Poor Develop module performance on new retina iMac

[F Tedsen]

All of the Develop module operation are extremely slow on my retina iMac.  This machine has the 4.0 GHz processor and upgraded GPU.  It should be very fast, and in fact for operations such as import, export, and preview creation it is.  But for Develop module functions it is much slower than my Mac Mini and my wife's Macbook Air.  When moving adjustment sliders, there is a delay of a second or more before the effect is seen on screen.  The same operation on the other computers is nearly instantaneous.  I am running version 5.6, but I went back and tried it with version 4.4 as well with the same result.  Can anyone give me advice on how to proceed?  Apple support says contact Adobe, but I haven't found any way to contact Adobe directly; I keep getting directed to the forums.  Thanks.

[shootnhooton]

5k has a long way to go yet. See my later reply.

[LouisJaffe]

Though not on a 5k iMac myself, I've been helping a friend configure one, with LightRoom. Of possible relevance is this suggestion from DPReview forums:

From http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/54724375

prefs>file handling>cachedefault=1gbchange to 100.my riMAC loved this.

Confirmed in http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/54725211

Thanks - in fact a buddy over on Fred Miranda recommended the same thing - I had already bumped it to 50gb, but that wasn't enoughNow at 100gb and all running smooth

[viva_la_zoom]

louisjaffe thanks for that but I had already tried that and it didn't really improve the experience.

[Geoff the kiwi]

I can't speak for the Lightroom team but they do have holidays like everyone else and this is holiday time.

Let me see if I can't get someones attention though...

[LouisJaffe]

And thanks for your feedback, which echoes the experience of the friend I'm trying to help. He set the 100GB cache and is still experiencing Lightroom slowdowns.

One question occurs to me, though: Shouldn't it take quite a bit of time to fill this enormous cache? Perhaps operations that were slow initially could be speeded after they stack up in the cache? Am just guessing here.

In any case, it seems to me that if the software and hardware were doing their job properly, such a large cache wouldn't be needed.

[Geoff the kiwi]

The word is that the problem is on the radar....

[viva_la_zoom]

Well that's good. When is version 6 coming out? Any rumours about that?

I don't think adobe can't really ignore this one as the iMac is aimed at photographers who are likely to be using lightroom all the time.

Funny thing is that I don't really have any problems with Photoshop but I don't use it extensively, only to make photo compositions and such.

Premiere is quite good and final cut is exceptionally good on the riMac so it seems the problem is specific to lightroom and illustrator

[Badly Drawn Boy]

While Lightroom is definitely worse than Photoshop in this regard, Photoshop is still much slower—as are plugins like the Nik filters. I think Adobe, and possibly plug-in vendors, will have to address this with all of their applications/plug-ins.

[Geoff the kiwi]

This type of issue has been happening almost since computers and software

have been made by different vendors.

The issue will be resolved as soon as practical.

Maybe buyers of the latest greatest hardware could check to see if their

software works on it prior to purchase..

--

Sent from Gmail Mobile

[rwanderman]

"Maybe buyers of the latest greatest hardware could check to see if their

software works on it prior to purchase.."

The problem with this is that Apple doesn't have Lightroom loaded on iMac Retinas in stores so it's tough to do this in a real world sense. The only way we might know about problems is searching and finding threads like this.

Given that Adobe has said nothing about this, I'm probably going to buy a 27" non-retina iMac, maxed out.

[Modesto_Vega]

The performance problem with most new Retina display iMacs is down to the 5K display and not having a CPU big enough to handle rendering of edits on a 5K display at full resolution and using the whole screen as a working area.

I would not exactly blame Adobe for this.

I do most of my photo editing using a MacBook Pro (8 GB of memory) with a calibrated 27'' non-mac external screen. I shoot raw and my files are around 24 megapixels. As long as I do not use the 27'' screen to do any edits at 1:1, I am generally speaking happy with the setup. If I ever get enough money I would get one of the new Mac Pro towers which has plenty of computing power.

[Hifivoice]

It is not Apple, it is not Adobe, it is the combination of the two.

1. Other programs like Aperture work full-steam on the 5k displays. This implies the processor/GfX is sufficiently powerful to drive such a screen.
2. Adobe Photoshop/Lightroom works fast enough on Macs with comparable processors/GfX.

There is a valid reasoning to each of them.

In terms of screen, the size is 4x as large, so with the same HW a slow-down of a factor of 4 could be expected. Looking at a benchmarks at bearfeet, you can see that the net speed of the new iMac is a bit higher at the same resolution. So at max resolution, certainly some slower behavior can be expected. This is especially true for video, and programs that require a lot of real-time rendering

The slow downs for the Adobe tools are reported to be more than a factor of 4 (from instant reaction of moving sliders to seconds). This creates a couple of suspicions:

1. The screen update routines are called on a very high rate, leaving little space for spending CPU time to user tasks.
2. There is not enough data cached, resulting in constant recalculations for bigger screen.
3. The graphic rendering that Adobe uses in its products doesn't scale well with screen size. Some algorithms have a quadratic or even higher impact, which means a 4x bigger data size implies a slow down of 16x (or higher). You can't realistically expect such a hardware boost (4x or 16x) in a one-year update.

Hence, if Adobe chooses to support these high resolution screens, they need to re-consider their algorithms or cache settings, which they are obviously doing at this moment. So I assume it is a matter of time.

Despite these efforts, the performance on a screen with less pixels will always be better. For still images, and a responsive user interface, the hardware in an iMac should be sufficient.

[Modesto_Vega]

I think Adobe will choose to support those resolutions on Lr 6, it least I hope so. To do that they are likely to have to leverage GPU capabilities which are currently not used by Lr.

But this is not exactly my point, I have a simple question for you and anybody else in this thread.

Would you ever reproduce, print or screen, any of your photographs at 100% resolution, 1 pixel = 1 dot for prints? This is what a 5K screen is likely to be doing with certain sensors and Lr displaying images with 'Fit' selected.

[Hifivoice]

I have a D800, which has 7360 x 4912 pixels. It allows me to do immense cropping, without loosing too much details. And when I scale down the resolution to a print or screen, and perform noise reduction, I can boost up to ISOs I could only dream of before (I prefer to use natural light instead of flash). So, pixels make sense, even if not used in a 1-to-1 sense.

I looked at the normal iMac (2560 x 1440) and the Retina iMac (5120 x 2880) next to each other in a store, and the Retina Mac had a nicer screen to look at. Especially text was nicer to look at, and I have to work with large spreadsheets many times. For photos it looks more crisp and sharp, the screen looks nice under a wide angle, and has less reflections. So, also here the pixels and screen can make sense or is simply nice luxury (like most cars, watches, etc.).

At the end, it is a personal choice that each one has to make. Personally for me: I'll wait to buy a Retina Mac after the performance problems have settled.

[Modesto_Vega]

I have a similar experience, I have a D600 (6016 x 4016). I am doing things I didn't think possible, I can shoot at ISO 4000 and 6000 (even handheld) and there is no noise when I reproduce. For certain corrections, such as sharpening, I would use 1-to-1 to see the effect. I have also seem the Retina iMac (5120 x 2880) in the store, I do like the quality screen. Would I buy one? The basic Retina iMac (5120 x 2880) is $2,499 and the basic Mac Pro tower is $2,999, I already own a good external display, calibrated, and would probably go for a Mac Pro tower (and add later another display).

More pixels are not bad, but that does not mean we have to reproduce them, as you said they give us the means of doing things that we could not do before. I have found myself very recently, this week, in the situation of discussing a substantial crop to a photograph taken with the D600, a crop that enhanced the photograph, and my 1st though was "I am throwing away all of these pixels". Having a bigger screen (2560 x 1440) didn't help and it is just 1/2 of a 5k screen!! A 5k display is capable of holding 61% of you of 6016 x 4016 raw file at 1-to-1, that is awesome but it has a price (it is not just $$$). 8k and 16k displays are next in the pipeline, your entire 6016 x 4016 raw file will fit 1:1 in an 8k display.

Like you I will wait because 5k, 8k and 16k are game changers. If this is the way the digital imaging world is going, 80 megapixels sensors in consumer cameras are going to be mainstream in the next 2 to 5 years.

[rwanderman]

That's a great question and given that I do fine art printing, it's a reason to avoid the higher res screens until everything is working on the same page.

[tomb7278849]

Funny, LR 5.7 runs much smoother than LR CC 6. I think that because Adobe has to rectify quickly . I Ansonten Announce my subscription without notice and change to Cap . Especially helpful support is not as acu , but they do really as if they knew nothing .

[Steveatesh]

I trialled lR5 and found it laggy in some tools but still useable on a base spec retina imac.

I Have also trialled Capture 1 and found that it not only is a fantastic piece of software but uses the Gpu and was therefore a better experience than LR5 but still not perfect.

I Triialled Corel Aftershot Pro  2 which also uses the GpU and it flew, very quick and instant response on the retina imac even on full screen. sadly this program is no where near LR5 or Capture 1 in terms of ability and I have crossed it off my list.

But what it did prove to me at least is that there is nothing inherently wrong with the retina imac hardware, it is the software that needs to be re written to make full use of the GPU, something LR5 does not currently do.

personally I'm waiting for LR6 to be released in the hope they have addressed the issue by then. If not I will probably go down the Capture 1 route as it not only is an extremely capable image editor but it uses the GPU and benefits from this as a software tool.

HOw how did you find Capture 1 up to now?

[viva_la_zoom]

Steveatesh  those are exactly my thoughts. I've tried capture one recently and to be honest I really liked it. Great interface (love how you can redefine the whole space to suit your own workflow) and performance is definitely better than Lightroom on a maxed out riMac. Not so keen on the masks system but I could get used to. I'm, however, under strict deadlines at the moment so I can't really swap straight away, I'm waiting to see what Adobe brings (and when) with Lightroom 6 and decide then and there

GEoff - the greatest hardware works pretty well with lots of other bits of software so I don't think it's too much to ask that Lightroom (or any other software) runs better than on my 6 year old workstation

[Geoff the kiwi]

No one is saying that Lightroom won't run well on your riMac... it is a question of when and guess what, Adobe's release schedule is not tied to or governed by Apple's and vice versa.

The answer is ... it's on the radar.....

[natparnell1974]

I've also been struggling with this.  As a photographer I absolutely love the 5k screen but the poor LR Develop module performance has been really gutting.  I have the i7 processor with 32GB RAM (16GB Apple, 16GB Aftermarket) and the better of the two graphics cards and I was still experiencing issues with cropping, graduated filters and other functions, making LR virtually unusable at full resolution.  Working with LR taking up half the screen made it completely ok.

HOWEVER!  I have improved things no end by simply resetting the system PRAM (shut down, start computer and immediately hold down OPTION + CMD + P + R until you see the computer restart and you hear the second beep).  It's not completely sorted but I can now process photos in full screen without too much delay.  A massive improvement.

Felt I ought to post that in case it helps others.

[Badly Drawn Boy]

Anyone know why resetting PRAM would have any effect? I tried this and didn't notice much of a difference, if any.

[nitinchandra]

I saw this issue on higher resolutions with LR, but, the interesting fact is that if you try the same image in Camera Raw, that seems to work in real-time as expected. LR has major lags. Obviously, it is not a practical solution for daily use, but, if you have Bridge, you can try to do basic edits in camera raw rather than LR.

[Jao vdL]

‌You should add your vote and feedback to Lightroom: Stuttering on Retina 5k iMac.

Adobe does tend to pay attention to things there more than here.

[Bob Somrak]

Adobe is already aware as of a Nov 10 from Post #6 in this thread from Julie Kmoch of ADOBE.  I'm sure this is a hot item for the engineers.  As was said in post #44, why does Camera Raw sliders work well but Lightroom Develop doesn't.  Lightroom is probably doing more in the background but the basic RAW engine should be the same or similar.