Lightroom Classic Performance Issues

[Browneye1967]

Is there an Upper Limit to how many photos the Lightroom catalogue can handle?

I am having terrible performance issues. I can take a lot of photos in a day. 5000 plus. Lightroom just has a horrible time handling that many photos. You can't scroll in Library mode, it jerks and jumps around. Adding keywords is so slow.

I have watched just about every video and visited every page looking to optimise performance and I just get any work done without LRc slowing down and acting like something is wrong.

I've tested hardware, loaded all of the latest drivers, nothing improves the situation. 

For example in Library mode, you try to scroll, the thumbnails distort and it takes thirty seconds for the screen to redraw. But even then, all of the infromation above the thumbnail isn't showing e.g. filename.

Thumbnails are SO slow to load. Ive tried creating differnt previews 1:1, smart, nothing works.

The catalogue is sitting on an internal NVME drive which I have tested and it gets great results for read an write. The actual photos are on an external NAS drive. I edit 4K video from the NAS which has a 10Gb/s connection to the PC, I doubt it's a slow NAS.

Do I uninstall and reinstall?? I've tried shifting pictures between catalogues to see if that speeds it all up, no it doesn't.

I'm at my wits end!!

 PC Info attached

{Moved from Lightroom Cloud to Lightroom Classic Forum by Moderator} 

[D Fosse]

There is no limit to how many photos in a catalog. I have one work catalog with about 100K photos, and a private catalog with about 25K. They are both instant and immediately responsive.

Try a test catalog with photos on the internal NVMe.

NAS storage comes up as problematic very often. Everything from slow performance, to missing files, to unrecoverable corruption. It should work, it just doesn't sometimes. Network configuration can be a moving target.

We can obviously rule out an underpowered GPU here - but is this by any chance a laptop with dual GPUs? In that case try to disable the integrated GPU.

[dj_paige]

Definitely not the number of images in the catalog, there is no limit and it has no impact on speed (exception: backups will be slower when you have larger catalog).

Try making sure you have the most recent studio driver for your GPU (not a gamed driver). Make sure your anti-virus is not set to check the folder where the thumbails are stored.

[GoldingD]

Library Path: C:\Users\grouc\OneDrive\Pictures\Lightroom\Aircraft\Aircraft.lrcat

I could be wrong, but my understanding is that the presence of the word "OneDrive" in that path indicates that you are automatically syncing to your OneDrive Cloud share. This can slow things down, and if your OneDrive is having issues, it can bring LrC down to it's knees.

Advise not syncing to OneDrive, this is often a result of using a MS account when setting up a Windows 11 PC as Microsoft gets pushy in the setup script (it can be gotten around). That being said, post Windows 11 setup, you can either just turn that sync off, or setup a local account without the forced OneDrive. (yes. I hate OneDrive)

• Choose which OneDrive folders to sync to your computer
• How to stop lightroom catalogue syncing with your onedrive? | LrC Community
• How to remove onedrive from my lightroom catalog location found in Catalog Settings | LrC Community
• Lightroom and onedrive. | LrC Community

[Sean McCormack]

Good catch @GoldingD.. I'd agree. 700K images and my catalog is far more responsive that back in earlier versions. They've done a lot of work making it feel and respond faster. 

[Jao vdL]

Ow! Yeah that is a really good catch. One should never put the Lightroom Classic catalog on a OneDrive (or really any of the syncing services) synced location. This is asking for trouble.

[Browneye1967]

Great catch, thanks for that. I have no earthly idea how it got to that location. F#&k MS.

I will relocate to a more freindly place and let you know how it went.

[Browneye1967]

So moving the catalogue to a more friendly location has improved the speed a bit, however there are some differences between catalogues.

I did a job this monring where I took about 1900 pictures and imported it into the default catalogue and it works like it should, snappy and fast.

Back to the Aircraft catalogue that I moved and repointed LRc to, it still is slow loading thumbnails, and sometimes when putting keywords in while typing it can be five seconds per letter.

Same camera was used both times (Nikon Z9)

Ive tried optimising the catalogue and it's still the same.

Why can one catalogue be snappy, while the other is like a snail?

[D Fosse]

Are both catalogs now in the same location on disk, next to each other? - not that they need to be, just to take that out of the equation.

It sounds like there may be corruption in the catalog, not so bad that it doesn't open, just enough to throw a wrench in the machine.

One standard toubleshooting step is to delete the previews and let them rebuild. There could be corruption there. You can also try to export part of the bad catalog to a new catalog and see how that behaves.

[Browneye1967]

Yes, bar from one sub directory. Original is in C:\Lightroom, troublesome one is in C:\Lightroom\Aircraft.

The Aircraft entries were migrated from the default catalogue.

I did do a delete previews and rebuilt some Smart ones. T

[GoldingD]

Please, in the catalog that you are having issues in, verify the library path. In LrC click on Help, thenSystem Info, hand copy the library path, and paste that into a reply. 

[Browneye1967]

Application folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Lightroom Classic
Library Path: C:\Lightroom\Aircraft\Aircraft.lrcat
Settings Folder: C:\Users\grouc\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom

[GoldingD]

Ah, also in that problematic catalog, double check that absolutly nothing is syncing, no Address Lookup, no Face detection, no sync to cloud.

[Browneye1967]

Everything syncing is turned off.

[Lumigraphics]

My working catalog (with EVERYTHING stored on spinny USB 3 hard drives) has 350,000 images and performance is decent. The biggest slowdown is waiting for previews to be built when I go into a folder I haven't looked at recently.

And yes I know SSD storage, Thunderbolt 4, blah blah. One of the days I'll have a top-end Mac Studio and a big Thunderbolt SSD RAID box.

[Browneye1967]

Another thing I have noticed with this catalogue when I open it the directories on the left hand side are dulled out (see screenshot).

These drives are attached and are working okay within Windows explorer just not lightroom

I can make the drives appear by opening a 'Sychronize Folder' dialogue, but actually doing it.

The other thing I noticed is that it does not remember where I left off while using the library to go through the pics in a folder. It comes back about two or three sessions previous.

Me thinks this catalogue is borked. 

[Sean McCormack · Accepted solution]

Go to the Catalog Panel and click on All Photographs. Next go to File>Export as Catalog. Leave Export Selected photos only OFF to have all photos selected and Export negative files off as you'll be referencing the original files in the new catalog. I'd leave out the Smart Previews for now and include the available previews. 

You'll lose any Published collections, but everything will be written out fresh so should work correctly. 

[Browneye1967]

Thank You Sean, I did this and the speed issues are now cleared up. The export said that it couldn't export some of the previews, so that might have been part of the problem. Anyway, the directory struture is now statusing correctly and the previews are loading quickly.

There must have been some deep corruption in that other catalogue.

[hao_atlarge]

Hi Browneye, after over one year, is the new catalog keep working smoothly? Or over time there need to be another new catalog...

[hao_atlarge]

This is a very valuable solution!

One thing I concern:

When I have the new catalog and turn cloud sync on and never open the old catalog, will the cloud sync has to be rebuilt? Will the photos on the cloud (smart previews and originals) be deleted or will them be downloaded? Ideally, only sync data is resynced, while local and cloud photos automatically re-linked. Is this the case?

[GoldingD]

Looking at that screenshot. Are your photos stored on one or more NAS?

Or perhaps, they used to be?

[Browneye1967]

One NAS, two different volumes. Both mounted and mapped to drive letters through Windows.

[Jao36452296e0r1]

Using smb file sharing protocol I assume? The greyed out folder names typically indicate that there was an interruption in the network connection to the NAS. 

[Browneye1967]

Yes SMB, the drive shares are working in windows explorer and other programs, just not in LRc. The funny thing is I can click on the greyed out folders and the pictures load, I don't get a 'File Not Found' error.  As I said earlier I can get the greyed out folders to show properly by doing a 'Synchronize Folder'. When the Synchronize dialogue apperas the directories are no longer greyed out.