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Lightroom Classic on M1 MacBook Air is glacial

Community Beginner ,
Nov 23, 2020 Nov 23, 2020

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Hi all,

 

I've used Lightroom for a long time, and importing thousands of files used to take maybe a few minutes at the most (on an old 2013 MacBook Pro).

 

I just got a new 2020 M1 MacBook Air (1 TB/16 GB RAM), loaded up Lightroom Classic 10, and tried to import 26000 files from a local folder. It took well over 30 hours. I ran a similar test, importing 500 files - it took over a half hour. I'm talking about simple jpegs from an iPhone. Default settings in the catalog and Lightroom.

 

I even rebooted the MBA in Safe Mode to make sure the system was as clean as possible (it's brand new, so there's almost nothing on it anyway). Still, glacial performance. Everything else on this machine is absolutely blazing fast, both network and CPU. Lightroom is clearly broken.

 

I've seen similar posts with no solid solutions. Is there any hope or is this the end of Lightroom for me?

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Community Beginner , Jun 08, 2021 Jun 08, 2021

Hi everybody, seven months after my original post, the native version of LrC has been released, and I'm very happy to report that verion 10.3 has fixed my issues with M1-based machines.

 

I've run a few basic tests, and here are the current results:

Importing 20 iPhone JPEGs:

Version 10.2: 150 seconds

Version 10.3: 2 seconds

 

Importing 29500 iPhone JPEGS:

Version 10.0: about 30 hours

Version 10.3: 13 minutes

 

Generating initial previews is taking much longer than the original basic input, but it's not ho

...

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LEGEND ,
Nov 23, 2020 Nov 23, 2020

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M1 not yet supported at Adobe.

 

May or may not be supported, some confusion on that

 

see: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/macos-big-sur-compatibility.html

 

Not a M1 owner, not a Big Sur user, in the link, Rosetta 2 emulation is mentioned.

 

hmm, also see:

 

https://www.engadget.com/rosetta-2-will-keep-old-intel-apps-running-on-apples-new-silicon-182442712....

 

 

 

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Community Beginner ,
Nov 23, 2020 Nov 23, 2020

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I checked the compatibility (from that first link) before installing, and saw:

 

> There are no known issues specific to running Lightoom Classic 10.x under Rosetta 2 emulation mode on Apple devices with M1 processors running macOS BigSur (version 11).

 

Didn't seem confusing... just wrong 🙂

Unless of course the problems really aren't specific to M1 processors and Big Sur.

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LEGEND ,
Nov 23, 2020 Nov 23, 2020

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Are you runnung Rosetta 2 emulation?

 

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Community Beginner ,
Nov 23, 2020 Nov 23, 2020

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Yes - that's the only way it can run.

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Contributor ,
Nov 23, 2020 Nov 23, 2020

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i have your same machine, just installed LR classic and downloaded everything from my LR cloud....it hard for me to tell how fast slow it is, compared to LR (cloud), classic seems a lot slower but then it always has felt sluggish (which is why i have used LR )....i would not say LRclassic runs slow though...i work with hasselblad raw files and the lag i see on my external monitor should be taken care of by software optimisation....

adobe says lightroom will come in 2020, does that mean LR or LRclassic? 

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Community Expert ,
Jan 21, 2021 Jan 21, 2021

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pschefz wrote:

“adobe says lightroom will come in 2020, does that mean LR or LRclassic?”

 

The Apple Silicon native version of Lightroom Classic is coming some time in 2021, according to their help article:

Apple Silicon compatibility

 

Lightroom (not Classic) is already Apple Silicon native right now.

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LEGEND ,
Nov 23, 2020 Nov 23, 2020

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Deleted, my bad

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 09, 2020 Dec 09, 2020

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Just to follow-up for anyone who's ended up here...

I've contacted Adobe Support multiple times, and no suggestions have helped.

I especially loved their suggestion, "Install Rosetta 2 and contact Apple".

I installed LrC 9.0 and tried that too. It still took nearly 10 seconds per image to import.

 

I did one last test, importing 100 iPhone photos (3MB jpegs):

Lightroom 10.0 on 2020 M1 MacBook Air: 17 minutes

Lightroom CC (2016) running on 2013 MacBook Pro: 31 seconds

 

So... I'm giving up until Adobe releases an Apple Silicon version of LrC. Hope it's better!

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New Here ,
Jan 04, 2021 Jan 04, 2021

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Same problem here.  Seems to use all system memory:

Lightroom Classic version: 10.1 [ 202012012023-e92d50bb ]
License: Creative Cloud
Language setting: en-US
Operating system: Mac OS 10
Version: 10.16.0 [20C69]
Application architecture: x64
Logical processor count: 8
Processor speed: 2.4 GHz
SqLite Version: 3.30.1
Built-in memory: 16,384.0 MB
Real memory available to Lightroom: 16,384.0 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 17,592.7 MB (107.3%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 15,376.2 MB
Memory cache size: 1,127.8MB
Internal Camera Raw version: 13.1 [ 658 ]
Maximum thread count used by Camera Raw: 5
Camera Raw SIMD optimization: SSE2
Camera Raw virtual memory: 209MB / 8191MB (2%)
Camera Raw real memory: 211MB / 16384MB (1%)
Displays: 1) 5120x2880

Graphics Processor Info:
Metal: Apple M1

 

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LEGEND ,
Jan 04, 2021 Jan 04, 2021

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Community Beginner ,
Jan 21, 2021 Jan 21, 2021

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Same issue here.

Its taking me about a minute to import 1 photo on my brand new M1 mac mini.  Tried restarting the mac, updating everything... still not working properly.  Its horrible so far.  How am i supposed to work?

How come some users are having this issues while others are not?

 

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Community Beginner ,
Jan 21, 2021 Jan 21, 2021

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Interesting to hear that it's on the Mac mini as well. I've tested every update with the same results: import is just too painful to use. It only uses about 1 GB out of 16 GB of RAM during import too.

But you're right, the real question is why only some users have this issue. If Adobe actually cared about fixing this they'd probably be asking usesrs to sample the app in the Activity Monitor to find out what threads are doing what. Instead I've just gotten the brush off.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 21, 2021 Jan 21, 2021

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This forum is primarily intended for customer to customer support and is very rarely visited by Adobe QE or Dev team members. If you have something you want to comminicate with Adobe, then best submit your issue at https://feedback.photoshop.com/topics/lightroom-desktop-cloudbased/5f5f2093785c1f1e6cc40874 , which is the forum Adobe personnel monitor.

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New Here ,
Jan 21, 2021 Jan 21, 2021

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I'm having the same issue as well. I'm running on the the 2020 MBP M1 8GB RAM. At some point, the LR Classic 10.1.1 takes forever to open and many times it doesn't respond at all. This is very disappointing. Hopefully, Adobe addresses this issue soon. 

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Community Expert ,
Jan 21, 2021 Jan 21, 2021

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Adobe has not provided a timeframe for shipping an M1 native version of Lr Classic. So, 'soon' is a tad optimistic.

 

Regarding your issues - see https://www.reddit.com/r/Lightroom/comments/kc1b7s/lightroom_classic_on_2020_m1_macbook_pro_with_8gb... as some of the suggestions may be more benificial (I'm stretching the definition somewhat) than here

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New Here ,
Feb 24, 2021 Feb 24, 2021

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I've been having a similar experience with my new Macbook Air M1 8gb. Chose this after seeing comparisons with 16Gb model showing neglible  performance improvements.

Another thread mentioned their 4K monitor being the issue. I changed the optimisation setting to "Built-in Retina Display" instead of the monitor itself and this does seem to have made a general improvement overall across web browsing and LR. There is much faster performance while editing in LR but it's not without the occasional lag. To be honest not the mind-blowing performance that the numerous reviews I watched promised. 

I still need to test the speed of the external HDD I'm using being partially to blame.

As an aside...suddenly on the new Macbook Air (coming from a 2015 Macbook Pro) I get images not importing properly (LR has a problem reading this image) and need to re-import. Also the import process often stalls before completing and I have to re-start it?


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Community Beginner ,
Mar 30, 2021 Mar 30, 2021

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I just bought a brand new Mac Mini 16GB with 2 TB Disks, because I wanted to experience a fast and enjoyable experience.

But the same here . . . Lightroom Classic 10.1.1 is soo slow, to import it takes decades and there are not even showing any previews. This is unusable. I tried the newest version 10.2 and this don't even start, it just states cannot load your catalog, cause a unknoen error. Even I'm not able to start LRC 10.2 with a new catalog, just states unknown error with the catalog.

I just did some comapision with my 8 year old Windows box. 

To import 50 iPhone JPEG it takes 30 seconds und my brand new Mac Mini it takes 10 minutes and did i mention, there are no previews visible. And I just reads the files into lightroom, the JPG sits already on the internal very fast SSD drive.

I just hope, the Silocon release of Lightroom Classic will be soon and solves my problem. Or do I really have to go back and buy a new Windows box?

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Guide ,
Mar 30, 2021 Mar 30, 2021

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comments deleted...

Ken Seals - Nikon Z 9, Z 8, 14mm-800mm. Computer Win 11 Pro, I7-8700K, 64GB, RTX3070TI. Travel machine: 2021 MacBook Pro M1 MAX 64GB. All Adobe apps.

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 07, 2021 Apr 07, 2021

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Same, I have about 8000 photos in a folder and when I try to add them to a new catalog it just becomes unresponsive and eventually I have to just force quit. Classic is definietly not compatible with large folders at this point for M1 devices. 

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New Here ,
Apr 07, 2021 Apr 07, 2021

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I'm running Lightroom Classic on my 2020 MacBook Air (8Gb).  Absolutely fine.  I do astrophotography  that involves quite a lot of importing, aligning, stacking and enhancing a few hundred photos at a time (140 Mb Tiff files).  Switching between LR and Photoshop also fine.  Very snappy performance. I'm happy.

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New Here ,
Apr 07, 2021 Apr 07, 2021

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Just to clarify my earlier post, my MacBook Air is running the M1 chip. Photoshop is native & Lightroom Classic is running under Rosetta.  All good.

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New Here ,
Apr 14, 2021 Apr 14, 2021

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I have a Mac Mini M1 with 8GB RAM. I updated to Lightroom Classic coming from LR 5.7 as the import was really slow on the Mac Mini. Also browsing through the library in loupe view was terrible. It take up t0 10s until the picture was loaded in final resolution (1:1). With upgrading to the latest LR version the problems stay the same. Tried to optimize the settings with the help of the support, but without any improvements. My last option is a LR version optimnized for the M1. 

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Adobe Employee ,
Apr 21, 2021 Apr 21, 2021

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Hi All,

Adobe is committed to ensuring Lightroom Classic is available on all major platforms and surfaces, including running natively on Apple devices with M1 processors. However, as of now there is no official timeline set for the native M1 support. In the meantime, you can run Lightroom Classic under the Rosetta 2 Emulation mode on macOS. Please check the steps to enable the emulation mode here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211861

To know more about the Lightroom Apple Silicon compatibility please head over to this helpful article: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/macos-big-sur-compatibility.html

Hope this info helps.
Regards,
Sahil

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 21, 2021 Apr 21, 2021

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Yeah this is a correct answer . . . we all know that . . . thanks anyways.

We are talking about the performance on M1 system, we know about rosetta2, that's how we work with Lightroom Classic at all. But it's slow and buggy.

Thanks

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