Lightroom 5.6 Slooow!!

[ciphermedia]

Just downloaded & installed Lightroom 5.6. It seems to be running really slow, taking 5 - 8 seconds to see any response to some commands in the develop module. For example, if I hold down the option key whilst adjusting the white levels, the on-screen response seems to lag markedly. It's a bit inconsistent as to when it happens - sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's reallly slow.

Am running on an iMac 2.7 GHz core i5 with 32 GB of ram. Never had any speed issues before with previous versions.

Wondering whether anybody else is having problems with 5.6?

[zooskifilms]

Having the same issue with excruciatingly slow performance on a Macbook Pro (details below) and 5.6. I haven't really edited much in past versions, so I have no way to compare to 5.6. But I do find a direct correlation between a highly edited photo and slow performance. The more edits I make, the slower the performance. By slow I mean small mask change........4-5 seconds to apply. Zoom in with "Z" key.....2 seconds to apply. Move within zoom range.......3-4 seconds to apply. I delete history and no noticeable improvement. The more layers of adjustments on a photo = slower performance. Seems to make sense if Lightroom is not built for lots of edits. By lots of edits I mean:

- masking background for color temp adjustments (mixed lighting)

- facial spot clean ups, brighten eyes

- lens corrections

- Detials

- Effects (mostly vignetting)

So I am not using every adjustment module, can only imagine it would get worse.

Recent project with lots of CR2 RAW head shots, I like to carry over adjustments from Previous photo. Nice feature. I tried turning off all adjustment modules except for the one I was working on at the time. No noticeable improvement, plus not a work-flow friendly method.

I also trashed preferences, increase RAW cache to 50GB, repair permissions. No noticeable improvement. The more edits you have the slower performance.

I am going back to Photoshop for my editing, works like a champ. Will use Lightroom as an image library only. Shame with so many nice editing tools. Good idea if and when these tools will work well.

My setup:

MacBook Pro early 2011, 2.3Ghz i7

Processor  2.3 GHz Intel Core i7

Memory  16 GB 1333 MHz DDR3

Graphics  AMD Radeon HD 6750M 1024 MB

Software  OS X 10.9.4 (13E28)

Creative Cloud Photography subscription

[~IanB~]

I share your frustrations although mine is working sort of OK but then I'm not doing full on work PP. The thing I don't understand is I need to turn off computer; not just LR .

Mine has worked better since cleaning out the rubbish that had been sucked into the underside of the lappy; but it's not THE FIX we all want. I would hate going back to PS for editing so I feel for you

I guess adobe will have it sort when they release LR6. If they don't get it sorted there may be no LR6

[D.A.Wagner]

Yikes!

In reading through all of the comments and suggestions, I get the impression that there are little or no Lightroom speed improvements on the horizon.

And to address a few comments I find particularly disturbing:

Lightroom cannot do serious masking or replace backgrounds. You may be able to do some basic masking or change the color of a background, but it's not designed do multi-element photo-comping. I can’t even imagine that an Adobe employee would suggest so.  But you did.

And the comment about "baked right into the file as you work" in Photoshop –

Using layers and masks is the non-destructive method of working in PS, so nothing is baked in (is there something I don’t know?) unless you’re working directly on a single layer. Plus, I have my PS preferences set to 100 undos without any speed issues. Most of my LR work is less than 100 actions and it comes to a crawl even with a few dozen – giving many (most?) power-users grief. LR IS NOT PHOTOSHOP. (I may be running on a dinosaur, but I don't have any of the speed issues with PS that I have with LR - Early 2008 Mac Pro Tower, 32GB RAM, 256GB SSD boot drive, ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB, 12TB-4 drive Raid 5)

And this –

The mention that burning and dodging, cropping and adjusting sliders - the exact thing Lightroom is designed to do - makes the program run slower and slower. So this seems like an admission that Lightroom is SLOW when used it as it was designed, to operate like a darkroom.

In my naïveté, I was certain that the speed issue would get better, after all Photoshop is looking pretty good these days. But I’m feeling pretty certain that LR 6 may be more of the same speed issues. I do love Lightroom and it’s integration with Photoshop. In fact, I never touched Aperture because I’m well aware of Apple’s disposition to discontinue a product. And, sure enough, they did.

Lightroom is a pretty good program. If Adobe can remedy the speed issues, LR could become a great program.

[zooskifilms]

I read through all of the explanations on why LR's Develop module is slow. Thanks for the info. But it really doesn't matter, either it works well enough to use, or not. For me not. It's nice that Adobe can tout all of these great features in LR, but if you provide them you should expect people to use them. Maybe we'll see more video editing tools and compositing features inside the next release of Lightroom that we can't use.

[areohbee]

Lr's develop module is fast and responsive for many of us. OK, it takes a few seconds to load a raw photo, but then it's quite brisk (responds almost instantaneously to every adjustment I make) - it's one of the things I really like about Lightroom.

Yeah: if I paint n' paint n' paint etc..., it'll eventually bring Lr (and my whole system) to it's knees. So, if I need to do a lot of painting (and/or spot removal..), I export a copy for external work, or to continue painting in Lightroom. Not optimal / room for improvement, to be sure, but as the saying goes "if it hurts when you do that, don't do it".

Granted, if one wants to go through a large filmstrip, and load each photo briefly (e.g. to check/tweak detail), it can be pretty grueling due to the loading time, but whilst editing it usually flies (on my machine(s)).

Don't get me wrong: I'm really not an Adobe defender by policy, but Lr's develop module, within normal use constraints, is quite fast for many of us. So if it's really sloooooow on your machine, you've got some trouble-shooting to do (or you need a new machine). If I were you, and I couldn't get it working smoothly, I'd be shopping for a new raw editor - just sayin'..

Cheers,

Rob

[D.A.Wagner]

No problem loading raw photos. But as a guy who's been working with digital since '84 (yes, '84) and a background as a Black and White printer prior to that, Photoshop has been my go-to program for the past 18 years until Lightroom came around. The big difference is that I can work in a "darkroom" like approach in LR - burning, dodging, etc. very expeditiously in comparison to PS. Even on my 2012 iMac with 16GB RAM, LR comes to a slow crawl. But if I paint and paint in PS, things keep chugging along, even with 1GB files with over 100 layers. I'm not braggin'. Just sayin'

In any event, can anyone from Adobe even remotely address this issue without sending us on an all day excursion of troubleshooting?

[areohbee]

The reason you can pile on adjustments forever in Ps (without penalty) but not Lr:

* Ps bakes everything you do into the image data then promptly forgets what you did (not exactly true, but try and work with me here - I'm shooting for a concept to make a point).

* Lr never changes the image, so all edits are just piled into a list, and Lr has to re-render the whole (growing) mess repeatedly.

This is what Julie Kmoch was trying to explain - they are very different program designs - Ps is a pixel editor, and Lr is a non-destructive editor, each has it's strengths and weaknesses.

Summary: Lr is great for initial raw conversion and light editing. Ps is required for heavy editing (or you can export to bake changes in for continued editing in Lightroom, thus clearing the growing edit list which bogs it down).

Rob

[~IanB~]

great way to explain the differences Rob; I can see myself quoting that some day.

Personally zooskifilms; I feel LR would do that so easy; or should do that so easy. I feel the  frustrates; especially those using LR for work. That is the beauty of lightroom; it's easy to add the same edits to the following image or to lots of files with 'auto sync'. I still don't understand why I had lots of drama like you and now don't have so many. To those 200 files I mentioned earlier I auto synced lens correcting/sharpening and noise reduce plus some basic editing without any dramas. But I do wonder if I could have done that when I was having similar dramas to you.

Just did an experiment: took a file and basically destroyed it by moving every slider and using every tool available several times>>added those edits to 56 lumix raw files with sync>>took several minutes>>selected one of the files and removed those edits and re-edited the file in a way it would be destroyed  if done in PS and all with no  real slowing down.

Went back and returned all files to how they were. Had to do that manually as I could not find an auto way (??) but still had no dramas

Not much joy for you having dramas; but I have been where you are now. So why? Why sometime? (for me anyway) There has to be a common denominator.

If we and others (please others) keep posting our dramas the penny might drop at Adobe. 

[~IanB~]

good reply rob; LR still rocks as far as I'm concerned even if I do have some dramas

been working fine; but again I'm not doing a great lot so ..................... (??)

I still want to look more into the importing/keyworking..rush rush rush...flip into develop.....back to library/keywording.

Once the computer/LR has has all the filing stuff done in the background develop seems to work much better. As I said earlier I bogged LR while sorting out a section of k/words..removing files>>adding files>>deleting k/words>>moving file into less k/words. What we see on the screen often hasn't happened in the b/ground.

Last lot of 200+ file where imported with 1 keyword and I had no dramas in develop. I added keywords later and still no dramas. ROF LOL now if have dramas today it will be ^%$#)(%&($##%^*(*)$#%%^ LOL

Maybe those having dramas could go back to some old files and see how things work on those files and let us know. I give the spot removal tool a real work out because to use PS I need to use another computer; so can't be bothered so I take it out on the Sr tool.

[zooskifilms]

I'm with Wagner on spending all day troubleshooting. It would be great to have a standard photo file to compare our system to, a RAW file with edits/masks applied, one could attempt some other edits and then compare times to apply those edits. I don't see it being my Mac as Photoshop, FCP, After Effects all work well. And it's not background processing, I have given ample time.

I think we all agree, if you need to make a good deal of geographic edits/masks, LR was not designed for this. If you want to slightly change the hue of your background, you need to mask it. This was my case with 30 headshots. I applied a mask and hue change, some minor lens corrections and then sharpen details. I forwarded these edits/masks to each following photo and then would edit the mask. LR said no thanks. That means round trip it to Photoshop or do all of your edits on Photoshop. I choose to do everything in Photoshop. I agree....if it hurts don't do it, my exact sentiments.

[robertotaylor]

I'm also getting horrible lag and high CPU/RAM usage with LR 5.6. I have to close it and restart it when it starts hogging up all the resources. Sometimes it gets stuck at 100% CPU usage, and using up about 4GB's of m 16GB's of RAM. Never had this problem with LR 5.5, so something is definitely broken.

[figit090]

do you have any add-ons/extensions/plugins associated with or installed in lightroom, robertotaylor?

[robertotaylor]

I have no add-ons/extensions/plugins installed. It's 100% stock and I never had these issues with any of the previous releases. The program is constantly locking up now, so I have to force close it and restart it about every 20 minutes.

Very frustrating! Is there a way to downgrade to one of the previous releases?

[areohbee]

robertotaylor wrote:

Very frustrating! Is there a way to downgrade to one of the previous releases?

If you've tried "everything" (you haven't), you can down-grade by installing a previous version and using it instead. If you need to re-download:

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/updates.html

(look for 'Lightroom', and choose platform..).

[robertotaylor]

Thanks for the link Rob.

I know I haven't tried "everything", but the whole point here is that I shouldn't have to be doing anything different if it's been working fine before this release. I'm clearly not the only person having this issue, so it's a software problem. Adobe doesn't pay me to troubleshoot their problems, so I will just downgrade to a previous version until they can get things sorted on the next release.

Thank again.

[areohbee]

robertotaylor wrote:

Thanks for the link Rob.

You're welcome.

robertotaylor wrote:

the whole point here is that I shouldn't have to be doing anything different if it's been working fine before this release.

Understood before, and understood now.. but, you realize this is the user-to-user forum, not the Adobe feedback forum, right? Our understanding may help you feel warm and fuzzy but won't change anything.. - we mostly want to help you use as best you can given the software as is.

If you want to bend Adobe's ear, you can do it here:

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/products/photoshop_family_photoshop_lightroom

PS - I realize Julie Kmoch (of Adobe) has participated here too, but your reply was to me (granted others will be reading too..).

Cheers,

Rob

[~IanB~]

maybe I spoke to early; my LR5 'crashed' again today

[areohbee]

Temporarily delete the preferences file, if you haven't already tried it - that will eliminate all (non built-in) plugins from loading, and other things.

[~IanB~]

its a long shot but this worked for me Problem solved

[~IanB~]

G'day again. May or may not work or have anything to do with all the dramas; however I'm finding if I don't do lens corrections I seem to be rolling along just fine. Lens corrections is on my standard import preset however I have not being using that preset for awhile. I also leave Lens correction alone until it's a have to do thing like when making a panorama/sharing. Once the panorama files are in PS I then remove lens correction from the RAW files.

Give it a try and let us know if it makes any difference to your slowness dramas.

[areohbee]

Disabling lens corrections has been suggested as a possible optimization on Adobe's "official" performance "white paper".

It affects all people/systems a little (presumably the norm, hopefully anyway), and some people/systems a lot (dunno why..).

Me? I have profile-based lens corrections enabled by default, since the performance degradation on my system is minimal, but I find it interesting that the Adobe default is for them to be disabled (unlike color noise reduction & sharpening in Lr, and similar lens corrections in other softwares like  DxO, NX2, and DPP). I could guess that such decision was for performance reasons, but I'd just be guessing.

One possible explanation for excessive slowdown when lens corrections are enabled: hardware is not compatible with Lr software, or hardware driver as exercised by Lr is problematic.. - the take away is: you may be able to resolve by buying a new motherboard/system, or installing different chip driver(s) (or BIOS..).

Cheers,

Rob

[~IanB~]

I still have no dramas since my last post (now why do I feel I should not be saying this........ yeah....mention the  and.......

[areohbee]

Sounds like you're flirting with disaster, or should I say tempting fate, or testing the "jinks" hypothesis..

[~IanB~]

Still works fine..........um ................ was working fine until I had to do lens corrections on Canon g12 raw files; LR didn't like that at all.

28 mm G12 files look worse than my Grandmother's pincushion full of old pins LOL.

Until I starting working on the lens-corrected files I had and have not any slowness dramas even thought the Lappy disc was getting close to full. The way around it for me is to do basic corrections on the raw file>>do lens corrections>>export raw file as a psd or tiff or jpg and do final work on that file>>remove the lens correction from the raw file.

That seems to work for me so I it helps a few others also

We can only look forward to the 64 bit (only) LR6 and worry about the cost  of it

[Jglaser757]

Mine is slower than molasses now,,and crashes. Either have to do a soft reboot or even a hard reboot..I think its been restarted about 15 times in the last month.

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/