on the upgrade path to quick its a problem. I am not in a position to upgrade lightroom via a paid up-grade just to get some of these issues working properly.

Which seems to be Adobes MO. Not totally blaming Adobe as other software manufactures do the something but they seem to fix the issues before the next big upgrade cycle. What I am trying to get at its not right for Adobe to not polish off in a working order the functions it already integrated  into Lightroom before a paid for upgrade comes about. I do understand when a new function or hopefully a faster more efficient upgrade comes out , which would be worth the upgrade price Like the support for 64 bit multi core utilization, nice jump in performance.

Yes I also  cringing when Adobe try's to put to many functions in a piece of "software designed to speed up workflow", Bloated yes killed allot of programs as being practical.

Problem is if they don't offer something else they can't  charge for  upgrade, That is why they sent out a questionnaire to see if you would in essence rent the software from a year to year stand point, cripes no, That is what they want but would be a deal killer for me with any software, maybe its time Adobe down sized its work force instead of bloating software for profit. Yes that is not PC but think about it, we our now talking about Cloud computing which would mean the power needed for almost all software has reached its apex in general terms. Software needs to be efficient and solid, competion is going to be who has the most seamless working software for the money out their not the most complicated or buggy, as far as straight viewer Idimager is allot quicker than LR but does not have the "polished" functions as LR started off more as a stream line viewer, hence people bring up that LR 2.0 seemed faster, which I know nothing about,  Adobe has done a great job but is there a

point when the 18 month upgrade cycle is going to or is a detriment?

In this discussion, Adobe Yes needs to focus on Performance and seamlessness of LR, that is all I want , no more functions .

I can't see that Lightroom as reached already the state of bloatware. It is not the fastest image browser, of course, and if some features - like local edits - are used very extensively, some people may reach the limits of Lightroom in their particular setup. It is a fast (at least for the majority of the users) photographic workflow tool, which provides functionality for the tasks photographers do: image management, image editing, image presentation and image printing and publishing. What is wrong with that? Why should we use different tools for this tasks? For the most part, Lightroom 3 is very stable, the products of the competition crash from my experience more often, while providing less "polished" features. Sure, the Lightroom team could not find and fix all reasons, which still cause performance problems for some users, but that should not be used to to attribute the performance issues to the "bloatiness" of the product, generally.

The current feature set of Lightroom is based on the requirements of its user base. These people wanted local adjustments (which cause some performance problems), perspective correction, a better demosaicing algorithm, and the ability to publish to popular web galleries. What is mostly missing is soft proofing and I bet we will see that in Lightroom 4, no matter some people would call this bloated.

Unfortunately, recently, the Lightroom team overlooked some easily reproducible bugs in the software, such as the issues with the sliders, but none of them are really blockers, as you still can operate the tools. So, yes, quality control should get better. The performance problems are likely not so easy to reproduce and thus it may take longer time to fix them. Possibly, they also discovered that some design decisions were not optimal for all configurations out there, which could lead to some major changes in the code base, which will only happen in the next major version, which would be a paid upgrade.

My reply is not to defend Adobe, but to argue against Lightroom being viewed as bloatware. I have tried already other software products such as Bibble, IdImager, iView Media Pro, DxO, LightZone - in the end always returning to Lightroom, because overall it is the best all around workflow solution. (Other products, such as Bibble, might be quicker in some respects, but you loose even more time with them, because of the awkward user interface or missing features.

Kind regards

[areohbee]

My .02:

There's two kinds of bloatware:

1. that which affects the size

2. that which affects the speed.

Adding independent features affects size, not speed.

Speed is mostly affected by changing software development practices, and packing more flexibility, quality, etc. into a particular feature.

For example, a photobook module won't slow the development module down, but a spell-checker may slow down keywording, and lens corrections may slow down the spot removal tool, or vice versa.

And, software is made from far more pieces than it used to be, far more layers, far more interfaces, each of which has been developed to be general and robust and thorough... - all of this slows apps down (and sometimes makes for bugs that can be very hard, and time consuming, to find).

PS - in the biz, there is a software phenomenon some of us call "machine-gun fire" (bugs that cause "seemingly random" data corruption) - its impact depends on what gets hit, and what gets hit depends on what order things were loaded in and myriad of other things. This is why the exact same hardware and software can still result in a myriad of different behaviors.

[Guest]

Rob,

I largely agree with you.

And you can see bloatware from a less technical perspective: the intended usage.

Lightroom is supposed to be a complete workflow solution for the photographer. Its goal is to do that in a non-destructive manner (parametric editing) and to reduce the need to create RGB files to a minimum. Thus, I can't call Lightroom "bloatware", because I can't really identify major features, which aren't part of a photographer's workflow (although not all of us may use every aspect).

DxO's goal, for instance, is not to be a complete workflow solution, but to offer unique raw editing and raw data handling features. With respect to this goal, full-fledged DAM features could render DxO as bloatware.

IdImager is supposed to provide a sophisticated DAM solution (better than Lightroom in this regard), so to add a full-fledged raw editor to the program would bloat that software as well.

Both software may cope with being full workflow solutions, but it is not the goal of the products.

Phase One has limited its goal for Capture One as well, although they  have acquired Expression Media - we'll see to where this goes.

Currently, I see only three products, whose aim is to be full workflow solutions: Lightroom, Aperture, and Bibble 5. I can only judge Lightroom and Bibble, among the two Lightroom clearly approaches its own goal a lot better (and BibbleLabs may not be so enthusiastic anymore to support such a broad feature set as Lightroom does, so they step a bit back from their goals).

It is of course the vendors responsibility, to choose a software architecture (and implement it properly) which can cope with the goals. There are indications that Lightroom isn't 100% there were it should be, thus this thread. Although we can't be sure that every performance issue, people reporting, are in the hands of the Lightroom developers.

So, from the feature set, Lightroom isn't bloatware at all. Technically, I can't say it, because as I have said before, Lightroom works in my setup at a very acceptable level.

I know, we deviate from the original intention of the thread again, but since the discussion of bloatware was raised ...

[areohbee]

The hair on the nape of my neck often raises up when I hear the term "bloatware" being used to refer to Lightroom - its a loaded term but of arguable utility.

And regarding Lightroom, its not bloated at all feature-wise - just the opposite, IMO: Its got numerous gaping ommissions that need to be filled before it will really be a complete photographer workflow solution.

Its severe performance issues come from bugs, not "bloating". And its other performance issues come from design, not "bloating". I mean I suppose you could call lens corrections "bloating" since it was a feature added to Lr3.0 which slows down rendering, but I hardly consider it bloating, and if you turn them off, its the same speed as 2.7 (PV2010) when its working normally I mean. Likewise, I certainly wouldn't consider PV2010 "bloating" - even though its a little slower, its significantly better quality: that's a pretty worthwhile tradeoff in my book.

And, people having performance problems tend to forget: Lightroom is one of the fastest raw converters around at some of most critical things (when its working well). I mean Lightroom slider response during development is nearly instantaneous for me across the board - probably the single most critical place where speed counts and one of the reasons I love developing photos in Lightroom (switching back-and-forth from lib to dev is fast too as long as the image is cached in RAM (ACR cache is no help to me - not sure why - how about you?).

I think this thread has hopelessly degraded into a free-for-all at this point ;-} I'll reel it in if people want to get serious again...

R

[dwterry]

I have discovered an interesting "tell tale sign" of the performance issues I have had.

Most of the time (in Library mode) LR3.3 and 3.4RC are very sluggish when moving from one image to the next (as in, it takes SEVERAL SECONDS to use the left and right arrows to move back and forth between images).  HOWEVER, I had found that some times it seemed very speedy (about the same speed as LR 3.2 and previous releases).

I believe I have discovered why.

BACKGROUND INFO

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

For speed purposes, my catalog and previews are on an SSD and all images are initially copied onto a local drive.  I do all of my processing locally (backing files up to a very large DroboPro as I go).  Later on, when a particular session is no longer "active" (proofs have been posted, orders have been filled, or it appears it may be awhile before the customer places an order) I will DELETE the images from my local drive to make room for incoming sets from other photo sessions.  That's okay, all of the images are still out on the Drobo.

Because I have been "backing up" the whole time ... the way I clean up the local drive is very simple.  I simply delete the images.  There is nothing to move, nothing to change.  I just delete the images.  In Lightroom the folder simply becomes disconnected.

LATER, when the customer places an order, I will go to the folder in Lightroom and tell Lightroom I want to "reconnect" the folder and then point it to the location on the Drobo where that folder exists.  Lightroom has kept all of the previews in the catalog and this is a very quick process. 

I've been working like this (or in similar fashion) practically since LR 1.0 came out.

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

So here is what I found: 

Sometimes (not very often) I am working without the Drobo connected.  I recently noticed that is when LR3.3 and 3.4RC move very fast (sub-second times to switch between images)! 

In fact, to prove this to be the case ... I have recently processed several of my incoming photo sessions without the Drobo being attached and in every case the performance has been good.  Later on, again to prove a point (and because I needed to take care of the backup), I have plugged in the Drobo and tried LR again and noticed that the speed has, in fact, suffered once again.

So here's what I think is going on:  I have a LOT of "missing folders" in my catalog.  They remain missing either because I fulfilled the customer's order and deleted from the local drive without ever having to re-attach the Drobo-sourced location to the catalog, or because the customer is taking a really long time to get back to me. 

MY GUESS is that while the Drobo is attahced, LR is out there scanning for missing folders.  Could it be?  (I don't think it has ever reconnected any folder on its own - I'm just guessing that LR for some reason is looking at my Drobo)

When the Drobo is not attached, there are no external drives to scan.  LR is fast.  When the Drobo is attached, there are probably well over 200,000 raw images in thousands of folders and I'm guessing this is not a happy place for Lightroom.

I've been wanting to download the SysInternals File Monitor to test out my theory and just haven't had time yet.  But in the mean time, I thought I'd pass this idea along and let your developers think it over.

Thanks,

David

[Samoreen]

Hi,

FYI.

I just did some testing with the recently announced Cyberlink Photo Director, a (shameless) clone of Lightroom. Regarding performances when using local adjustements, in all honnesty, I must say that it is not faster than LR. It might even be slower in some cases. Importing is significantly slower in Photo Director.

Local adjustments continue to perform faster in Camera Raw than in LR, though. So either LR and Photo Director have the same problems (in that case Photo Director is actually a "real" clone) or it's time to setup a much more powerful workstation to get LR (and its clones) running at a speedier pace.

--

Patrick