What is the maximum RAM Lightroom can use?

I’ve changed my thinking since I posted that reply five years ago. Up until recently Lightroom Classic didn’t need much memory when editing a single image, and only seemed to need more than 20GB when merging multiple images, for example into a panorama.

But in more recent versions, especially since version 12, I am seeing Lightroom Classic use up to 30GB more often on my Mac with 32GB memory. (That doesn’t cause a performance problem because the amount can include data that is compressed in RAM or cached, so all open applications, and there can be many of them, continue to run smoothly.)

I wonder if the increased memory use is related to things like the recently expanded masking, use of GPU acceleration, and use of AI. That increased memory usage doesn’t bother me, if it means it’s making the most use of the computer’s resources to let me do things both faster and at better quality.

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@rodlaird wrote:

If you aim to use LR intensively I would alway invest first in all the memory your system can handle - it is the cheapest performance debottlenecker.

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Maxing out any spec is not necessarily cost effective. A MacBook Pro laptop can now be specced with 96GB of memory, at a price premium of $800 over the base model; the Mac Studio compact desktop can take 128GB. For many Lightroom Classic users, 32–64GB is the sweet spot and the value of going above that is questionable, and the amount that could have been spent to get it to 96GB or 128GB will usually be better spent on other components.