Out of memory on OSX after HDR Pano

Report · Jun 05, 2023

I have a late 2019 5K iMac with 80 Gb RAM with normally 450 Gb free on the system HD. After repeated a merge to pano operation, I notice my memory pressure spike and remain high. Lightroom doesn't release the RAM after the operation is complete. If I perform repeated operations, the memory usage continues to climb. Eventually it will page out to the hard drive and fill it. When that happens, LR get slow and must be exited with a Force Quite action. The HD may be so full that OSX cannot boot outside of Verbose or Safe Mode.

Thhis happened once before which caused me to jump from 16Gb to 80 Gb ram. My normal work around it to exit LR after three panos to free up RAM. I got lazy and LR filled up the HD.

Now, I am trying to find out what file LR is using so the HD space can be recovered. OSX and LR are both the latest versions. HD space is not being recovered even after multiple reboots and restarting lightroom. I moved some unrelated files so I shoule have some breathing room, but I need to recover the 430 Gb of space.

Any ideas please!

Report · Jun 06, 2023

Update: I left the machinr running all day. OSX eventually reclaimed the space confirmed by the finder and Disk Utility. Additionally LR seems to be responsive again.

There is still a memory leak in LR that at a minimum manifests itself when merging HDR photos or Panos. It may be present for other tasks but take much longer to become apparant.

FOr now I will continue the annoying work around of closing LR before it pages out to the HD.

Report · Jun 06, 2023

It would be helpful if you could answer below questions re your issue:

1. How many images do you typically merge when building pano / hdr

2. Which format (CR3, NEF, RAF, ARW) and the pixel count of the individual files.

It would also be helpful if you would post your 'System Info'. This can be obtained from thr LrC Help > System Info menu item as shown in attached screenshot.