Lightroom Classic is painfully slow

[Bobozjznagagzm]

Hello my friends
I have Intel 17-14700kf, AMD RX 7800-XT, 64GB DDR5, but Lightroom is so slow, I tried everything but nothing is working, when I try to add a mask it takes about 10sec to get ready, I have the latest windows update + latest lightroom update + driver + etc.
can anyone help me please?

[dj_paige]

Make sure you have the latest driver installed; and make sure it is a studio driver and not a game driver.

[Bobozjznagagzm]

does amd have a thing called studio driver??

[jo sch]

Nope. As i know that's nvidia only. And believe me, it's slow too.
Take a look at the task manager while working with LrC. It doesn't use all the power.
Buy a M-Mac 🙂

AMD 3900X, 12-Core, m2 SSDs, 96GB DDR, RTX4060

[Bobozjznagagzm]

After building my PC I feel regret for not buying a Mac studio, Adobe Apps are not using 5% of the CPU power and I don't know why, I make all the adjustment that could be done but nothing works. 💔

[Jao vdL · Accepted solution]

That's expected. Almost all processing is done on the GPU. If you do an AI mask, it is all GPU for example. Shouldn't be that slow at all on your machine at least for raw files. If you're doing masks on enormous panoramas it can get slow if the image doesn't fit in the GPU memory but that is rare with modern GPUs if you're using straight raw files. If things are slow on your machine, check the performance presets whether it is using full GPU acceleration and check any settings in the GPU driver. Slowness on windows machines is often due to overactive antivirus software by the way that is scanning the catalog every time you touch any develop setting.

[Bobozjznagagzm]

Man, I love you!

I spent the last four months just searching for the cause of the problem. After so many hours of searching, I decided to ask the community as my last resort. You saved me! I turned AVAST off, and everything runs smoothly now. I am truly grateful to you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you so much!

[Jao vdL]

Glad to help! The antivirus thing is very pernicious but somehow it is not well known. It is very commonly the cause of slowness in Lightroom. Usually just excluding the catalog, image library location, and previews from scanning solves it but some antivirus is very aggressive and looks for access patterns using AI techniques. Lightroom very actively accesses your files on disk and it must look a bit like encryption malware.

[melissas74444283]

Do you happen to know any cause of the PAINFUL slowness on a Mac?  Would it also be anitvirus?

[Sean25874736rjup]

The issue has NOTHING to do with a GPU. I too have a very fast PC with a fast graphics card that can be and is used by LrC when it needs to. Yet, as the OP says, sometimes LrC sits there doing almost nothing for the most basic things. Starting a Mask is not the same as the AI selection of the 'thing'. Switching from the main Detail panel to the Mask subpanel can takes many many seconds of doing nothing, then very very slowly building the windows on the screen.

I am 99% sure the issue is NOT the LrC software and it is definitely not the hardware. It is something in Windows 11 and/or the virus/malware software. One or both of these slow some accesses to disk down so badly that anything at all, grinds to a halt.

Oh, I forgot the other contributor - OneDrive. When I went to Windows 10, having OneDrive and iCloud on the same computer virtually froze some disk accesses. I now shut down OneDrive as soon as it starts, but I suspect it - as part of Windows 11 - may be a big contributor to this widespread issue.

[jakobi78]

I have similar issue, the LR is uselless. Some time ego, ca 2 mnd the LR is slower and slower, and today opening take ca 2 min, each picture is loading 5 sec and delete its complitly hang LR. 

I have buy the SSD M2 and moved all pictures from 2024 and 2025 but it did not help. I have reset settings and tried configure in various way and its did not help. 

Windows 11 Pro 24H i5 10400 32GB RAM SSD4 GTX1080Ti 11GB SSD M2 2GB system and 2GB with Lightroom  classic folder. 

I have tried also disable Norton360 and remove folder from scanning and this also did not help. Any Idee what can be done more. Is it only reinstalling LRc left?

[Miabella23548684plqg]

This took care of it for me!

• Exclude Lightroom from Windows Defender Scans:

  • Open Windows Security by searching for it in the Start menu.

  • Go to "Virus & threat protection" > "Manage settings" under "Virus & threat protection settings".

  • Scroll down to "Exclusions" and click on "Add or remove exclusions".

  • Click on "Add an exclusion" and select "Folder". Then, add the folder where Lightroom is installed and the folder where your Lightroom catalog is stored.

• Adjust Controlled Folder Access:

  • In Windows Security, go to "Virus & threat protection" > "Manage ransomware protection".

  • Turn off "Controlled folder access" or add Lightroom as an allowed app by clicking on "Allow an app through Controlled folder access" and adding Lightroom.

• Disable Real-time Protection Temporarily:

  • Sometimes, temporarily disabling real-time protection can help improve performance during intensive tasks. Go to "Virus & threat protection" > "Manage settings" and toggle off "Real-time protection". Remember to turn it back on after you're done.

• Optimize Lightroom Settings:

  • In Lightroom, go to "Edit" > "Preferences" > "Performance".

  • Enable "Use Graphics Processor" if you have a compatible GPU.

  • Increase the Camera Raw Cache to 10GB or more.

  • Enable "Use Smart Previews instead of Originals for image editing".