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Here are my specs on a 2017 iMac: 3.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5, Radeon Pro 570 4 GB, 32 GB memory. The biggest caveat is that it's a 5K retina display, which I've learned to work around by using a smaller window and previews, etc. It worked absolutely fine on Lightroom 9.4 for over 4 years when I had a HDD (now SSD) and only 8 GB memory. I can't justify buying an entirely new computer yet when everything was fine for me only a week ago before I had to have my drive replaced.
By @laurent60700078
Yeah, I see the issue, and you deserve sympathy, although that might not be enough to shift Adobe policy.
Not your fault in the least, your last iMac was an excellent choice at the time, and that was a decade when Macs and PCs were not changing all that much from year to year. But in the last 5 years, there has been a lot more change than usual. Cameras with a lot more megapixels came out, and they were straining the existing raw photo editors and computers. At the same time, CPUs and GPUs started to add a lot more cores, so software companies said “hey, let’s update the software to take advantage of all that power.” So the software started expecting that kind of power to be there, the system requirements went up, and older computers seemed a lot slower. For example, the new masks do depend on the kind of graphics hardware in current Macs and PCs, and run a lot slower on computers more than a few years old. And then the new hardware made AI practical (which drives some of the new masks), but older computers couldn‘t keep up.
I can see some of the same problems you do, in my old Mac, a 2018 Intel quad-core MacBook Pro. When you reach the point that you can upgrade to an Apple Silicon Mac, it’s going to be like night and day. For example, even the cheapest and oldest M1 Mac has 8 CPU cores, and the graphics are a lot more flexible and can use more memory. Those first Apple Silicon Macs are now 3.5 years old, so software companies are writing for that and the newer Macs.
As an extreme example, the new AI Denoise feature can take several minutes per image on my 2018 Intel Mac, but on my 2.5-year-old Apple Silicon Mac it takes less than one minute, and the newest Macs can do it in 15-20 seconds. That’s how far the Mac GPUs have come in the last few years.
When you can afford to buy something newer, know that even buying a decent previous generation Mac that is now heavily discounted (for example, M2 Pro or M2 Max instead of the latest M3) will be a huge step up for you. In the meantime, yes, the best solution for a 2017 iMac is probably the earlier version you want of Lightroom Classic. Unfortuntely, any of us posting here who do not work for Adobe don’t have a way of making that available. Hope somebody comes to your rescue somehow.
Hi, I've used Lightroom 9.4 for work for years and after upgrading the drive of my Mac (HDD to SSD, upgraded from Mojave to Ventura), I've had to reinstall all of my programs. I've tried the latest Lightroom, as well as Lightroom 10, and they've been incredibly slow and ruined my workflow. This is my livelihood and I'm desperate for any version of Lightroom 9. I've contacted customer care and they suggested that I ask here. Please help me figure out what to do.
By @laurent60700078
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