Lightroom classic export not working or extremely slow

[Danny Stein]

Hi dear community,

I'm using Lightroom classic 13.1 on a windows 11.
My Hardware consists of a GeForce 2060, AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core Processor and 16 GB of ram.
Lightroom is installed on a SSD, and the catalog files are on a SSD as well.

Whenever I try to export CR.3 files, the process bar does not move at all, export settings are at auto, doesn't matter how many images I try to export. It does let me export single images, though, but that's not helpful when dealing with hundreds of raw files.

It is possible to export files, if I tell Lightroom to only use the GPU, but it is painfully slow (I cleaned the apartment, made coffee, made lunch, had a phone call with a friend and still had an hour to wait for it to export 600 JPGs cursing my decision to just buy another preset package, keeping me from changing to other programs).

Additionally, whenever I export anything, Lightroom turns the entire computer into a stasis, I can't do any work, music starts to stutter, programs freeze and I basically have to leave the PC alone for whatever time it'll take for LR to finish.

I tried deleting the Lightroom preferences.agprefs with nothing changing, tried installing it on another local SSD, same result. The graphic card driver is up-to-date.

I tried freshly installing it, a brand-new catalog and changing the export setting, but it doesn't help.
Does anyone have any Idea what the Issue might be?

All the best
Danny

[GoldingD]

Can you share three four  pieces of information.

1. Your Export Screen (incidentally your stated " export settings are at auto" I have no idea where auto comes from, perhaps when you post this it will be clarified.)

2. Your /preferences/performance /   screen

 example deleted now that author has posted, this to save scroll space.

3. And as for where your catalog is located, how much free space in %

 example deleted now that author has posted, this to save scroll space.

63%

4. Where do you keep your photos?

[Danny Stein]

Dear GoldingD,

Thank you for your response. Here are the details:

^ This is the drive where the cataloge is, I tried it at the same drive where Lightroom is installed but it didnt solve the Issue.  I had the Raw files (CR3) also in both drives, changed the location of them to see it if changes anything. But it didn't.

^ This is the drive where lightroom classic is installed, as with the catalog, I tried installing it on the other drive as well, but it didn't change the outcome.

I tried this export prefs as well as the ones below, also tried to increase the cache, but it doesn't seem to make a difference.

Thank you for any ideas and takes on this.

[Danny Stein]

Oh and also, I tried it with a new, empty catalog as well - same issue.

[GoldingD]

Go back into /preferences/performance/

For the use graphics processor section, select Custom again

Then click on that 2nd option"Use GPU for Image Processing"

And then , hopefully the third option will then not be grayed out, and click on that last option "Us GPU for Export"

You may need to restart LrC

What happens?

[Danny Stein]

Thank you for replying!
It does work that way, it doesn't get stuck so far, yet it takes a very, very long time to export.

[Albiemanmike]

Danny,

               I too have just recently noticed this issue. Mine is pretty identical to yours but I have the issue on both a workstation and laptop both are loaded with resources and are available to use those resources. This was never an issue with earlier versions of Lightroom Classic it only seems to be an issue very recently. Yes I did update Lightroom Classic recently. I have tried everything an IT guy which I am can do to get it to perform like it used to but to no avail? Very disappointing as Adobe charges me every month for their "service" but now I don't get much "service" when it comes to exporting?

[Danny Stein]

Hi Allbiemanmike,

yes! And for me, it also started with the more recent updates, Lightroom worked fine before, for some reason.
Did you find any solutions so far?

[Danny Stein]

I have an Update, so the issue does seem to appear for me at least, when I downsize the images "limit size" within the export pannel, if I export without limiting the file size, it does relatively fine. @Albiemanmike is that the case for you as well?

Aside from that, it does seem that lightroom is putting a lot of pressure on my hardware when exporting, but not on my GPU, that might be normal?

[Albiemanmike]

@Danny SteinI have not tried this but will give it a shot today in the interest of getting to the bottom of this. My exports I usually do not want to downsize the images but I will try it and report back here.

[GoldingD]

From your screenshots, I am wondering about this one

Is the NVIDIA RTX 2060 with 6 GB that old that it cannot support full acceleration, and is it not supporting export

Following are samples from my rig. Perhaps you can attempt to change the Use Graphics Processor setting from Auto, to Custom, and see if you can accomplish the following selections.

 As shown above, change to Custom. Very likely the USe GPU for display will already be checked. Highly likely the Use GPU for image processing, and the Use GPU for Export, will not be checked (yet), And the latter will be grayed out. Note that you will not be able to directly click on the last option USe GPU for Export just yet.

As shown in the above, check Use GPU for image processing

And, crossing fingers, click on that last one, Use GPU for Export.

I do not remember, if after clicking Ok, if you will need to restart LrC.

And I do not know, if after accomplishing the above, if reverting to Auto, would then behave better (if one wants to bother)

P.S. their is a method involving deleting a file or two to force LrC to reconsider the GPU at startup. I do not have a link for you at this time. Perhaps another member has that????

[Danny Stein]

Thank you very much @GoldingD  for your effort.
Exporting the files with the GPU is working better than the auto settings, It's less likely to get stuck but still very slow.

I noticed something yesterdays and that was, that the export is being heavily slowed down, if I downsize the images while exporting. If I don't select to resize, the time it takes is actually bearable.

Any idea how that might play into it?

Thank you

[Danny Stein · Accepted solution]

Little Update, I've installed more DDR RAM in my machine and from 16 to 32, it should also be a more powerful RAM than the old one.

The way I've figured the issue, was by opening up the task manager during the extremely slow export and check the performance tap, my RAM was almost always up at 98/99 Percent usage - with the double amount now it mostly stays under 70 Percent.

In any case, that was the solution for my issue and I hope it'll help someone in the future.