Lightroom Classic CC seems slower than previous Lightroom version it replaced

[brente978]

Lightroom Classic CC seems slower than previous Lightroom version it replaced.  To test the performance of the new classic update, I imported some raw pictures taken with a Nikon D810/D850 and am noticing that moving from one image to another (all with 1:1 previews) in the Develop module takes 4 seconds before the image is displayed after pressing an arrow key to move (or using the mouse to select an image).  When you move to another image, the UI is repainted first (and, i assume, the histogram calculated, etc.), and then the image is displayed on the screen.  Moving between the Library and Develop modules also results in about a 4 second delay before the image is displayed.  Moving between pictures in the Library module is almost instantaneous. 

This level of performance is unacceptable.  Doing a copy/paste of settings from one image to another takes longer in the latest Lightroom than in the previous one as the time needed to display the image seems to slow everything down, thus slowing down the entire workflow process.

Another quick test was to press the right arrow key 10 times in succession in the Develop module to move between images.  It took Lightroom Classic CC 20 seconds before the UI finally caught up and displayed the desired image.  Doing the same in the Library module takes about 3 seconds.

Or, is this just the level of performance to be expected?  Was this not tested during the beta process, or just deemed satisfactory by Adobe? 

What's the best way to get feedback directly to Adobe on this?

[JamesAllenUK]

Hey a pleasure Mihai. That tip definitely helped me with speed issues with previous versions, however like you I still get slow down after a while. Just came back to this thread to see if anything else had been discovered as right now LR Classic is really dragging it's feet while I'm trying to edit. Really frustrating.

[LindaLMP]

I may be one of the very few that did not have any issues with speed in the last version of Lightroom.  I updated to Lightroom Classic and it is painfully slow.  There must be something that is tweaked in the settings.  Reviewing and implementing some of the tips found here. Hope they help.

UPDATE: I switched to minimal previews during import and it helped speed things up.   I find it much faster to import from memory card to my computer file, then drag/drop into LR. It used to be instant, now there's a delay. It's not as fast as the previous version, but at least I can work again.

[nasoj21]

I am also having the same sort of issues. Synchronizing changes to multiple image gets no response sometimes, or an extremely delayed response. Trying to go in and add or change local adjustments almost crashes the program.

If I go back to 2015, can I downgrade my current catologue or do I need to load the one it converted?

[michaelh99192563]

During upgrade, a new catalog was created.  You should be able to open the old catalog in the old version of LR

For those posting in the last couple of days, have you upgraded to the version that was released since LR was renamed?  That version is a bit faster for me...

[stet57]

On my iMac 5K 2015 - i5, 16GB RAM, 256SSD - extremely slow! Scrolling in my library is 0-1FPS on 5k display. Once I move Lightroom window to my secondary screen (Cinema Display 21") scrolling has at least 30FPS!

LR is totally unusable once more than one export is running!

Adobe do to hell! We are photography professionals and all we need is fast, reliable software. This slow peace of crap even on +$2000 computers is shame!!!

Funny point is that browsing RAW files in Bridge is much, much faster than is LR!

[cambunch]

Another user here with a terrible experience after the update. Had to revert to the 2015 version. My specs are below. I would say most operations took about 3-4 times longer than before the upgrade.

i7-7700k

32GB Ram

nVidia GTX 1060 6GB

Multiple SSDs

[NHPhoto4]

This user would also like to add his two-pennorth -Unbearably slow. I'm half way through a wedding edit and it's like pulling teeth. For example; up to 15 seconds to get an image from Library into Develop, 5-10 seconds to move from one image to the next in Develop module. 5-10 seconds for some adjustments to render into the viewed image, laggy real-time adjustment views such as white and black clipping - occasionally these sliders even take on a life of their own and on trying to catch up they start wildly rolling back and forth of their own accord!. All this is making what should be an enjoyable job a real chore. You're supposed to be being creative whilst trying to work around all these annoying issues?  I've messed about with all the various settings as describe here and elsewhere but to no avail, but anyway, surely all these adjustments to various preferences should be considered fine tuning tweaks and not essential for getting any sort of acceptable performance? It should be somewhere in the ball park out of the box? In my opinion, at present LR is not a product that's fit for purpose. In my experience the previous version wasn't much better, I was hoping for a big improvement from this long-awaited update - wrong!. Can't find anywhere to contact Adobe directly about the problem either. Very very frustrated and disappointed.

Win 10 x64. i7 3.50GHz, 32GB DDR3, NVIDIA GTX 1050

[AmbiOkie]

LR Classic is worse.

----

It crashes regularly.

The "Loading" message appears all the time.

In Develop, images take over 7 - 10 seconds to load on scroll.

In Develop, sometimes the images never load.

Sometimes the "Loading" message never goes away.

Crop tool spazzes out.

---

i7-6800K, Win10, 32GB, NVMe SSD....

This is so ridiculous!

[bob frost]

Have you turned off the GPU and Render previews in parallel under Performance? And have you rendered all your standard previews, or are you leaving LR to do that while you try to do other things?

Bob Frost

[NHPhoto4]

I've tried all those, turning off the GPU makes a marginal improvement. I've tried 1:1 and standard previews, none of which make any difference. It seems as though on opening an image in Develop, there has to be a waiting period before you can start work on it. This varies from a couple of seconds to 5 - 10s. One of the most annoying aspects that I'm experiencing is that real time updates are not being made to the image as adjustments are being made, there is a lag of several seconds, so adjusting exposure/highlights/ shadows becomes a guessing game..until the image updates and you realise it's not what you wanted so then you have another guess..No such problems in ACR, it's a real mystery, to me anyway. I might go back to working in Bridge until it's sorted. I also have ON1 RAW installed. No problems with that either. I want LR to be right though.

[AmbiOkie]

One of the most annoying aspects that I'm experiencing is that real time updates are not being made to the image as adjustments are being made, there is a lag of several seconds, so adjusting exposure/highlights/ shadows becomes a guessing game..until the image updates and you realise it's not what you wanted so then you have another guess..

Seconding this. I can't wait 5 - 15 seconds for the damn tool / slider to make its adjustment.

Adobe, this is deeply disappointing.

[AmbiOkie]

I've tried a multitude of things:

GPU: On/Off

Render: Minimal, Standard, 1:1, Embedded

Convert to DNG: Yes/No

Preview Cache: Increased

Do I wait for previews to be rendered? Absolutely, LR is slow enough without trying to work while previews build.

The slow downs are almost always in Develop mode. They're worst after editing a few images and performance doesn't improve until closing LR and actually waiting for LR to die in the task manager, which is another 30 - 60 seconds after being closed.

[JamesAllenUK]

Have you tried removing all your develop presets? I suggested that earlier as it totally returned the speed to Lightroom for me and did in the past. In fact I just reduced the number I had which had the same effect but it's defo worth testing. I'd love to know if it helps anyone else.

[NHPhoto4]

Thanks for your feedback James. I'm not keen on dumping my presets tbh, most of them are paid-for bundles. It doesn't sound like a permanent solution but I'll try it when I get chance just to see if it makes any difference, but tbh, I've tried so many things that I'm not confident it will.

[JamesAllenUK]

I know just what you mean, but this was the one thing that totally sorted out my LR issues a while ago. Before that I'd been having slow downs for years and tried everything - all the cache stuff and much more. The preset thing was the only thing that made a big difference. I'm just not sure if it's my install or will help others but I'm dying to know.

If you could temporarily try moving them out to test that would be really appreciated. I have now cut down to a core set of presets - made my own favourites based on the bundles I picked up over the years, just focusing on the ones I use a lot.

This is not a long term solution though like you say. If it does fix it though I am still totally confused how it could be such an issue unless there is some legacy code that really does block up the UI when there are over a certain number of presets.

[PastaRhymes]

Limiting the amount of presets during import really makes me wonder what kind of presets you guys are using.

All I use is sharpening-scenic and, to be honest, I wouldn't even know what to use besides that without taking a look at the images first.

What kind of presets do you use upon import?

[JamesAllenUK]

I'm not actually talking about import presets here, just the develop presets in general. When I had a certain amount installed LR would be so sluggish in all modes. Had it like that for years. Then finally when I tied reducing the number of presets the speed went up massively! It's mental and I'm still not 100% sure it's not just on my install but it made a big difference on the new version when it started to grind down. Now it's really quick again and has been for days.

[Joe_Mokee]

I've been really disappointed with the 'upgrade' to LR Classic. It is more sluggish and I have another issue where I can't see my images in loupe in the Dev Mod, I just get a black screen. I'll try removing the Dev presets to see if that makes a difference. Thanks

[Joe_Mokee]

Right, I've removed the vast majority of my presets and there is noticeable improvement in performance and I seem to have my Loupe view back in Dev. So far so good. Thanks

[JamesAllenUK]

Wow! That is good to hear - so it's not just me who this works for. I still don't get why this would help after all the revisions over the years but maybe it is just some legacy code that is hard to improve.

Glad it's helped though. It's certainly possible to use a certain number of presets but after a certain point everything just seems to grind down.

[dasman6699]

Doing some research here: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html

Reduce the number of presets

Adding presets to Lightroom (whether created by you or a third-party) can reduce performance because the Develop module generates thumbnails in the Navigator panel for each preset. This is most strongly seen once you have 2,000 or more presets. Reduce the number of presets loaded into Lightroom to only those you use most often to avoid this type of slow down.

[JamesAllenUK]

I think that is where I may have found the presets info originally but I do remember testing it and found that performance goes to hell when there is a lot less than 2000 presets. I did tests and I think I was getting problems even as low as having 400. I'm not sure if there is anything else at play here but it certainly is the biggest improvement of performance I've ever had with LR in years.

[john beardsworth]

A related issue is the type of the presets. Remember that every time you select a file, LR tries to see if its edits match an existing preset. Presets saved by LR itself are usually quite small files, just text files. Others are much bigger files, generated by third-party code, and I have encountered instances where some of those from VCSO greatly degraded LR's performance. Often people collecting large numbers of presets have some of this type.

[JamesAllenUK]

Great insight John! Makes a lot more sense now why it could affect the whole UI in the way that it appears that it does (I didn't think of the code having to check every single image for a matching preset). Same with the different types of presets. That would explain why in my testing it was a lot less than 2000 where my install would slow down. I was using VSCO back when I discovered the issue.

I do hope that the LR team can work on making the preset code more efficient moving forward. They have done a fantastic job on the new version in terms of things like the crop tool (works so quickly now) and when using the adjustment brush etc, so hopefully there are optimisations they can do to the preset routines as well.

[Jao vdL]

AmbiOkie  wrote

Do I wait for previews to be rendered? Absolutely, LR is slow enough without trying to work while previews build.

The slow downs are almost always in Develop mode. They're worst after editing a few images and performance doesn't improve until closing LR and actually waiting for LR to die in the task manager, which is another 30 - 60 seconds after being closed.

It is a major misconception that previews have anything to do with Lightroom speed. In fact if you dive into Develop, rendering previews only hurts performance. The previews are NOT used in Develop and rendering in the background is detrimental. You only need 1:1 previews if your workflow is import 100 images and step through them to select a bunch looking for critical focus and such and only then and only for the few selects going into Develop. If this is not your workflow, do not generate anything but standard previews. It will only hurt. Previews have nothing to do with Develop performance. Just making sure this is clear.

For Lightroom's Develop speed what matters is how fast it can load the raw files and whether there is a cached version of the raw. This is why the camera raw cache matters and why if this is on a slow volume your speed suffers. Lightroom is supposed to store fast load data for your raw files there. Also, if the camera raw cache is poisoned somehow, bad things happen and then clearing the cache will help. Basically cache misses really hurt performance. Also, antivirus tools that scan all disk access have a major impact on speed as do permissions that are set wrong on the cache folders.

Oh and if it is switching to Develop that is slow, there appears to be a correlation with the number of develop presets you have as some have reported.