Terrible performance on iMac 5K

[Totallynotjan]

Hey Adobe Forum!

I got my high end iMac 5K from Apple (4GHZ, M295X, 24gb Ram).

I planned on primarily using the Adobe Creative Cloud and especially programs such as Lightroom, Photoshop, InDesign, Edge.

With an exception for Photoshop all of the above mentioned programs run horribly.

While browsing my catalogues in Lightroom it stutters and freezes. Edge runs as if it was running under 20fps, very laggy and stuttery.

InDesign is also pretty slow while switching pages and scrolling in general.

My questions: Is this normal for Hi-DPI screens? Is anyone else experiencing this?

Thanks!

[BeeNeat]

I have the exact same problem. My 5K iMac is about 10 months old and whenever I'm using photoshop and illustrator for a couple of hours my entire iMac slows down 500%. It's literally laughable how slow it starts going. Opening a new document or booting illustrator takes 4 full minutes.. I mean come on.. I paid 3K for this...

Adobe FIX THIS

[Badly Drawn Boy]

Apple just announced that they are working on a new iMac for fall release (very unusual for Apple to "pre-announce" a product; they are trying to show pro users that they still care, apparently).

Here are the rumored features.

I know they are just that—rumored—but assuming the rumor is accurate, will these specs be enough to address the problem we're discussing in this thread with poor performance of the 5k iMac in Lightroom?

[eliastheroux]

Solution I have found beyond just resizing the viewport:

https://www.thnkdev.com/QuickRes/

This standalone mac application allows you both to upsample the display to even further clarity but, more importantly it lets you run lower native resolutions that do not exist as options from the display panel in Apple's system preferences.

[robgendreau]

I don't see how upsampling (which is scaling) helps improve clarity, since 1:1 is the clearest one can get.

And I thought that there was only ONE native resolution, which is 5120x2880 on a retina iMac; Native resolution - Wikipedia

So any other resolution is scaled, which can be useful. And often quite clear. But it's still scaled, not native. And what's the benefit of doing that for the whole display, as opposed to just scaling the image itself in  the Lr window?

[eliastheroux]

I never said this was a perfect fix or even a true solution, but it does fix the core problem that people face when editing an image in Lightroom.

Example:

You are editing an image in Lightroom that is 6000x4000 and viewing it at 1:1. Each time you make an edit, the display attempts to show the change to the image in HiDPI mode (2 pixels for every 1 pixel) which in turn causes the slowing down of Lightroom. This method of screen resolution viewing is not adapting the contents of the screen to be at their "true" resolution but instead trying to double down on the pixels per inch because that is what the display is programmed to do. By using a tool like QuickRes (and there a few more great ones out there) to change your display to be a normal resolution (not HiDPI) you negate the issue and slowing down of Lightroom goes away.

[robgendreau]

HiDPI graphics in Lr in that situation apply only to the user interface elements, like the menu bars, the Lr tools, etc. 1:1 is just that: one pixel on the screen corresponds to one of the image's pixels.

The UI elements are really 2:1 either. The application and OS are actually using special hiDPI graphics (fonts maybe excepted since they might be vector, not raster). So an icon for hiDPI is like 200x200, as opposed to 100x100 on a 2.5 monitor. In other words, they are two separate icons, not the 100x100 scaled.

For example, take the Safari icon. Assuming a 2.5k monitor and a 5k monitor, and assuming both are right outta the box, at regular standard recommended for retina native resolution, and assuming no customization for icon size, both the 2.5 and 5k will display that Safari icon at the same dimensions on the screen, say 1cm x 1cm. But they are NOT the same icon; one is say 500x500, and the other is 1000x1000. The second one was created by some Apple engineer with more detail than the 100x100 and you can see that. It's like a 250k pixel photo vs a 1MB photo. But two different photos; not the 250k photo scaled.

So I'm not seeing how this would have much effect.

[Badly Drawn Boy]

Hi everyone,

I'm sure many of you noticed that Apple released updates to the iMac line and also announced an iMac Pro line. Both have faster processors, faster storage, and significantly improved graphics cards.

The iMac Pro is overkill for me, but I'm thinking of upgrading to a maxed out iMac 5k, with 4.2 Ghz i7, 2 TB SSD and 32 or 64 GB of RAM. I'm hoping this will resolve the issues I've had with editing photos in LR.

I can still sell my current iMac for $1,500, so the upgrade will cost me (or rather, my business) about $2,500. Seems like a worthy trade up.

I'll report back once I see the results.