Experiencing performance related issues in Lightroom 4.x

[BCormier]

Anyone else notice that lightroom 4 is slow? Ligtroom 3 always ran fast on my system but Lightroom 4 seemlingly lags quite a bit.

My system is:

2.10 ghz Intel Core i3 Sandy Bridge

8 GB Ram

640 GB Hard Drive

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit

Message title was edited by: Brett N

[DdeGannes]

I have been using LR since it has been released in version one. I have a very modest system, Win 7 64 bit Home premium, Processor 6.6 GHz; Memory 4GB; Displaty 1680x1050.

Test on export of 101 raw files from Panasonic G3  Lightroom time for rendering 15 Min approx 9 seconds per file.

Export from After Shot Pro Approx 3 Min 1.87 sec per file.

Both systems using only standard processing functions no Lens corrections, adjustment brush etc. just standard corrections.

Just unbeliavable.

I did not think I have an issue with the performance of Lghtroom but this is a revelation. I have no hangups or crashes etc.

[juw13]

Just look at their latest issues list:

http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2012/03/lightroom-4-hot-issues.html

Performance is not even on the list! Once again, non-functional requirements are swept under the rug.

There is no easy fix here and I wouldn't hold my breath for a solution any time soon. I don't think Adobe knows what to do about this.

[quenton8]

juw13 wrote:

Just look at their latest issues list:

http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2012/03/lightroom-4-hot-issues .html

Performance is not even on the list! Once again, non-functional requirements are swept under the rug.

There is no easy fix here and I wouldn't hold my breath for a solution any time soon. I don't think Adobe knows what to do about this.

If you look at the dates there, they are early March -- so they hardly apply anymore.

Look instead at the "Common Problems" section here ...

   http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family

[juw13]

Dennis Smith, where in that link does it have documentation of performance problem in lightroom? Is it buried beneath pages of lesser issues?

There is one line entitled "Sticky Sliders", 3 weeks old, 2 replies, no moderation. That site is not the official feedback channel.

[Natsukashi53]

It sounds like a lot of people have LR3.6 installed along with LR4

installed. I was wondering if anyone has uninstalled 3.6 and then

installed LR4. maybe the files from 3.6 are interfering with LR4 maybe?

I'm going to back up all my lightroom stuff on my laptop and give it a try

some time this week when I have some free time. If i don't have any luck,

i'm thinking that i'm gonna have to either increase the size of my cache,

or ask for a refund and go back to 3.6.

i was really looking forward to this update too unfortunately. maybe a good

alternative is bridge w/ photoshop or the photo organizer w/ photoshop

elements?

What are the majority of you doing in the mean time? just going back to

3.6?

I like the processing results from LR4 though... it's a shame it's sluggish

when editing.

[Guest]

juw13 wrote:

Dennis Smith, where in that link does it have documentation of performance problem in lightroom? Is it buried beneath pages of lesser issues?

There is one line entitled "Sticky Sliders", 3 weeks old, 2 replies, no moderation. That site is not the official feedback channel.

I think it is an Adobe priority. For you, and for the rest of the users here you go:

http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2012/03/lightroom-4-1-now-available-on-adobe-labs.html

Specificalle there, from Adobe's "hand"

"Addressed performance issues in Lightroom 4, particularly when loading GPS track logs, using a secondary monitor, and the controls within the Develop module"

Furthermore:

This forum is like you said (Lee Jay), from users to users. Adobe doesn't take posts here as "official". For bug report it needs to go here: http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family

If you go there then you can see that one of the threads with more responses and acknowledged by Adobe is "Lightroom: LR 4 user interface, and Develop slider response very sluggish"

(I'll give you the link too)

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lr4_0_reacts_extremely_slow

If you hurry up (because only the last 15 entries can be seen, you can see answers like this one:

"

strange slowdown in software can happen in floating point calculation or when denormal numbers occur. maybe some slider settings produce very small numbers. very small numbers such as a calc 0.00000000000000002*200 cause denormaliziation slowdown.

this can cause lots of FPU/ESSE slowdown"

Which is way ahead of the "Maybe it is a RAW problem because on ONE non-RAW image..."

You guys can keep doing whatever suit you best. This is not a cache location problem. This is a Lightroom problem and a big time one. If you want to put a bit more pressure on Adobe. Then go to the Bug report forum and voice your opinion. Let Adobe know that you are experiencing the same problem and that RC1 and RC2 didn't solve it. That would be more useful than talking about cache's location.

And I am not saying that properly placing your cache won't speed up LR. It will, but that is not a solution (nor the problem) of LR4. That is simply a best-practice thing that can be applied to any LR release for what matters.

And to the one asking why I am here and not there, well, again, you might be, apparently, struggling to read my initial comment from yesterday. "To save you some time..." But it seems like I failed at that.

Now I don't want to distract Natsukashi53 from all the debugging he's not gonna do, or Lee Jay to summarize that we all have in common with the LR 4 problem is that we use LR 4 (Maybe if we all unistall LR4 we might solve the problem! We should all try that!)

Lee Jay, as I mentioned once before, the only thing all of our systems might have in common is "LR + intel" and that was meant to be sarcastic since maybe many have non-intel processors. You can keep asking around but that is a futile effort, at least the way it is being done now.

I agree that this is a forum where users can help each other. Helping is not always telling you what size your cache should be (although some times it is). For the current problem and issues most of us have expressed here, the help is:

• Check RC1 and RC2.
• Check the issues that others have and see if you can recreate them in your system
• Go to the bug report and feedback forum from Adobe and report there that you too are having the issue(s) and that RC1 or RC2 didn't help (It is not obvious, but at the intial post, you can report it as your issue as well)
• Share other situations where the problem appears and try to recreate that on your system.

Lee Jay, the reason I thik that simply continuing to ask for information on people's system with no "structure" is of no help is because just asking for RAM, CPU and where the cache is is very rudimentary and of no help. Seriously, there are so many other factors that play a role there:

- Are all your drivers updated?

- Do you run other programs at the same time you run LR?

- Do you have third party plugins for LR installed?

- Is your OS updated?

- What's the size of your catalogue?

- What type of images do you work with?

- And then get a full System info and not just such very basic info as must people are sharing here.

- Are disks regularly defragmented?

- ...

Even more, to properly "diagnose"something that way, you would also need a large pool of "I'm not having those issues" kind of users. So you can rule out many things.

The only reason I have said all I have said is that this is not just a simple "Let-me-see-what-it-is" kinda problem. This call is for Adobe and not for its users. (except for Natsukashi53, he might stumble on the solution while clicking things on LR)

oh, and Natsukashi53, "don't worry" I have no intentions to hire you or pay for your services as IT. Don't think I'll miss anything there. And just while you are at it... It would be great if you also ask around other forums... maybe you might also stumble upon the cure to some diseases. And if you do stumble across the solution well, I'll be happy to buy you lunch and publicly address you as "hero".

[Natsukashi53]

Dude, just shut up already you're just being a d1ck. You're just trolling

people (including me) and you're not providing anyone any helpful

information except posting the adobe LR4.1 link. Which I might add is in

the adobe site already.

You can post as much as you want from the other thread, but until a fix is

actually released, you're not doing any good here. You may be filling your

ego by talking down to everyone here, but seriously, other than that,

you're not doing nothing helpful. If you want to offer up your technical

expertise, please by all means go back to that other thread and help them

there.

You have brought no one in this forum, any closer than where we already

are. No 'new' information provided by you solves anything nor does it help

any of us with workarounds. Neither does you talking down to us or posting

info from the other thread.

[Geoff the kiwi]

There is a lot of frustration apparent and while it is understandable please make sure that we keep in mind the forum guidelines.

The Lightroom team are working hard on the issues that have arisen in Lr4 and do appreciate informative responses.

[acresofgreen]

Geoff the kiwi wrote:

There is a lot of frustration apparent and while it is understandable please make sure that we keep in mind the forum guidelines.

Right. But at least with the great new forum interface it's not clear who is being insulted

[Geoff the kiwi]

Exactly!!

acresofgreen wrote:

Geoff the kiwi wrote:

There is a lot of frustration apparent and while it is understandable please make sure that we keep in mind the forum guidelines.

Right. But at least with the great new forum interface it's not clear who is being insulted

[LynneHarty]

Okay all "oneupping aside", I am back to my basic question. I'm a professional photographer, and nowhere near the tech level of most of the people I'm listening to on this forum. Here is what I'm hoping to get answers for:

I had to upgrade to LR4 because LR3 won't open the files shot with my new Nikon D4, which I had to purchase after all my equipment was stolen in December, so it made sense to get the newest and best camera I could afford. I have about 50,000 images in my catalog (I'm unclear on whether that matters or not in terms of speed). I've been using LR since version 1 and using LR4 with these new files (yes, RAW, of course RAW) is unbearably slow in every way. Waiting for each image to "focus" to edit takes way too long, as do the rest of the adjustments. I can't shoot tethered with this camera either. I found a workaround with a free download called Sofortbild, or something like that, for my D700, but alas it doesn't recognize the D4 either. So now I have this sweet camera and new LR software and I feel like I'm in the dark ages.

There has been a lot of discussion about cache size and location. I have no idea where mine is or how to find it.

Am I just screwed until adobe fixes the issues with LR 4 and the nikon D4 compatibility? Do I have to shoot with my lesser D700 till then?

Thanks.

Lynne

[andreas603]

I would say yes, you are screwed until its fixed...unless you opt for Plan B which is to ingest in LR4, convert to DNG then edit in 3.6....which I simply won't do beause its a PITA!   Also, if you haven't already, pls post your experience/complait in the form that Adobe watches and add you name to the list here:  http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lr4_0_reacts_extremely_slow

[juw177]

The reality is, unless we are seeing Lightroom 5, there will not be any redesign of the underlying code. We can only expect small performance tweaks that MAY make LR4 slightly more bearable (such as the "improvements" in RC1).

[A_C_G]

This is not going to get us anywhere - but what has so far?

There are several IT gurus around here. Can one of you explain why Adbobe cannot 'borrow' one of the machines reporting no speed problems, borrow one with them, and work out where they differ? Damn it all. The USA is not that huge. Surely FedEx could get both to the same lab room within 24 hours.

It is years since I wrote crude progams in dBase 2 - but in those days we could put them into debugging mode and see where they were failing. I know that these days software is significantly more complicated but surely diagnostics must have moved on as well.

The Lightroom software team must have dozens of machines running LR. Surely not every single one of them is glitch free?

I have a cynical view that there is some beancounter at the top saying 'no more money on this - we must move on'. But that is a view of a cynic who used to be a beancounter myself before retiring.

IT man - tell me what you can't put a working and non working LR installation side by side and puzzle out why they perform differently, please?

Tony

[juw177]

Being a software engineer on numerous commercial projects I can tell you that it is not up to the IT guru. No more changes are allowed after the business has signed off on the product with exception of bug fixes. If you look at all of Adobe's change logs they only fix functionality related bugs. Performance is not considered functionality by Adobe and it is shown by their track record of each new bloated release (Photoshop, Acrobat, Lightroom). Not to mention optimisation requires more expertise and money than say, building the DVD burning module. Which one will the business choose?

When performance really becomes a problem, it is too late. The IT gurus will tell the business it wil cost millions to redesign, rewrite, retest the existing code, and the business will simply say "No, we wlll go with a temporary fix and push up the system requirements".

[DNJphoto]

Mmm.. Juw177 how far are they going to push the System requirments up?

I'm currently on a $10k single PC setup and it is beyond frustrating when open 100 raw files quicker in Photoshop CS6 and review them as opposed to Lightroom 4, 4.1, 4.2 etc.
My current specs: I7 2600K @ 4.5Ghz, 32Gb 1866Mhz DDR3, GTX570 Graphics, 120GB SSD OS drive, Adaptec dual Raid setup (48 SAS) comprising of 500GB scratch/cache disk Raid 0 1400MB/s R/W and 16TB Raid 6 with hotspare 900MB/s R/W. Any other program thrown at just blitz along including CS6, Premerie and 3D CAD programs.

The only way Adobe will fix their product is with a class action for as far as I can see.

Another matter that "really" peeves me of is Adobe are still selling and recomending this product as if we are pronoucing a hoax.

[andreas603]

Thats a scary but very real possibility sadly....so here's a question then...if you believe those that beta tested LR4, they claim that the performace issue was not present then..only in the final release...  This just begs the question, WTF happened in between!?  I did not beta test but was it really not a problem then?

[MarceloTrad]

Just Intaled RC2 and increased the Cache to 10gb...

I do think is somehow faster, but I only have 100 raw in my actual catalogue

Marcelo Trad

[joema3]

A C G wrote:

....Can one of you explain why Adbobe cannot 'borrow' one of the machines reporting no speed problems, borrow one with them, and work out where they differ? Damn it all. The USA is not that huge. Surely FedEx could get both to the same lab room within 24 hours....

There is no reason why a development group facing a difficult-to-reproduce problem cannot fix it. This happens frequently in software development and testing. Common solutions are remote debugging, or putting "instrumented" code on the customer site having the problem. These methods almost always work. As a last resort the machine itself can be overnight shipped to the development group. That should rarely be necessary.

The most effective solution is having a concise, well-defined "replication scenario". Tech-savy customers can help a lot by providing this. Needed are the exact steps to reproduce the problem, including system details, system & application logs, etc. If problem is data-specific, the customer can provide that. It's up to the development group to state what they need. If the product has special "verbose" logging output, the development group should state how to enable that, capture it and send it back.

If there are special information capture utilities, the development or escalation support group should provide those.

It's sometimes a lot of work, but end users who narrow down the replication scenario to specific steps and data are a big help.

If this isn't possible there are remote debugging tools the development group can use to run your product remotely under a debugger and examine it. If that isn't possible they can build an instrumented version of the product with data-gathering code targeting the problem area.

There are also specialized debugging tools for memory and handle leaks. However if program only enters that state under specific conditions, a replication scenario is often still needed.

[andreas603]

exactly Joe!  This is what Adobe has yet to provide us!!  I know we are willing!!  Pls post this in the bug reporting forum...PLEASE!!

[juw177]

I cringe when people here try to give advice to the software engineers.

Bug reporting here is useless because software engineers most likely know exactly why the application is slow. They just can't do anything about it. They are not allowed to make high impact code changes after the product is released. They are also not allowed to gimp existing functionality. That's why all we get are some gimmicky workarounds.

It is up to management to decide how much resource they dedicate to improve their product. And given how badly designed the application is, they have a long way to go.

[Lee_Jay]

juw177 wrote:

Bug reporting here is useless because software engineers most likely know exactly why the application is slow. They just can't do anything about it. They are not allowed to make high impact code changes after the product is released. They are also not allowed to gimp existing functionality. That's why all we get are some gimmicky workarounds.

That's all baloney.

[juw177]

Why is that baloney? You have been an active poster here. How did the big LR3.3 performance feedback thread go?

I am giving my perspective as an experienced software engineer. They are never going to come out and say that LR is slow because it is built on top of crappy architecture that is expensive to rewrite. The conservative approach is to brush it aside and go back to adding new features and up the system requirements.

[Lee_Jay]

juw177 wrote:

Why is that baloney?

This is:

Bug reporting here is useless because software engineers most likely know exactly why the application is slow. They just can't do anything about it. They are not allowed to make high impact code changes after the product is released.

Saying that they won't fix a major bug or bugs that are making the application unusable for a portion of the user base because management wouldn't allow it is baloney.

[MarceloTrad]

Cool, tel me if did it help at all !

Best

Marcelo Trad