P: Desktop Memory leak on M1 Machines

[Minh0D4D]

Hi!

I am a software developer. Recently, my Lightroom CC (version 4.2 - 20210301-0713) is very slow . A close look at activity monitor reveals that the app consumes too many threads and memory (attached photos) which freezes the app.

ScreenShot20210505at18.20.28-ee51c157-d137-49cb-a5e5-f8f251f9a9ed-1057135810.jpg

@Rikk Can you help me forward this to the development team?

Thank you so much!

[Radoan A]

Noo low memory issue yet nor i used too much presets/effects. Just opend 85 raw which was taken by sony mirroless camera and then started loading slow even whole machine working slow. but no out of memory message. 

[Jao vdL]

What settings are you using on import? There are two things that will slow all machines down when importing. One is 1:1 preview generation. You generally don't want to do that. The 1:1 previews are not useful in develop (they are immediately discarded) and generating them for a big number of files will slow your machine terribly. Best speed option is to import using embedded previews and not generate smart previews nor 1:1 previews. Just know that the appearance of your images might change slightly going into develop as Lightroom's raw engine is different from the in-camera jpeg engine (embedded previews are generated by the camera). Second if you have automatic face recognition turned on, immediately turn it off. It slows down everything like crazy.

[Jao vdL]

So are you generating 1:1 previews or using face recognition? That would explain the behavior you are describing. It does that on all machines. Even if you are doing standard previews there would be slowdown while it is generating them. Another source for slowdown might be if you are importing the images to a slow external disk especially when working with very large files from high megapixel cameras. It will take much longer to load them into develop and you will get long pauses while shifting between images in develop. It can easily take 5 to 10 seconds to load a raw file from one of those cameras from an external USB hard disk. SSD disks are far faster and will show less of a delay shifting between images.

[Jao vdL]

Also, just noticed you only have a 256 GB SSD in your machine. How much of that is free (check in the Apple Menu -> About this Mac -> storage). You should have at least 25% of that drive free or you won't have enough space to swap memory on and your machine will be slow.

[Radoan A]

it's 185GB free still and i don't use this internal ssd for anything storage expect apps and data

[Jao vdL]

That's good. What are you using for image storage? Is your catalog on the SSD or somewhere else?

[Earth Oliver]

So, this thread is starting to sound like you just have buyers remorse and are looking for things to complain about. 
Anyway, in your Activity Monitor, go Window>CPU Usage. If you see all the meters maxed out, then your CPU is being used and you can't expect good performance until that settles. 

[Ian Lyons]

Jao,

I have no idea why @Radoan A iMac M1  is behaving as described.

I have a Mac mini M1 with 16GB or ram and 1TB SSD. So, other than the larger SSD and the display is a BenQ 4K SW271C having fewer pixels than the iMac M1 with 4.5k display, my system is the same as @Radoan A I bought it to see how it would compete with my late 2013 10-core 3GHz Mac Pro with of 64 ram and 2GB of VRAM. Other than importing and building previews it was absolutely hammered by the Mac mini M1. I've since retired the Mac Pro and use a MacBook Pro M1 Pro with 32GB or ram, 2TB SSD and 30 inch NEC  Spectraview Reference display (2560 by 1600 pixels).

Getting back to the issue @Radoan A  raised earlier, Using the Mac mini M1, I've just imported 450 Canon EOS R5 images (45MP each previously edited). The 1:1 previews are being built in background whilst I edit same in the Develop module without any sign of a lag. This includes spot heal, multiple AI masks per image plus brushes, graduated filters and radial filter. The only Toolbar edit that's not real time is the spot heal. Dragging any Develop module slider left or right prouduces a near instant change to the image. 

Note that Photoshop is also running.

Regarding the actual use of memory, CPU, etc. See below screen captures. Note that the CPUs are not maxed out, nor is the GPU. Memory is a different matter, but given how Adobe have chosen to allocate same when 12GB or more ram is  available, then this is what I expect. 

[Jao vdL]

>The 1:1 previews are being built in background whilst I edit same in the Develop module without any sign of a lag.

Wow, I am going to need to get me one of those 😉 I can't do that on my top-of-the-line i9 machine.

[Radoan A]

Catalog from internal drive.

[Radoan A]

Well, guys

I am running standard preview instead of 1:1 and my Raw files are 51mb plus per image and I'm a real estate photographer. 
even I made 60gb cache of raw. I'm going to see the cpu pressure and all others and taking some screenshot and posting here today later. 
It's 12.1 Monterey OS

will you suggest me some settings where I will change and see the performance again. 
I closed all other running apps for better performance but still same. 

[Radoan A]

I used 1:1 and going to change it and others mentioned nothing appearing on. 

[Radoan A]

Will check it today and give you a screenshot here 

[Earth Oliver]

Yes, the Lightroom Classic user experience in Windows is abysmal. I've been using a monster win10 machine for the past 3 years and hated every minute of it. Importing, Exporting, Rendering, Tagging, etc and solo tasks only and usually require so much CPU that the machine becomes unusable for the duration. I've bugged the issues so many times and got nowhere. I eventually had to give up and bought an M1 and i can finally use Classic without wanting to toss my machine in the garbage.

[Conrad_C]

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@Radoan A wrote:

I am running standard preview instead of 1:1 

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Make sure you are OK with the Standard Preview size.

When Standard Preview is set to Auto, the pixel dimensions of the preview are based on the display being used. For the Retina resolution Mac displays (or HiDPI Windows displays), a Standard Preview can potentially have very large pixel dimensions, and of course larger pixel dimensions mean more time and memory required to build each one. For some combinations of display settings and camera sensor pixel dimensions, a Standard Preview might be close to the pixel dimensions of a 1:1 preview.

The Auto Standard Preview size shown below, 3600px, is the default for how my 14" MacBook Pro M1 Pro display is set. I assume that the default Standard Preview pixel dimensions for the 16" must be even larger. I don’t like how much the larger sizes tie up my CPU generating previews on import, so I like to set the preview to Embedded & Sidecar (no processing needed, just show the preview already attached to the raw file), and then generate Lightroom Classic previews on demand.

If you do prefer to have Standard Previews generated, but you think it takes too much CPU or RAM, you can choose smaller Standard Preview dimensions.

[Ian Lyons]

@Conrad_C

The native resolution for the 16-inch is 3456px. When the Apple Display Settings are set to the default scaling the resolution is 1728px, but then LrC doubles this back up to 3456px. See below screenhot.

Apple specs for the 14-inch would suggest that you're not using the Apple default scaling in Display Settings

[Conrad_C]

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@Ian Lyons wrote:

Apple specs for the 14-inch would suggest that you're not using the Apple default scaling in Display Settings

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Absolutely correct, and very perceptive of you. I do use the More Space setting (to fit more UI on the screen), and that equals a 1x UI size of 1800 px wide. As it is a Retina display at 2x scale factor, Lightroom Classic decides that the Auto size for Standard Previews should be 2x 1800, or 3600 px.

[Radoan A]

@Jao vdL @Conrad_C @Earth Oliver @Flawless_Wizard15B9 
Guys, here is the setup and info of mine

[Hector22658901gj45]

would this help with illustrator/

[freddym45031525]

New Macbook 16 with 16GB RAM.  I iinstalled the Lightroom (Cloud) from the adobe creative cloud.  When I open the software the RAM is pegged to the point where I can't open anything else without massive warnings about SWAP usage because RAM is pegged. 

If I close everythiing else and just use LR, I can get by but that's not acceptable, definitely something wrong with its memory usage. 

[maxphotography]

Just giving this a +1. I've had the issue on my old Intel iMac and had hoped moving to an M1 would help. No luck; using an M1 Pro with 16GB RAM and I'm having the exact same situation. LR Classic uses 15-16GB RAM and won't let it go until I quit and restart. 

Adobe--this is so frustrating. I've posted about this memory leak on these forums before. 

[Jeff_Warner]

New Studio Ultra with 128GB ram (20cpu 48gpu), current versions of all OS (Monterey v12.3.1) and software (LR v11.3.1, PS v23.3.1). Despite setting memory limits in Photoshop preferences (and what little I can control with Lightroom), both PS and LRc will routinely and quickly gobble up ram to the point that I get an OS error ('out of application memory'). LR is the bigger offender.

This just happened to me with LR open and being used (cloning headshots, maybe 60x/image), PS closed; ram usage shot up to 98GB over the course of maybe 30 minutes, and then I got the OS error, requiring me to close LR. Oddly, Activity Monitor showed 0.0 bytes of memory being used. PS set to 55% memory limit; when open editing large panoramas, it will often exceed that and head toward 100+GB; unfortunately LR does not allow you to limit memory usage, although it's a moot point since PS does not respect the limits set, anyway.

Three screenshots of Activity Monitor from the last several days included below.

This is becoming way worse than the years-old memory leak on Intel machines (longtime user, coming from 2021 5k iMac i9 w/128GB). One would think that having ample ram would help issues like this, but it seems to matter not.

[aapPT]

How come are we still adressing this? How come this is still an issue? 

It seems even worst now, even without GPU aceleration LR just keeps wanting more and more RAM, makes no sense.

[MrhoniKeith]

M1 Mac Studio Ultra with 128gb ram.  Monterey 12.3.1.  LR Classic 11.3.1

I was just editing some photos in LR Classic and got out of memory errors and LR froze.  I checked Activity Monitor and I didn't think to look directly at LR for its memory usage, but saw Memory Used at 108gb.  Activity Monitor showed LR not responding, however after a minute or less LR unfroze and I quit LR.  Looking at Activity Monitor it seems that LR may have grabbed about 70gb of memory.

I had been using a 2015 iMac with 32gb ram, not on Monterey, and never got that type of message, just LR was slow sometimes.

[Flawless_Wizard15B9]

The latest version of Lighroom Classic (11.3.1) is very unstable.  It regularly crashs upon closing the program jusrt for me (runnin a 2021 14" MBP).

Part of the issue is the programing language that Adobe uses (Lua) and (IMHO) part that some of the apps/applets that Creative Clod (misspelled purposely) installs are still Intel-based and rely upon Rosetta 2. It just seems mixing Intel and Apple Silicon apps by Adobe just don't play well together.