P: (Windows) Panel is limited to 1600 items (folders, keywords, etc)

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Lightroom bug - hit a folder limit and unable to select the newly imported folder.452497 photographs across many drives in one catalog.The S drive has 214341 photos. It's the largest drive and so had many more folders than the previous drives.S:\Master Photos\ contains ~1633 folders. I know that's a lot but that is how her filing system was started. Those are the sequential numbers from 2220 - 3853 but there may be a sub folder or two or deleted folder in there so that's why the number is ~ approximate.Folders are labeled "sequential number"-"date" so 3853-20150316Adding one more folder caused Lightroom 4 to not allow the last folder to be clicked on and not show any images. The T:\ drive (offline, collapsed and below the S:\ drive) was collapsed and the label was overlaid on top of the "Collections" section label. Updated to latest version of Lightroom 5 via her new cloud account, had it rebuild the catalog and the same problem occurred.Created a sub folder S:\Master Photos\2012 and moved 15 of the folders into that folder. The 2012 folder was expanded so the list was actually one row larger and the last good folder wouldn't open. I collapsed the 2012 folder and now all the bottom folders were accessible.It appears there is an object limitation or a fixed array or something that is causing the folder list to become finite. She said a similar thing happens on her keyword list until she collapses some of the groups but I didn't check that out.

[M 15B9]

Ah, just as I suspected.

Thank you for the help,

M

[M 15B9]

Thanks for trying to help. My problem was with the 'line' limit to the number of pixel lines that the UI can display in the Folder panel, as @Rob_Cullen pointed out in his answer.

[johnrellis]

The limit is caused by a bug in Windows LR present from day one, which Adobe has decided not to fix.  When you hit the limit, LR can act wonky in many different ways. 

The workaround of keeping most folders, collection sets, and keywords collapsed helps, but it doesn't avoid all the bad symptoms. For example, typing into the Folder, Collection, or Keyword List panels' filter box can lock up LR for a minute or two at a time, regardless of whether the hierarchy is collapsed.  And you can't display the flat keyword list in the Keywords column of the Filter bar's Metadata browser (which is the only way to find keywords directly assigned a parent keyword).  

[johnrellis]

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography, please merge with the existing non-bug report:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/p-windows-limit-on-number-of-keywords-f... 

[Ivan CS Kuznetsoff]

When number of presets in Lightroom exceeds 2000 I've noticed huge slowdown in Library perfomance. I've noticed also some slowdown when number of presets is more then 1000.

I used total number of files in folder Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\Settings as number of presets.

Slowdown affected scrolling down through the catalog, listing photos, selecting photos and other operations in Library module.

Maybe this will be useful for somebody

My system is i5-8500 CPU, 32 Gb RAM, GeForce 1070 8Gb, SSD M2 (for catalog and system)

[dj_paige]

I can't imagine that Library performance is affected by previews in such a way that affects "scrolling down through the catalog, listing photos, selecting photos". This sounds more like a case where A is true, and B is true, so then you assume A must affect B ... which doesn't hold ... correlation is not causation.

Nevertheless, are all of your previews in one folder (with no subfolders)? What about virus checkers, are they set to check the folder(s) where your previews are located? Virus checkers should not do that.

What about other actions in LrC such as synchronizing with the cloud, address lookup, face detection? Turn them off or confirm that they are indeed off — don't tell me "I never use them" because that is not confirming that they are off, I want you to check and double-check to see by looking at the option that these options are set to off (or "Pause").

[SeanMcCormack]

The old .lrtemplate files were effectively lua programs and definitely impacted performance. It's part of the reason there was a change to XMP. 

There definitely was an issue with windows and long lists though, which may be part of what you're seeing. 

[GoldingD]

This is (or was) why Adobe changed what presets were in use, we're available, via managing presets. By this I mean, in the presets panel, click on +, and manage the presets, unchecking those you do not need. They did this because presets when in the thousands, was hindering performance. I suspect, a restart is required after doing so.

One possible issue. I have no idea if this is the case, but if you turn off a preset, does an image that you applied that preset to, get fouled up?

I should fess up, not a big preset user. basically use a total of one preset, zeroed, very useful to fujifilm X users.

[johnrellis]

Hmm, I wasn't able to reproduce that.  I wrote a script that created 5000 presets, and LR handled that just fine in my LR 12.0.1 / Mac OS 12.6.1.   

Did you try moving all the presets out of the Settings folder and observing improved performance?  That would be direct evidence that the presets were causing the performance problems (causation not correlation).

It's certainly conceivable that the number of presets could affect Library performance. The Quick Develop panel shows the most recent preset applied to the selection. If that lookup had a performance problem, then that could slow down many Library operations.

There is a long-standing performance bug with plugins' access to presets, caused by an elementary programming mistake that Adobe hasn't recognized or fixed:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/lightroom-perefomance-and-number-of-pre...

With thousands of presets, plugins aren't practically able to enumerate all presets.  It's possible that the Library UI sometimes also trips over the underlying cause of that bug.

Unfortunately, Adobe is very unlikely to investigate this, unless there was a simple recipe handed to them that reproduces the problem.  (That's why I wrote the test script.)

[Ivan CS Kuznetsoff]

Maybe it's just an Windows issue. I'm using Windows 10 21H2 LTSC. I move presets out of Settings folder when I'm working with Library to make it work faster and return them back when I'm working in Develop.

[SeanMcCormack]

No, the preset tells Lightroom what settings to apply. Once applied you could delete the preset without changing/losing the settings. 

[johnrellis]

"Maybe it's just an Windows issue."

Indeed it is. I tested my 5000 presets on my Windows test machine, and though I didn't experience sluggishness in Library, I did get this error at one point:

The Adobe Technote is years out-of-date, referring to features no longer present, but it does hint at the underlying problem:

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/error-restart-required-problem-menus.html

When I tried to scroll through all those presets in the Quick Develop preset menu, it only displayed the first 1163 presets.  In Develop's Present panel, it only displayed about the first 3200 presets.

This is yet another instance of a LR's poor implementation of its user interface on Windows, which also limits the number of keywords, collections, and folders displayed:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/p-windows-limit-on-number-of-keywords-f... 

The actual limit on the number of items depends on the current setting of Windows display settings and LR's current font size.  In those other panels, it's typically about 1600 or 3200. 

The bug has been present since the beginning, and it's clear Adobe will never fix it.

You may be able to avoid many of the bad symptoms by organizing your presets into groups, with no more than, say, 500 presets in a group.  A "group" is what LR calls a folder of presets that's displayed in the Presets panel -- it doesn't correspond to any disk subfolders.  Reorganizing that many presets in the LR Presets panel would be very painful, but you could use the free Fix Presets plugin.

[johnrellis]

Another instance of this problem: The Presets panel and the presets drop-down menu in Library Quick Develop.  This user reported disabling sluggishness in Library when his Settings folder contained 2000 presets:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/lightroom-perefomance-and-number-of-pre...

Moving the presets out of Settings eliminated the sluggishness.  This is likely due to LR trying to prepare a too-large menu for Quick Develop as he changes the selected photo.

[johnrellis]

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography, please merge with this existing bug:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/p-windows-limit-on-number-of-keywords-f...

[SeanMcCormack]

Thanks for this @johnrellis, it fleshes out my half remembered long list issue. 

[mastix]

This is a totally flawed component of Lightroom . It does not work correctly. Once you have many keywords, the program collapses. You cannot add anymore without seeing them. Trying to make a hierarchy might seem as a good solution, but it makes things worse, as then you have to deal with duplicate keywords in and out of the hierarchies. The List also becomes totally unresponsive once you have many keywords . You are not more allowed to drag and drop one or many keywords to a top hierarchy keyword if you have too many on the list and go to the lasts ones (something about a windows limit).

You can solve this creating "artificial" hierarchies like alphabet letters. But that brings a number of new problems. When you keyword and image. I use a Lightroom keyword plugin all those new keywords get saved outside the hierarchy. But you don't want to have them that way as if the lists becomes to long it will hit again the unresponsive problem because too many keywords. But now you have sometimes the same keyword inside and outside the hierarchy (if it is a new keyword no problem, but if it is one you have used before and put inside the letter you are on a road for headaches).

You cannot simply select a group of all letters with A now and throw them inside the A hierarchy because once Lightroom detects one of those duplicated you can not throw them all inside.

So now you have to go one by one and leave the duplicated one for later to deal with. Once you have done this (labor and time consuming) you now have to search for every duplicate one that is left out select the images , throw those images inside the duplicated keyword inside the hierarchy and delete the one outside the hierarchy ( DO NOT delete before you assign them to the one inside the hierarchy or those keywords will be deleted for those files).

All this could have been fixed by Adobe just letting us merge duplicate keywords or give us a click option do NOT create duplicate keywords and assign them wherever they where created first.

For me, this is by far the WORST implementation in Lightroom classic, and it gets not fixed over the years. Adobe is just not listening to customers here.

In my case, I don't recommend to anyone Lightroom as a Dam solution. For developing and retouching, yes. For classifying photos there are at the moment much better , advanced and above all responsive solutions.

[Paulou12]

Hi Wonder if someone could help understant and rectify this. My LRC keyword list stops to the letter N, instead of showing me from A to Z. Eventhough I have picture which I can see have keywords such as Television, sunset, etc, the list stops to N.

Thoughts???

Thanks,

Paul

[Ian Lyons]

See https://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/threads/keyword-list-1600-word-limit.42860/ Windows limits the number of entries in a list to 1600.

[Ian Lyons]

The same limiation also applies to folders, etc More details can be found at https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-windows-panel-is-limited-to-1600-items-folde...

 Note that the thread includes posts from 2015 through 2022

[Paulou12]

Would you happen to know if this is new, as before the last major update last fall I had from A to Z?

Thanks Ian!

[Ian Lyons]

The list has always been limted to 1600 entries on Windows. So, the question is - have you added more keywords to your lst since since you were able to use A to Z?

[Paulou12]

No I didn't add more to it, in fact I didn't add any. I just finished replacing my disk in my NAS this week and it was since last fall I hadn't gone to LRC and know that all of my backup and HHD have been replace, I went in LRC yesterday and notice this. Seems odd to me that that all my XMP file are still attached to my Pic's and I see them well laballed in LRC, but can,t see all of them in the keyword list when I search.

[Ian Lyons]

If you're sure that the keyword list hasn't changed, then you could try resetting the LrC preference file. This often fixes issues that otherwise leave us scratching our heads. Details of the procedure are given in Method 1 at https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/setting-preferences-lightroom.html

[Paulou12]

Thanks Ian, I read this with the hope it won't screw thing more ;)!

[johnrellis]

The limit is based on the current font size used in the Keyword List panel.  The panel can be at most 32,767 (2^15 - 1) pixels high.  So perhaps you had previously used a small font size and now are using a larger font size.  The font size is controlled by the LR Preferences > Interface > Font Size and by the Windows Display Scalling.