Participating Frequently

Question

Lightroom Classic running very slow and retains memory after closing down for over 15 minutes

Forum|Forum|7 months ago
July 30, 2025
5 replies
1706 views

I am running Lightroom Classic version 14.4 (build 202506051112-5918896a) on Windows 10. My catalogue is a little over 3.3 Gbytes with about 253,000 images.

I have imported about 5000 photos (mostly DNG files from a Mavic 3 Pro drone plus a handful or CR3 files from a Canon R5). I am now trying to stitch some of the drone shots together using merge->HDR panorama, automatically putting the result and the input images in a stack. After a few minutes, Lightroom Classic starts to slow down. Eventually, even simple things like displaying a menu option can take over a minute.

When I close Lightroom Classic down after it is in this state, the app appears to close correctly but it is still running in the background and it has grabbed a large amount of RAM (128 Gbytes+). Note, I do not select the option to create a backup. Over the next 15 or so minutes, it gradually releases the memory. Until it has released it all, I cannot run Lightroom Classic again. If I do not close Lightroom Classic down, it does not release this memory. The maximum it seems to use is about 128 Gbytes out of a maximum of 256 Gbytes.

A Windows reboot resolves the problem for a short time (a few minutes) but it comes back again.

When the problem occurs, disc activity is zero and CPU activity is low (under 5%) (in fact I can't get Lightroom to use more than about 30% of the CPU available at any time).

The catalgue is on one internal SSD drive, the images on a second internal SSD drive and the cache on a third internal SSD drive. None of these are the windows system drive. All discs have a suitable amount of free space. No other applications are running at the time.

I have been using Lightroom for many years now and it has gradually got slower and slower.

This is unworkable for me.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

I have attached a document which show the increasing memory usage (with screen grabs) and how it is slowly released after closing Lightroom Classic down).

Paul_Gath_Lightroom_Classic_slow_and_memory_grab.docx

Windows

A

avalent

Known Participant

I can confirm this. It will sit in my Task Manager eating up as much as 15GB RAM depending on what I was doing.

Though I'm arriving here to vent about the fact it just crapped out on me in the middle of cropping a photo (?) with CPU 100% usage, and wiped clean all the denoised images along with the edits.

This squarely makes the 'new and improved' denoise workflow unstable and unusable. What a time saver!

It's clear that we're yet again seeing a broken update which is par for course for Adobe - understandable because they're such a small startup company and this is only the beta.. oh wait, it's an industry giant with decades of experience. Nevermind.

Anyways, as always, be a good monkey and do the roll back - uninstall - hop hop dance and spend time and nerves trying to troubleshoot this as if you're paid for it 🙂

M

MrSammyD

Participant

I have the same issue on Windows 10. I have to use Windows task manager to kill LR after closing because it never releases memory and LR can not be restarted unless the program is killed. It has nothing to do with imports or edits... just start and close... fast workstation, plenty of disk space, SSD, memory hog, zero CPU, zero Disk activity.

johnrellis

Legend

@MrSammyD, have you updated to LR 14.5.1, released a couple days ago? It has a bug fix for this.

P

paulg6227407Author

Participating Frequently

Hi, sorry for taking so long to reply, but I've been in the highlands of Iceland for a week (although the attrocious weather didn't help!), so I have only just downloaded and started to use LR 14.5.1.

I'm very pleased to say that this has two significant improvements for me. First, the speed at which it creates HDR panoramas is so much improved. Anecdotally (because I haven't taken any timing measurements), I would suggets it is 2 or 3 times faster. This is a BIG IMPROVEMENT.

Seccond, the memory management also seems to be much better - yes, doing multiple HDR panos does start to increase the used memory, but the increases stop on my system at about 30% (63 GBytes) of use. The memory is not released back to the operating system while you continue to edit, but adding more HDR panos does not seem to result in LR grabbing more RAM, it just re-uses what it has already claimed. This means I no longer have to restart LR every 10 minutes or so.

This is a HUGE improvement for me.

The only thing I haven't tested yet is how long it takes LR to release its memory when it is closed down. So far, I have not had to close it down. I will update this thread once I end this editing session.

Thank you SO MUCH Adobe for improving this.

Rikk Flohr_Photography

I've sent you a direct message via this forum with additional information. Please review.

Thank you!

Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org

G

George-LRC

Participating Frequently

where can I find this message you sent to me?

Rikk Flohr_Photography

It will be in your private messages (envelope in the upper right of the forum):
https://community.adobe.com/t5/notes/privatenotespage

Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org

G

George-LRC

Participating Frequently

- Run "Disk Cleanup" & check every tab

- Run "Disk Cleanup" & click on "Clean up system files" and check every tab - may take a long while depends on amount of junk files buildup throughout years

- Reboot the system

- Perform "Disk Cleanup" after encounter the same issue by closing the LrC first and wait for a minute

I perform "Disk Cleanup" every time I shout down/reboot the system daily. If you never shout down your computer but only using hibernation to wake up the PC it will be equivalent of a human never has a full overnight sleep but only takes catnaps every day! It's got a very tired brain with a lot of junk in it's RAM since last reboot!

P

paulg6227407Author

Participating Frequently

Hi George-LRC

Thanks for the tips. I tend to keep my PC fairly clean, so this only took a few minutes. I followed your instructions to the reboot and restarted LRC. Doing a couple of HDR Pano merges took the RAM usage back up to about 60 Gbytes (50 images in each merge) which was not released when the stitches had completed. Closing LRC had the same effect i.e. the RAM was gradually released back to Windows over a number of minutes.

Thanks for your help though.

Paul

G

George-LRC

Participating Frequently

Did you run Disk Cleanup again after closing the LRc?

P

paulg6227407Author

Participating Frequently

Sorry, this should say Windows 11.

johnrellis

Legend

1. Is Catalog Settings > Metadata > Automatically Write Changes Into XMP enabled?

2. As a diagnostic, disable all anti-virus/malware packages -- does that help?

johnrellis

Legend

Hi John

Yes, 'automatically write changes into XMP' is enabled.

It's just after midnight here, so I'll do some testing with my anti-virus (Norton) disabled tomorrow, although I have tried this in the past and it has not made a noticable difference.

Thanks for replying.

Paul

"'automatically write changes into XMP' is enabled."

LR 14.4 introduced a severe performance bug with that option. It's known to interact badly with applying Denoise to batches of photos, but there might be other conditions under which it causes problems. Try disabling it.

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