Lightroom Classic on M1 MacBook Air is glacial

[Pixbug]

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?

[tukane]

Thank you TravelMichi! That's the point. Apple announced the M1 last summer and Adobe was not able to provide us a version of Lightroom Classic that is working with adequate speed yet. So when in 2021 will Adobe release a version of Lightroom Classic, that supports M1? 

Thanks

[jayman2107]

Seriously, this is getting ridiculous.

Both Apple and Adobe fingerpointing at each other like in old Windows times, won't help any user. 

Instead try to understand your paying customers, otherwise our trust is gone - and as corporate history shows, at some point every company will get through somewhat crisis that will ask for customers' trust.

To me this looks like the typical Apple move: "Let's move first. Now let's see how our ecosystem evolves. Delivery is disappointing. Let's build our own." So.. maybe not this year, but in the coming years Adobe will destroy itself, just like Intel is about to.

[Conrad_C]

The situation does not seem to be as extreme and polarized as that, not if you look at the big picture. Sure, we need an Apple Silicon native Lightroom Classic now, since it’s been months since those Macs were released. But if it’s time to switch to something else, which Apple Silicon-native software would you switch to? Looking into which alternatives are M1-ready, here is the situation as of today, for raw editors that have at least some DAM capability:

RAW Power: Apple-Silicon native now

Adobe Lightroom: Apple-Silicon native now

Adobe Lightroom Classic: Announced but not available yet.

Phase One CaptureOne: Announced but not available yet.

Skylum Luminar: Announced but not available yet.

On1 Raw: Announced but not available yet.

Darktable (free, open source): No announcement

So Adobe is already one of two companies that has Apple Silicon-native software, with Lightroom. They have promised Lightroom Classic, just haven’t finished it yet. The only Apple Silicon-native alternative is RAW Power, but it is not nearly as capable as Lightroom Classic. For some reason, all the other major Lightroom Classic alternatives are also not yet Apple Silicon-native at this time.

If you don’t need any DAM features and just want a raw processor, then:

Adobe Photoshop: Apple-Silicon native now

Affinity Photo: Apple-Silicon native now

Adobe currently has public betas available for Apple Silicon-native versions of Illustrator, InDesign, and three of their digital video/audio applications, so they are hardly sitting around doing nothing.

Adobe in general isn’t finger-pointing at Apple, because they’re already providing Apple Silicon-native Photoshop and Lightroom along with all of those public betas. The delay is specifically with Lightroom Classic, and mysteriously, also with almost all of the direct competitors to Lightroom Classic.

[Aram0101]

I just don't understand why a WIDLEY used program such as adobe lightroom classic still has NO fix to this issue. 

About to jump ship to a different editing program.  

[Conrad_C]

---

@Aram0101 wrote:

About to jump ship to a different editing program.  

---

Out of curiosity, which different editing program will you jump to? I’m asking because as I noted earlier, for some reason the major competitors to Lightroom Classic also do not have an Apple Silicon native version yet. But maybe there’s one I don’t know about.

[ferrocinque]

Well, I am using both LRC and Capture One, on a MacBook Intel and on a Mac Mini M1.

While C1 is running at least as fast on the M1 as on the Intel, LRC is totally unusable on the M1. I can't imagine how faster it will be on my Mac Mini when they will release the native version.

Capture One is definitely an option!  

[Aram0101]

I havn't decided which program yet, but i will look into Capture One...

I hope Adobe gets their act together... this is taking way too long.  

[Calshotlight]

I am in the market for a replacement iMac. When the Mac Mini came out I thought that would do fine. However because 

Lightroom clasic was not fully compatable, but support was pronised I decided to wait, still waiting.

Now we have the release of the new iMac and I am still waiting. Looks like my wait will be extended  a bit longer because the delivery of new iMacs is now mid June.

Seriosly thinking of putting all my photos into Apple Photo and use Affinity Photo and dump Lightroom costing me 

£10.00 month to be stuck on 9.4 Think I am going to have to delay until the autumn now.

Rob

[brudy918]

I bought the M1 Mac mini and use Lightroom Classic a lot. It runs fine in emulation. Not great mind you, and not as fast it should be, but at least in how I use it, it's been basically problem free. You'll be ok with the new iMac. But I REALLY wish Adobe would get on this.

[wrenschl94538586]

Hi

I had very slow times for LRC moving between photos in develop mode.

I turned OFF graphic card accelaration in the lightroom preferences and thing definitely improved on my base mode M1 air. 

also resuced memory pressure showing up in actvitiy monitor.

Hope it helps for you

[lindat28052073]

Hello - with the latest Apple updates, my Print module consistently fails. It will print ONE picture (I use "print to file" as I like a nice border on my images, so have to use the print module for that) and then I try to do another and it freezes. I have to force quit Lightoom as the entire program is stuck. I am using an older version of Lightroom (5) as I really do not like the layout of the online version and I can't seem to use or make my own presets so it creates more work for me than necessary, which is why I go back to the old one.

Will this ever be fixed? The struggle is real!! seriously though..... 

[Pixbug · Accepted solution]

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 holding up any work since you can just click on a an image and it generates the preview right away. The UI is very snappy.

This is exactly the performance I was expecting. (Also, the machine, a MacBook air is slient and barely warm after all that.)

Thank you Adobe, and I hope this version helps everybody out.

[Calshotlight]

Horray   

Now I will go Apple Store and talk M1 iMac 24"  

[TravelMichi]

YAY . . . I just installed it and it's awesome . . . it works much much much ..... much faster than before.

I don't have to import photos right now, but it seems to be awesome fast to check in folders with more then 1000 photos which are already imported and which are new needed Minutes and now BOOM (under a second) and it states which are new.

I'm looking forward to work with it . . . finaly it's done . . . thanks Adobe, but more a 7 month waiting was very very long. I had to work on my old windows box, cuase it was driving me over the edge untli today . . . 

Hope it will that fast in all my workflow steps . .  I will report later, after really working with it.

[techguru74]

Import and working in Develop mode does appear to be much quicker however I'm noticing that Exporting photos to JPEG is taking longer than the original Intel-based LR Classic. Anyone have a similar experience?

[Kirsty5C74]

Hi all,

I am having issues in LrC Develop mode. My MB Air is only a few weeks old, so not enough time to clog the HD. It's running EXTREMLY slowly, worse than my 2009 iMac.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Kirsty

[Ian Lyons]

It's a tad difficult to provide asssistance when you've provided no details on you MacBook Air or the version of LrC you've installed.

Can you confirm:

1. that you've installed LrC 10.3, which is M1 native

2. the amount of ram installed (8GB or 16GB)

3. the size of SSD (256GB, 512GB, 1TB, etc)

4. Number of images in your catalog

[Kirsty5C74]

Whoops

MB Air M1

8gb

256SSD

LrC 10.3

Catalogues have less than 100 images in them 

I did some more reading after I posted this realising that I have a bottome end MB Air (not my choice, provided machine) and that is does not have ideal conditions for processing, but it's still incredibly slow. I've increased the LR cache and it seems to have helped a little. 

Any further ideas would be great as I have only just started this job and this is the machine I have been provided.

Thanks

Kirsty

[GoldingD]

See  (ref 1) obviously many of the  tips listed cannot be accomplished on the computer in hand.

Some that you can use. (not a complete listing)

A listing of some to try

High-resolution displays

On a MAC, you cannot reduce the resolution, Oh you can play with scaling, but that will not help. But you can reduce the LrC display on your screen. And you can work with different view sizes (1:2, 1:3) This is about reducing the number of pixels LrC creates each time a develop module edit is touched, and the issue gets compounded with each and every edit.

Keep standard-size previews as small as possible

Do not select to make standard previews larger than the display defaults, perhaps even go lower

Leave autowrite XMP turned off

Unless you need to share the LrC edits with someone, you really do not need this

Optimize the catalog

It is a database, it gets beat up, optimize cleans things up.

Increase the Camera Raw cache size

As you have noted.

Spot Removal tool, local corrections, and History panel

read that one. Issue is these mods are intensive, even though you just see the one line in the history, many mods requiring a rewright of pixels are involved. Also, try to leave these mods to last, also consider doing these nods via Edit in Photoshop.

Order of Develop operations

Mentioned in part above, but mote on that, read it.

Avoid corrections that you don't need

Requires experience, requires time in product. One thing you could do, say you made lots of edits, many you changed your mind on and redid. You could just reset all that, start again, without those false leads. One thing to restate, each time you do an edit, LrC its way thru that history, all the previous edits, recreates the pixels, moves to the next, and next, ubtill it gets to the last edit, recreates the pixels again, so slower and slower,. This is because LrC is a parametric editor.

__________________________________

An additional reference, mostly the same but with a somewhat different look,  (ref 2) talks about the Camera RAW CACHE better, and brings up a quirk (not so sure if still viable) about a setting in PS that can effect LrC."Optimize RAM settings in Photoshop"

_______________________

And, (ref 3) a bit dated. Using Smart Previews, and Converting to DNG

(ref 1) Adobe | Optimize performance

(ref 2) Peta Pixel | How to Optimize Lightroom Classic for the Best Performance

(ref 3)10 Ways to Speed Up Adobe Lightroom CC HOW TO USE LIGHTROOM FASTER 

[Ian Lyons]

The specs for your machine are really at the lower end of LrC system requirements. However, the fact that you've been issued with it means that you can't complain too loudly.

David has already suggested some things that might help, but in truth they're tinkering at the edge, and I mean the edge. That being said, all is not lost.

A few years back Adobe added a feature that allows customers to use proxy files (Adobe calls them Smart Previews) in lieu of the full size file. The proxy or Smart Previews has limited pixel dimensions (2560 pixels on longest side), but being smaller and lower resolution means that the processing and ram overhead is much easier for lower powered machines to handle, even with the most taxing adjustments tools in Develop module.

Smart Previews can be activated in the Performance tab of the LrC Preferences (see below screenshot). After activating this preference, you should select a folder in Library containing a few dozen images, then choose 'Build Smart Previews' from the Library > Previews sub menu. Next select one of the images from the same folder and switch to the Develop module and see how the computer now performs. It should be much better than you've experienced up to now. Try a few more images to confirm your initial observations. If you find using Smart Previews helps, then that will at least allow you to work with the computer until you can convince your employer that something faster would benefit both them and yourself. 

Note that since Smart Previews are lower resolution 8-bit images they can be prone to banding when heavy edits (particularily colour) are applied.  However, when you zoom into 100%, LrC will switch to the full sized and resolution images. So, sharpening and noise reduction can be applied at optimal image size.

[Kirsty5C74]

Amazing @GoldingD  and @Ian Lyons this is really helpful. 
I was a professional photog' back in the day, but it's been a while since I was dedicated to working with it, so my preferences and workflow knowledge is a little rusty. In that, I never expected to be doing photography in my current role, so thankful that they even let me have a license. Will have to make do with the hardware!

Thanks again

Kirsty

[GoldingD]

Oh, and do not forget,that blasted Face Recognition and to a less extant Address Look Up. PAUSE, if on, it absolutely slows everything down.