How i can speed up editing in Lightroom (cloud version)

[Esman K]

Hello

My lightroom is working slowly, this is especially noticeable when I select a preset or switch photos. I have a little idea how to speed up the Classic version, but I don't understand how I can do the same with Cloud Lightroom (the client is installed on a PC (Windows))
Classic works much faster. I have a normal internet connection (100mb/s)
Can you give me some advice? I'm trying to train myself to switch to the cloud version, it's really convenient, but noticeably slower processing drives me crazy.

[ray_chan]

Thanks for reaching out! 

Did you try selecting the option "Store a copy of all smart previews locally"?  It's primarily for offline editing but does also help with performance as the photo previews are cached locally instead of downloading from the cloud as you switch photos.  

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-cc/using/preferences.html

[Esman K]

Thanks for the reply.

No, I didn't include smart previews, because for some reason Lightroom gives me the option to save the cache and previews only on the Windows system disk С, without allowing me to select any other disk. I don't have a lot of space on the system disk. 

[Jao vdL]

The speed of the cloud version is really dependent on the speed of your internet connection. Storing local copies of your smart previews or even the orginals will help quite a bit but Lightroom still communicates back and forth to the internet all the time and so it is not the best choice for slowish internet connections. Working with large raw files excacerbates the problem. Lightroom Cloudy is really good for cell phone images and smaller raw files. It works well for larger raw files and photoshop psd/tiff if you have a fast connection such as fiber. If you deal with many large raw files and your internet is not so fast, it is much better to stay with Classic. You can use the cloud from there by selectively syncing only those images that you ant. These become fully editable on other devices through the cloud and edits sync back to Lightroom Classic. Bonus is that Classic only uploads smart previews which do not count against your cloud storage limit!

[Esman K]

Wow, interesting, thanks for reply

I would never have thought that my internet connection was the problem. I can easily watch 4k videos on YouTube at 60 fps without delay, downloading a movie at the same time. I suspect that then perhaps the nearest Adobe server is far away from me.

[Jao vdL]

Interestingly, 4k video is much less demanding of your internet connection than you would think. Typical 4k video is only 25 Mbits/s or so. A typical raw file is more like 50 megabytes nowadays. On a typical 100 Mbit/s connection, it takes at least 4 seconds to download that raw file. Typically when you are working with images in full screen view, it will download also the smart preview, so add at least another second. Oftentimes, Lightroom will only decide to download the raw image after you make a change like applying a preset (or even just previewing a preset). So switching between images will take several seconds if the image is not cached locally. This should be faster if you have already recently done something to the image. A few seconds doen't sound like much but it will really add to it feeling like molasses. Lastly, if you are at the same time uploading images and your connection is assymetric like typical cable internet connections (i.e. 100 Mbit/s down/10 up), it will take even longer to upload the images and when this is happening (the upload being saturated), typically, the download will slow down tremendously so it can get even worse. For a really fast Lightroom cloudy experience when editing raw files from modern cameras, I think you probably need a good symmetric fiber connection (i.e. 500 Mbit or higher both ways).  Slower connections than that and you will often have to be patient. Not unworkably slow but something to realize will be a limitation.

[Esman K]

I've been thinking about increasing my Internet speed for a long time, you gave me a very detailed answer, now I think it's really time to update my connection with a faster tariff. Thank you!