Lightroom Classic So Slow / Laggy on Windows 10

Report · Jun 10, 2019

Lightroom Classic can be REALLY SLOW on my computer. It seems that it got a LOT slower for me about 6 months ago after a Windows 10 update. While my computer isn't bleeding edge, it is still respectable.

Very laggy adjustment brushes. Often I have to wait 10 to 15 seconds when switching from one photo to the next in the filmstrip in the develop module for the photo to load. Exporting 20 photos (from jpgs to jpgs) now often takes 7 minutes where in the past it took about a minute and a half.

Sometimes when Lightroom is at rest (I am just letting it sit there), my computers fan will start spinning up and lightroom will be using 50% of the CPU for two minutes straight, when I am literally not doing anything.

Sometimes when clicking on the magnify icon to zoom in, or when switching between photos by clicking on the film stirp, the screen will go black for about 10 seconds and I will get a "not responding" message at the top bar of lightroom and a spinning blue circle replaces my cursor.

I have removed any third party plugins that I could remove.

On the other hand, if I use the Camera RAW filter within photoshop, I don't seem to have the slowdowns / lag issues.

I usually edit 24MP Sony RAW files from my a6500.

LR Classic 6.3.1

ACR: 11.3

i7-6770 @ 3.4 GHZ

Win 10 64-bit Version 10.0.17763 Build 17763

24GB RAM

500 GB SSD (System and Lightroom App, and RAW files) with about 240 GB Free Space

250 GB SSD (Lightroom Cache and Previews) with about 90 GB Free Space.

GTX 960 2GB VRAM

In Performance preferences, I have:

Use Graphics Processor: Checked (GTX 960 2GB VRAM)

Camera RAW Cache Settings: Max Size: 30 GB

Use Smart Previews instead of Originals is Checked.

Generate Previews in Parallel is Checked.

Also, I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling lightroom. This didn't help.

Thanks in advance for thoughts on how to get Lightroom back to it's old self.

Report · Jun 10, 2019

Laggy adjustment brushes is a known problem in Lightroom, particularly if you are doing a lot of brusing, and particularly if you have a 4K or larger monitor. The GPU acceleration should be OFF, this will speed up local adjustments (but other aspects of LR may be slower)

You don't say what size monitor you have, in pixels (not inches). This makes a difference. If it is larger than 1920x1200 (or 1920x1080) then try setting the monitor resolution to 1920x1080, restart the computer, and see if this helps.

Report · Jun 10, 2019

Thank you for the reply.

Firstly, my monitor is 2560 X 1440. That is the recommended resolution in the Windows display control panel setting. I don't know if it makes a difference, but it is scaled to 125%, which is also recommended by the Windows display control panel setting.

When I say the brushes are laggy, I mean making one stroke and having to wait 5 seconds for it to show the effect. I generally do only one adjustment brush per image (usually lighten shadows), but that one brush might have several strokes (usually covering about 1/4th to 1/3rd of the image). I am not sure if that is the type of lag that is typical for most users when using the adjustment brush.

Just so I understand, will using GPU acceleration ALWAYS mean adjustment brushes are laggy / slower? Or does a GPU just need a certain amount of VRAM / CUDA cores / clock speed for it to actually increase the speed of adjustment brushes?

Any thoughts on why LR might use 50% CPU when my computer is at rest? I look at resource monitor and I don't see any networking activity going on with LR or creative cloud doing any connections to the internet in the background.

And is 30GB too small for the Camera RAW Cache size??? Is it too big??? (It is on a separate SSD from the one that my system, LR app, catalog and images are on).

When I look at the memory usage, I usually have around 10 or 12 GB of RAM in Standby, so there should be plenty of RAM available.

Report · Jun 10, 2019

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Easy+Mark wrote
Just so I understand, will using GPU acceleration ALWAYS mean adjustment brushes are laggy / slower? Or does a GPU just need a certain amount of VRAM / CUDA cores / clock speed for it to actually increase the speed of adjustment brushes?

Turning on GPU acceleration slows down brushing. ALWAYS, as far as I know.

Any thoughts on why LR might use 50% CPU when my computer is at rest? I look at resource monitor and I don't see any networking activity going on with LR or creative cloud doing any connections to the internet in the background.

Face detection might be on, previews might be in the process of being generated, Lightroom Classic may be uploading images to cloud storage (although in this case you say this is not happening).

And is 30GB too small for the Camera RAW Cache size??? Is it too big??? (It is on a separate SSD from the one that my system, LR app, catalog and images are on).
When I look at the memory usage, I usually have around 10 or 12 GB of RAM in Standby, so there should be plenty of RAM available.

None of this slowness problem is related to disk or cache or RAM.

Report · Jun 10, 2019

Again, thanks for the helpful replies. I really appreciate you assistance with this.

I have set my monitor to 1920 X 1080 and restarted.

I started up lightroom

I have a folder with several 10MB jpg files and several 24MB Sony ARW files (RAW files)

If I use the filmstrip to switch from one jpg to another, the new photos is loaded almost instantly.

If I use the magnifier to zoom in on a selected jpg photo, it will show me the "clear" zoomed in image in approximately 1/2 of a second (it shows me a blurry zoomed in image and then after 1/2 second it is sharp looking).

If I click on a RAW image, it takes approximately three seconds for the image to switch.

If I click on the magnify, it takes approximately 12 SECONDS for the "clear" image to load. Usually the screen goes black and I get the spinning blue circle for approximately 3 seconds. Then I see the magnified blurry image for an additional 10 seconds, and then finally the image becomes sharp.

Admittedly, the jpg files are only 10MB while the RAW files are 24MB. And the jpg files have the adjustments baked in to them, while the RAW files are reading adjustments from the database.

In preferences, file handling, Standard Preview Size is set to: Auto (1920)

Preview Quality is set to Medium.

Any idea if Sony ARW files are notoriously difficult for lightroom to work with? (I assume it is because when editing DNG files from my drone, they don't take so long to load, even though they are about 22MB in size, so almost as big as the ARW files from my Sony a6500)

Thanks in advance.

Report · Jun 10, 2019

If I click on the magnify, it takes approximately 12 SECONDS for the "clear" image to load. Usually the screen goes black and I get the spinning blue circle for approximately 3 seconds. Then I see the magnified blurry image for an additional 10 seconds, and then finally the image becomes sharp.

Is this image that took approximately 12 seconds to magnify one of the images that you did a lot of brushing on?

Report · Jun 10, 2019

Is this image that took approximately 12 seconds to magnify one of the images that you did a lot of brushing on?

Yes, they are RAW files with lots of brushing / local adjustments.

On the other hand, the RAW files from the a6500 that I didn't do brushing on (just global adjustments in the basic panel and some global detail adjustments) take about 4 seconds to become sharp after I magnify them.

Also, if I open photos in Bridge CC 2019 and use the ACR tool to do local adjustments, their doesn't seem to be any performance lag. Local adjustments are done in real time. In Bridge I can easily switch between photos in the film strip and magnify seems to work in real time.

Report · Jun 10, 2019

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Easy+Mark wrote
Is this image that took approximately 12 seconds to magnify one of the images that you did a lot of brushing on?
Yes, they are RAW files with lots of brushing / local adjustments.
On the other hand, the RAW files from the a6500 that I didn't do brushing on (just global adjustments in the basic panel and some global detail adjustments) take about 4 seconds to become sharp after I magnify them.
Also, if I open photos in Bridge CC 2019 and use the ACR tool to do local adjustments, their doesn't seem to be any performance lag. Local adjustments are done in real time. In Bridge I can easily switch between photos in the film strip and magnify seems to work in real time.

All of this is known (poor) performance in Lightroom with photos that have lots of brushing. I can't explain the apparent good performance in ACR, as I don't really use it as a separate tool. If you MUST do lots of brushing, consider doing it outside of Lightroom (either ACR or Photoshop).

Report · Jun 10, 2019

All of this is known (poor) performance in Lightroom with photos that have lots of brushing. I can't explain the apparent good performance in ACR, as I don't really use it as a separate tool. If you MUST do lots of brushing, consider doing it outside of Lightroom (either ACR or Photoshop).

Thank you. I will see if what I do can be accomplished using bridge / acr because it really is a frustratingly slow experience, and local adjustments are very significant to my workflow.

BTW: Exporting jpgs from Lightroom is so much faster than exporting RAW files (the sony ARW files)

For example: I was able to export 20 jpgs in approximately 5 seconds. (Each jpg was around 10MB and had only minor global corrections and transform / vertical straightening.

Exporting only TEN Sony RAW files with significant adjustment brush adjustments took approximately 7 minutes.

Exporting FIVE DNG files from my Drone with significant adjustment brush adjustments only took about 50 seconds.

Extrapolating the data means that exporting 20 Sony ARW files with heavy brush adjustments would take 14 minutes, while exporting 20 DNG files with heavy brush adjustments would take 200 seconds / three and 1/3rd minutes.

Report · Jun 10, 2019

Since large amounts of brushing are important to your workflow, I would do it in Photoshop, where there won't be speed issues.

Report · Jun 10, 2019

Since large amounts of brushing are important to your workflow, I would do it in Photoshop, where there won't be speed issues.

Well... it seems your suspicions are correct....

I took a couple of the Sony RAW files and applied xix different Radial Filters AND six different graduated filters to the images, and I also used Range Masks on all of those filters in an effort to slow down performance, and even with 12 filters on it, the performance for those images was still quite snappy. It was only a about 1/2 a second slower to magnify than a Sony RAW file that had NO local adjustments at all.

So it seems the adjustment brush is indeed the culprit... and it seems to be made worse when using a range mask in conjunction with the adjustment brushes.

Report · Jun 10, 2019

Would have thought I previously stated this, but anyhow.

”It seems that it got a LOT slower for me about 6 months ago after a Windows 10 update’

Windows updates, and incidentally GPU driver updates can alter settings you may have made to the OS, and to preferences and so forth to GPU drivers.

Some of the Windows defaults are designed to keep general users happy, might make multitasking better, might make simpler programs like word processors, etc happier, but can slow done creative types of programs like pretty much any post processing photography software, including PS, LR.

Not at a PC right now, so some of this from poor memory.

In the OS the power options as in use of CPU might have reverted to “balanced”, while you will want High Performance..

In the OS lots of pretty do-dads might be switched back on, things to make the desktop prettier, animations, pop up aids, coretna or whatever, lots of crap

As for the GPU driver, some options on how it behaves with specific programs might revert to defaults upon an update. I see you have NVIDIA, will look up a link

Report · Jun 10, 2019

In the OS the power options as in use of CPU might have reverted to “balanced”, while you will want High Performance..

Yes, I have it set to High Performance.

As for the GPU driver, some options on how it behaves with specific programs might revert to defaults upon an update. I see you have NVIDIA, will look up a link

For what it is worth, I have just double checked and do have the latest graphics card driver from Nvidia installed.

Report · Jun 10, 2019

10 things to disable in Windows 10 - CNET

Windows 10 quick tips: 12 ways to speed up your PC | Computerworld

https://www.winhelp.info/boost-lightroom-performance-on-systems-with-nvidia-graphics-chip.html