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!

[dj_paige]

Use the "Insert Photos" icon.

[Radoan A]

[Radoan A]

Should i wait for next update? I have talked with Apple and they are talking about third party apps. So i decided to post here even another issue of Photoshop on their community. But there is no positive response 

[Jao vdL]

You clearly have changed the color scheme looking at your screenshot though so I would still try resetting the pointer color and the color scheme. Try running Lightroom using a fresh username and password (just create a new user in "Users & Groups" and log out and log back in as that new user and run Classic there. If it stops giving you high memory pressure (orange or red in the memory pressure graph) something is wrong in your original user setup. Also try resetting the Lightroom Classic preferences in the original user (hold shift+option+delete while starting Lightroom Classic). 

[Radoan A]

I didn't change anything though, i will take your advice and will do all setps and see what i get. I will update you here. Thanks 

[Earth Oliver]

What exactly are you worried about here? Ps and Lr are both very memory intensive and what you're seeing is 100% expected.

[Flawless_Wizard15B9]

Radoan

What you're seeing is a known isssue.  LrC and Photoshop are memory pigs...period.  While there are some memory leak concerns with macOS Monterey, the bigger issue is how much memory that PS and LrC utilize,

From a developer friend, part of the issue is the coding program (Lua) that Adobe uses.  Another issue may be that some of Adobe's applets are still written for Intel and use Rosetta 2.  It's in Adobe's court to fix - and they are aware of the issues.

[Radoan A]

Nothing improved with all those steps I've tried. 

[Radoan A]

The machine using extra ram and swap memory with those two apps. Is this normal and safe to use like this way?

[Radoan A]

You are correct. I noticed still few parts are loading from intel through Rosetta maybe and that will be a cause of extra memory use. Perhaps Final Cut Pro when I'm using with 4k footage it's taking maximum 3GB or ram which is very normal. But this LrC is totally insane 

[Ian Lyons]

> I noticed still few parts are loading from intel through Rosetta maybe and that will be a cause of extra memory use.

Lightroom Classic (LrC) is not using Rosetta 2 but like all of the Creative Cloud applications, it won't run unless the Creative Cloud App (CC App) is installed.

The Intel (Rosetta 2) based components you see in Activity Monitor are services associated with the CC App, and these services use around 3-4 hundred MB. If you Quit the CC App a few services will continue to run intermittently in the background. Some of these services are still Intel based and some are Apple based.

As mentioned above, LrC will not run unless the CC App is installed. However, the CC App does not need to be running for LrC to run.

Does any of above address why LrC is using seemingly excessive amounts of memory? Nope but hopefully puts the use of Rosetta 2 firmly into the 'not the reason' box.

[Jao vdL]

Using all the RAM is actually a good thing. You WANT your computer to use as much as possible. Modern operating systems do this to speed up recuring actions and it should automatically and very fast release memory if it is needed for something new. So in general you should not wory about this. You should only worry about it if the memory pressure goes so high that you see red spikes and even then only if it results in very slow behavior (basically the computer locking up for short periods). If you don't see this, don't worry.

I was surprised at seeing orange in your memory pressure with just Lightroom and Photoshop open but that really depends on what you did before that screenshot. If you just had an editing session in both, it is normal. If you just opened them, that is very abnormal.

There are memory leaks in Lightroom and Photoshop on M1 architectures. If your computer doesn't completely bog down suddenly, don't wory about them. You can't hurt your computer by using its RAM memory.

[Radoan A]

Well, this is not startup screen and yeah i did editing on it and got higher memory use.  I didn't face any slower issues either. But i am worried because if it become higher and higher then might need extra ram which will not be able to add with this new iMac 2021 M1.  Very Important: Do you think adobe gonna fix memory leaks issue in the future so i can wait for a better memory release in future?

[Radoan A]

Yes LrC and PS are native but creative cloud running with few intel still. Which i already said to adobe support agent but didn't hear anything positive. 

[Jao vdL]

DOn't wory about it. It will just swap the memory it doesn't need out to the SSD drive or simply release it (i.e. delete  the memory pages that are stale) when it reaches the full memory point. This is how modern operating systems are designed. If you don't notice it bogging down terribly there is nothing to worry about. For sure Adobe will release updates that make it more efficient with memory (or less pernicious holding on to memory pages that it will never need again) but you will not really notice a difference. The memory utilization thing is mostly a red herring and very often misunderstood. Modern machines with fast SSD drives and high memory bandwidths have very little problems with this and the graphs you can get are mostly misleading.

[Radoan A]

I am trusting you and i really need this. because i am a photographer and i use just two of those adobe apps and started using final cut pro and trust me this machine is just awesome for that. I tried 4k even 8 and got just 3gb of ram using and no lag on the preview section.  I need to keep this machine running at least the next couple of years as i am a new Mac user.

[Earth Oliver]

Don't worry, your applications and computer are doing exactly what they were designed to do. My advice is to just close the activitiy monitor and get back to work 😃

[Radoan A]

Haha. Just finished talking with Apple senior advisor and she also said don't worry about this way. You are fine. But you, i had a high configured windows machine and i enjoyed working with. 
Still i would keep this question up for few days to see if anybody suggest anything else. Thanks 

[Whitney Dunn]

I'm running into memory pressure from Lightroom too on an M1 Pro 16GB. Here's a screenshot showing it ballooning to 8.8GB after opening it, browsing through a few folders, and lightly editing two files (no local corrections). This is the only app that seems to put the Mac under this kind of stress. 

[Whitney Dunn]

Also, you can see clearly from the memory pressure graph where I opened Lightroom.

[Whitney Dunn]

Providing a little more context which may be helpful. 

First: Lightroom 5.1 (20211204-1710-0e71941 Build). MacOS 12.2 Beta (21D5039d). (Yes, it's a beta. The same problems occurred on 12.1. I upgraded to see if it fixed them; it didn't.)

Test. I put 30 D7500 NEFs in a folder in Lightroom and Apple Photos, none with any existing adjustments, and then ran the following test: start at the first image, hit the 'auto' button for adjustments, scroll through each image as quickly as possible and at the last one again hit 'auto'. So effectively that's browse a folder of 30 images and adjust two. And when I say folder I mean it's a normal dumb folder in my main library with only these images in it. Before running the test I switch to the folder, quit the app, then restart it so it opens directly there with, hopefully, no other images loaded in memory.

And one additional test for Lightroom: I ran it again with 'Use Graphics Processor' in Preferences > Performance switched to 'Off'. For the first run it was set to the default of 'Auto'.

Results: Photos consumed 1.14 GB of memory; Lightroom with use graphics processor switched to auto used 7.6 GB; with it switched to off, 1.45 GB. 

Hypothesis: there may be a leak or bug with the M1 series and their unified memory architecture when LR's use graphics processor setting is switched to auto.

[Radoan A]

Guys! When I'm working on RAW files this machine going to be death and mouse dancing automatically. Tried clean reinstalling but nothing fixed. 
I don't why I purchased this machine 😞 

[Ian Lyons]

Can you be more specific about what your issue is? Previously, you were concerned about memory use and swap but performance was ok.

[Radoan A]

it was using more memory that time with a few images on lightroom. But yesterday i loaded 85 raw files and then it started slow working and mouse was not moving smootly because of lag. 

[Jao vdL]

Yeah agree with Ian, this seems different to your original post. Just pressure on memory is normal but it shouldn't start beach balling like mad. Here you are talking about the machine basically freezing up. Do you get the "out of memory" message? Or does it just slow down? Note that cetain things in Classic will bring even the fastest machines to their knees. Extensive masking using bushes is one of those things that does not scale to more than 10 brush masks for example and it never has. Any computer will buckle under that even the "magical" M1 machines.