Lightroom Share is getting bogged down in "Rendering" phase -- so slow, please help!

Report · Jan 24, 2024

I regularly share batches of 50-100 photos from Lightroom CC (iPhone 13 w/ current iOS) and I have always used "Share" to send directly to my laptop or iMac via Airdrop. Never had this problem before but now I'm completely stopped here:

Just upgraded to the newest Lightroom mobile version. Now, when I "Share" the photos, they go into "Rendering" mode and it takes FOREVER or just never finishes, and I'm talking about less than 50 images. This just started after deleting the old version and upgrading to the new one. I WANT THE OLD ONE BACK.

Why is this happening? How to make it stop? In the "Rendering" phase it will say, quite literally, "This may take a while" and it's not kidding. It bogs down around image 10-12 and I get this message.

Please for the love of all that is holy, help me.

Report · Jan 25, 2024

Thanks, ChatGPT

Report · Jan 25, 2024

I don't understand why you can't edit or delete posts on this forum? I got a weird totally unhelpful ChatGPT reply to my post! Super annoying. Oh well, never mind that. I just wanted to attach a pic of what I'm experiencing - Here I'm only trying to export 10 images, and it's bogging down on the SECOND image, and I captured this on image four. Each image takes 10-15 seconds to "Render" - what is going on? Please someone help me. I've deleted and reinstalled Lightroom, and my iOS is current at the most recent update (17 I believe). I'm in a near-total work stoppage till I can figure this out otherwise I have to abandon this ecosystem.

Report · Jan 25, 2024

Report · Jan 29, 2024

Curious - what format are the files in the Lightroom library on the iPhone, and what format are you choosing in the Share dialog to then export via Airdrop? Also, are you using masking (particularly AI masking) or lens blur at all before sharing? Both of those are pretty resource-intensive and can take a bit to actually render.

I'm actually finding in some quick testing (on both an iPhone 12 and iPad pro 11" 2nd gen) of a batch of 84 that I see the same behavior, and it gets "stuck" (goes very slowly) on an image with lens blur. If I try to export that one image, not as a batch, with the same settings... it still takes forever (original a 23MB Enhanced DNG with some edits + lens blur; no masks, exporting to JPG). It gets there in the end, but almost looks like it's stuck along the way. So I think it's potentially an individual image rendering very slowly and not the overall batch that's a problem. If you can see which image(s) it gets stuck on in your batches, I'd check the individual image and see if you similarly have an issue. And, the format/size, and if it uses lens blur or a mask.

I've also tested a 1.1MB HEIC original with lens blur shared to JPG (same JPG settings) and it had no issue with that. Resolution of the image was the same, just a different format (and file size, obviously), so it may be either coming from the DNG format or the much larger file size that's the issue. But, lots of variables at play.

If—as you say—this hasn't been a problem in previous updates of the mobile app, and you've been able to handle the exact same file format situation/same amount of actual editing on the photos, I might move this to file as a bug report in that forum with all the specifics. A moderator might just be able to move this thread over. If you're doing the exact same process as before that worked fine, and it's suddenly slowed horribly, that obviously seems like an unintended issue!

I can't explicitly confirm if this used to go quicker or not on a previous mobile version for me... though I feel like I must have exported a DNG with lens blur at some point on a previous version of the mobile apps and not had an issue in the past?

Report · Jan 29, 2024

Thanks for your reply. Yup, this is new for this version and I've changed nothing about my process. How do I get this reported as a bug? I'm new here 🙂

As for the type of images, it does this as either DNG or JPG. There's zero editing on my part, no blurs or anything, it's just straight up taking a pic in the lightroom app, then attempt to export or share. It is interesting to me that it's happening for you (or at least, you're noticing a slowdown) with the blur. I wonder if I have some setting on that is adding in an edit I'm not aware of.. I'll check into that. In the meantime I've settled on an unfortunate workaround which involves saving all the images to my device (iPhone camera roll) then sharing via airdrop to my desktop where I work with the images. It's clunky and adds a step, but at least when it "renders" to device storage it goes super fast in comparison. The biggest issue is that it reverses the order for some reason, which isn't a huge deal for me but it is weird and somewhat annoying.

Anyway thanks again for your reply!

Report · Jan 29, 2024

Huh, interesting. I was having the same slowness with the DNG+lens blur export to the camera roll, too, so it may be we're running into different issues.

One other idea, given your goal: Have you tried the "Export As..." rather than "Share..."? That lets you just export the actual original file without converting it into another format, which should essentially bypass the rendering step. If you're going jpg > jpg via Share, you may actually be adding unwanted lossiness, too. Export then drops you into the same share sheet where you can AirDrop.

Re bugs: There's a separate bugs forum as part of the community (this post is in the "discussions" section)—not sure if they move threads like this over automatically sometimes, or if you'd need to write a new one in that section.

Report · Aug 09, 2024

I'm also experiencing exactly the same issue! Did you get a fix?