LR Classic became unusable

[Danpaol]

Hi, developing photos on my Intel 2020 MacBook Pro became nearly impossible to do with Lightroom.
The performance of this program is now below zero. To apply a brush mask I need to wait for minutes between two strokes.
I am planning to upgrade to a new Apple Silicon machine in the near future but this is not the point, LR Classic was working just fine on this machine, the latest updates basically made it unusable.
If this is a strategy to make customers upgrade their hardware (because if you don't have the bleeding edge harware your money are less valuable) I'll take care to upgrade the software too moving to CaptureOne, which by the way is performing very well on the same machine, even with the trial version.

These are my specs, I noticed a heavy usage of VRAM, is this normal?

Lightroom Classic version: 13.1 [ 202312111226-41a494e8 ]
License: Creative Cloud
Language setting: en-IT
Operating system: Mac OS 14
Version: 14.2.1 [23C71]
Application architecture: x64
Logical processor count: 8
Processor speed: 2,3GHz
SqLite Version: 3.36.0
Built-in memory: 16.384,0 MB
Real memory available to Lightroom: 16.384,0 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 1.661,7 MB (10,1%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 47.748,0 MB
Memory cache size: 25,3MB
Internal Camera Raw version: 16.1 [ 1728 ]
Maximum thread count used by Camera Raw: 5
Camera Raw SIMD optimization: SSE2,AVX,AVX2
Camera Raw virtual memory: 986MB / 8191MB (12%)
Camera Raw real memory: 1085MB / 16384MB (6%)
Standard Preview Size: 3840 pixels
Displays: 1) 2880x1800, 2) 3840x2160
Graphics Processor Info: 
Metal: Intel(R) Iris(TM) Plus Graphics
Init State: GPU for Image Processing supported by default with custom export support
User Preference: Auto
Application folder: ***
Library Path: ***
Settings Folder: ***
Installed Plugins: 
1) AdobeStock
2) Aperture/iPhoto Importer Plug-in
3) Flickr
4) HDR Efex Pro 2
5) Nikon Tether Plugin
Config.lua flags: None

[Bill Sprague]

This is a user forum.  Most friendly participants here would like to help you.   Have you ended your subscription, moved to other software and venting anger?  Or are you seeking help?  Have you tried returning to a previous version?  Have you tried a trouble shooting chat at https://helpx.adobe.com/contact.html?rghtup=autoOpen?

[Danpaol]

Not yet moved. This situation is going on since months, the past version was just slightly better than this, so I don’t think that rolling back will solve anything, but I can try. I searched and applied (I think) all the solutions on this forum to improve performance during past months but none seems to work, so I’m starting to think that this is a proper bug (if we want to call “ignoring issues on 4years old high end laptop” a bug) and not a configuration issue. I am afraid that when I’ll upgrade to a new machine, the exact same problem will pop up after another few years, and I don’t think upgrading 2,5k ~ 3k€ machines every few year to run this software can be a viable and friendly solution, this is why I’m so critical about this. This machine is still performing well for basically everything else but Lightroom, I understand that I cannot get some features without AppleSilicon and that ai masks will take a lot more time to process, I totally understand this. But having to wait minutes between a brush stroke and another, or having the machine hanging for 2-3 seconds when switching photo, or waiting 5 seconds to see the result of the modifications I’m doing it’s not acceptable in my view, it makes the whole thing not usable.

I’m on a dual monitor set up. The second monitor is a 4k BenQ pd2700u and I do most of my LR edits on this one, it was also the first suspect but unfortunately (or fortunately for the monitor) it was neither it or the cable. I get almost the same performance on the native retina screen. What it seems strange to me is the virtual memory usage being so high, but maybe it make sense for LR, I just don’t know what to think at this point.

Cheers,
D.

Excuse my bad English, it’s not my native language.

Sent from my iPad

[GoldingD]

For some reason you think the location of your catalog is PII. Ok, to each their own. However

• What had drive is your catalog on? Main internal hard drive? An external hard drive? The Cloud (bad very bad)?
• For that particular hard drive, how much free space in percent. And yes I mean %. Typically this needs to be 20%, some say 25% or better.
• I always get a bit confused on one item in the System Info, so I ask the following. How large do you allow the Camera RAW CACHE to get Hopefully not the default 5 GB.

 I noticed a heavy usage of VRAM, is this normal

For AI, probably yes.

Ahh, but one odd thing, perhaps I am looking right at it, bit I do not see in that System Info, the amount of VRAM. Does this Laptop have VRAM? How much? Hopefully grater than 2 GB for bare minimum performance, but actually 8 GB or more in a MACOS/Intel rig.

[Danpaol]

Hi, and happy New Year!

• The catalog is on the main drive, freshly optimised
• More than 40%
• Camera Raw cache size is 20GB (maybe is this too much?)
• Unfortunately this laptop comes with an Iris Plus so it's 1536MB, but it wasn't performing so badly in the past. The problem escalated during the last couple of months, during that period no changes were made to the hardware: same laptop, same screen, same raw files (same camera). 

I can confirm that Ps is running a lot better compared to LrC.
The strange thing to me is that I experience the worst performance drop when I'm applying brushes. I'd expect to get the worst with AI masking or AI enhancing, indeed they are slow compared to newer machines, but somehow applying a brush to selectively dodge&burn is what kills the performances the most. After a brush, even moving from an image to another becomes a lot more sluggish.

[GoldingD]

I’m on a dual monitor set up.

That will consume more of the GPU support. If you go back to a single monitor, does LrC perform a lot better? Not a bit better, but a lot better ( a little better would probably not be a acceptable improvement for changing your workflow)

This machine is still performing well for basically everything else but Lightroom,

Yes, LrC has always been a resource hog. and comparing performance while using LrC to say PS is not applicable. PS is not such a resource hog.