Lightroom using too much RAM

[PagiArt]

Today after long editing session I noticed that my PC slowed down noticable. I looked up into task manager and saw that Lightroom uses 13GB of RAM + 12GB usage from Photoshop. I thought it isn't that much, because I have 64GB of RAM, but it's usage was at 98%. After I closed Photoshop RAM usage dropped by 15GB and after closing Lightroom usage dropped by 33GB! That's huge amount of RAM usage and it was 20GB more than task manager was showing next to Lightroom process. Is this a bug?

LR Classic 13.1
Windows 11 Pro
i7-13700K
RTX 4080
64GB RAM

[Morty C137]

Hi, 

I have the same issue with LRC is using over 35Gb of RAM and exports are failing due ti insufficent memory. I am trying to export a single photo as a Jpeg after I have edited it. 

LR Classic 13.1
Windows 11 Pro
i7-12700F
AMD 6800 XT
32GB RAM

After a lot of searching and testing I can't help but think that this is a bug within LRC. 

[Karolína]

I keep having the same problem for a long time as well.

Is it normal that after a short period of time the app uses 15,7GB of RAM (of 16GB) and the app keeps freezing (including mouse movement)? When I turn off the app, Windows 11 with other apps take 3,5GB but when I run Lightroom it goes up to 12GB very quickly. When I start masking it goes up to 15GB and the app starts stuttering and occasionally freezing. I almost can't use the new lens blur function because it keeps freezing for a minute or so after activating it.

I was thinking of increasing RAM size to 32GB but, as I can see in the previous comments, even 64GB doesn't help.

It is annoying. There must be some kind of a problem. I usually have to turn off every other app to be able to use it 😞

[D Fosse]

All of the above: are these dual GPU systems - either a dual graphics laptop, or a desktop where one screen is connected to a motherboard connector?

Integrated GPUs use shared system memory. GPU memory usage tends to increase over time, and a GPU can use a very large amount.

The standard advice is to disable any integrated GPU, to avoid conflicts.

[Karolína]

Hello, my computer is Ryzen 7 3700X, Rx 5700 XT, Patriot Viper 4 16GB, WD Blue SN550 and motherboard is ASRock Fatality B450.

[Karolína]

Only one GPU and connected to a TV 

[Mark29635073t1ik]

Same Problem here. 

My work around for now is: edit 2 Fotos -> restart Lightroom -> edit 2 Fotos -> restart Lightroom .... you get the picture. 

LR Classic 13.1
Windows 11 Pro
Ryzen 5900X
RTX 3070 Ti
32GB RAM

[Karolína]

Yes, that is my solution too lately. If I edit without masks it is not a problem for an hour or so. If I edit with masks, editing stutters after a short time and I have to restart the app. If I use the new lens blur the app gets laggy and stuck immediately after activating the function so I can't use it at all.

I love the app and how it is constantly updated, etc, but editing is unbelievably frustrating. 

Everything works fine on my phone but editing on my much more powerful PC is really frustrating.

I've started looking for alternatives even though I don't want to leave Adobe 😩

[Mark29635073t1ik]

Its the same for me... i like LR very much, but its start to loose me a lot of time.

And yes, the masks seem to cause the problem for me as well.

[garyrowe]

My mermory usage goes up to 63.x out of 64 GB, even when I don't actually do anything - just start 13.1 and watch the memory usgae go up bit by bit, untuil the PC is fairly unusable. This is totally  new behaviour since last upgrade. Dunno whether to be happy or sad that I'm not alone ...

Classic 13.1, 5900X, 64GB Ram, 3060 TI - and 20TB+ free HDD space

[kerryt97789372]

Same problem. If I leave LR running, my iMac will eventually crash (screen goes blank, have to reboot). If I'm at my computer, I get a dialog telling me I'm out of memory, showing LR Classic using 63.x GB (which is weird because I only have 32 GB). I updated to LR Classic 13.2 today, we'll see if the problem persists. (One wonders if anyone at Adobe is monitoring this thread...)

LR Classic 13.1

iMac Pro

Intel Xeon

Radeon Pro Vega 56

Sonoma 14.2.1

[lucaj26267957]

Having the same issues since today. Before it worked just fine. It always crashed the whole computer. Macbook M1 16gb Ram. Normal export settings. Never had problems before even on smaller machines.

[ricky336]

Just a thought for those who use Windows. ( I don't know how Mac uses it.)

Have you disabled Virtual memory in the Windows setting? You will always need virtual memory to be enabled. It is best to let Windows manage it.

This could be a problem if there is not enough memory, it goes to Windows and offloads it to the virtual memory. Even though you may have ample RAM, Lightroom still seems to use it. 

[defaultv09ic51g8u9b]

What you see is correct behavior.

There are several factors in play. First is the amount of data the running apps on the system have loaded. Second, when that number exceeds the physical memory in the system, the excess is put on disk and the OS pages app data in and out of physical memory as needed. Third is the amount of app data in active use. If that number exceeds the physical memory by too much, paging disk activity will slow the system. (This is why editing 50MP images in 8GB memory is a bad idea.) Fourth, an OS does it's best to minimize paging by using all of the physical memory and by having the most active data in that memory. That's why 98% of memory was used. 

The memory use in Task Manager for an app is the amount of that app's data that's in physical memory. When you closed Lightroom, the app data dropped 33GB and the physical memory in use dropped 13GB.

[defaultv09ic51g8u9b]

I didn't comment on the slowing down--that's the result of excess paging. Adobe could use memory more optimally, but it isn't a bug. 

[Karolína]

I have solved the problem partially by disabling AMD anti lag feature (AMD software considered Lightroom a game for some reason and when the anti lag was on, my GPU showed as crashing in the Lightroom settings) but the memory problem is still there.

If a software does not know how to use RAM memory it is a bad thing. When I edit one photo it is okay but when I start editing more of them in one session and switch between them, things start to get bad very quickly. Having to turn the app off and on again just to free up the RAM memory is unbelievably annoying.

When I stop editing one photo and click on another one, the RAM data needed for the previous photo should be automatically synchronized and then removed from the RAM.

There should be left data for the last 3 photos or so and the rest should be deleted. 

Finding out that increasing RAM to 32, 64, or even 128GB does not help at all is striking.

On my phone I can keep editing forever and it works flawlessly. And I am capable of getting absolutely the same results with the same process. But on my 20x more powerful computer I keep getting serious lags after a short period of time.

I'm seriously considering switching to another software with cloud syncing ability. 

[trungv14008555]

Same problem here with 64GB of memory. Thank you for reminding me not to upgrade to 128GB. Did you find any solution? 

[kerryt97789372]

I politely beg to differ - it is not correct behavior for the memory assigned to a process to continue to grow until all system memory is exhausted at the same time the user is doing nothing. (This is the behavior I've observed.) But I do have a "solution" (actually a workaround - the app clearly has a memory leak in specific circumstances).

To prevent Lightroom from consuming all my memory, I make sure I shut Lightroom down in Library mode and not in Develop mode. If I do this, it will start up in Library mode the next time I use it and the amount of memory allocated to Lightroom will not grow except as actuallly needed by the application. So instead of having to continually exit the app and restart it, I just make sure to switch to Library mode when I shut down, and I no longer experience the problem. (My Mac has been sitting for over 48 hours with Lightroom running, the memory allocated to the task is steady at about 2 GB.)