Lightroom RAM usage climbs suddenly to over 15GB causing PC to lag and freeze

[steveisa054]

(UPDATE: Please also read my comment below as a reply. I have identified when this extensive memory consumption occurs).

The problem has started to occur, or at least be noticeable, in the last few days. When working in the Development module on an image, Lightroom's use of motherboard memory surges to over 15 GB. I have 32 GB on my Windows 10 stationary PC. But this grab of over 15 GB causes the PC to not respond anymore. I have to wait until I get control of my mouse again and then shut down Lightroom and restart it.

This must be a bug. Today, just now, this happened when working on an image from a Nikon D810 with a dng file size of around 45 megabytes. I ran the Lightroom denoise, and was editing a few masks (subject and background selections with a few adds and subtracts using a brush mask) when the PC stopped responding. Looking in Task Manager, I saw that Lightroom's memory usage was over 15 GB. After restart of Lightroom and continuing to edit, I see that Lightroom memory consumption is currently only 3 GB.

Background information: My Lightroom Classic is updated to the newest version now, but this problem also occurred before I performed the last Lightroom Classic update. I installed a new graphic card a few days ago, going from a GTX 1660 Super to an RTX 3060. Graphic card driver is fully updated with the Studio driver version from Nvidia. This freezing of the PC caused by high Lightroom memory consumption seems to have started after putting in the new graphic card, but I do not see why that should be. Lightroom performance tab is telling me my system is capable of full GPU utilization (it was listed as limited only with the GTX 1660). I have the setting here on "auto".

This must be a bug. It is happening consistently and often, and I have to shut down Lightroom very often to clear out the memory usage. Today's episode shows clearly something is wrong, because it happened while working on the very first photo, it happened quite suddenly (while working with a few masks), and the memory usage is now down again after a Lightroom restart.

App version: Lightroom Classic version 13.0.2, Camera Raw version 16.0

OS version: Windows 10, fully updated, stationary PC with 32 GB RAM and a 12GB graphic card (RTX 3060)

To reproduce: I just work in the Develop module for a while. I am not sure if this is happening only or because of working with masks.

Expected result and actual result: Using over 8 or 9 GB RAM becomes too much for my PC and certainly for many others. Using 15 GB or more RAM creates a show-stopper situation. There should be no need to take a hold of so much RAM. Expected result therefore is better memory management in Lightroom Classic.

[Broccolise]

Was there ever a solution found for this? I have a Mac and it keeps crashing because lightroom uses up to 80GB of my application memory, that's just insane. I am not even doing crazy stuff, just some default editing and masking. 

[Icaro_Rodriguez6758]

I am having a similar issue with my lightroom app. I am running a RTX4070 GPU, 13700i CPU with 32gb of DDR5 (basically a tank) and am still using 75% of my memory when editing pictures. My macbook air does it better than this. Not too sure what the solution is as I've checked for updates, tried deleting pictures from the cloud and all the restarts/resinstalls possible.

Would love to know if a solution is ever found 🙂

[XeoN_PL]

Man, there's no solution. We all here have the same problems and still noone could help us.

[GRPImagery]

Would be happy just to know adobe is taking this seriously.  

[XeoN_PL]

But they're not.

[Ganji12]

They really dont care...