Lightroom CC is slow...

[bmeiri]

My PC specs are:

Motherboard: Asus Z170-AR

Processor: Intel i7-6700K (4.0/4.2 GHz Turbo

Graphics: EVGA GTX 970 4GB SC

RAM: 32GB, DDR4, 3000 MHz (2X16GB)

Operating System: Windows 7, installed on Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD

Catalogs stored on the SSD

Photos stored on WD Black HDD

I believe that this is quite powerful PC. However, I still experience slow down when working with Lightroom CC, especially after running it for a few hours. Restarting Lightroom helps for some time but then it slows down again. It is slowing down after merging to HDR for example (in Lightroom). It is also very slow when converting 20-30 files from DNG to JPEG at once. It makes everything slow, until the operation is completed.

I have configured Lightroom the way I have learned to be the best:

Use Graphics Processor - Enabled

I generate 1:1 previews  and keep them for 7 days (Used to be 30 days - No difference)

Preview quality: Low (It used to be High and the Medium - No difference)

Standard Preview Size: Auto (1920px) - Same as my monitor size

The files that I process are DNG, from a 36 MPX camera. Some are standard (50MB) and some are in-camera HDR (150MB)

Any suggestions to improve the performance? Where do you think my bottleneck is?

[bmeiri]

So turning off GPU at what point? After brushing and before lens correction? Or turn it off completely? What is the logic behind this action?

The CPU that I use is Intel i7-6700k and according to a bench test that I have read, only the Intel i7-7700k was faster, and by no more than 2-4% so I guess I will skip this for now..

[_raden]

Yes, you have the exact same problems with me and almost everyone else and it is terribly frustrating to even work with lightroom. It has gotten slower and performs much worse on every update or upgrade. So, everything you said slows LR down and you have to close it and then reopen LR again. Especially, with heavy editing with brushes, radial filter, spot healing, etc., and the other tools such as that. It really slows down dramatically but mine now quits working for a few seconds and then disappears completely and then it will reappear but nonresponsive or LR has quit working and you do have to wait for a while and try to close it and restart it again. I have used LR since early LR3 and every upgrade has gotten worse. I have to delete all of my editing history as that really slows it down too. I would welcome any new suggestions that you may offer as I have read, researched and studied every manual and book published by Adobe and all the other well known authors so I try to make sure that I do maintenance and double check a list of the very same things that have been suggested now for a long time. I did add new memory to now at 16 that did help some. Thank you. Raden Adams

[J_Maness_Photography]

IMO I find it kind of ridiculous to not use a tool in LR to avoid it, just because photoshop has the same tool.  If Adobe is selling a product then that product should work flawless when the required specs are met and/or exceeded.  To simply avoid the issue to make life easier, is only making matters worse by not screaming at Adobe to fix the ongoing issue that LR has when being used on a PC.  So lets call Adobe out and say "GET OFF YOUR LAZY A$$ AND ACTUALLY FIX THIS PROBLEM."  That is all.. This rant is over Have a wonderful evening

[BobRockefeller]

How is the external hard rive connected? USB-3? Something else?

[bmeiri]

What do you mean? The HDD is not external. I store the images on internal HDD and the operating system & catalogs on SSD

[BobRockefeller]

Oh, OK. That should be fine.

[bmeiri]

Thank you all for your advices.

One thing that seems to be improved a lot is exporting DNG to JPEG speed, after disabling GPU. This was very helpful. Thanks

[Frank Nadeau]

Same story here.

I have dual XEON with 8 cores each. 96 GIG of ram. OS on a single SSD (and assigned Adobe CACHE there), Database of lightroom on a separate PCIe Memory storage (more 12GB/s of transfer). All the images are on a 12x3TB SAS RAID5 Storage (for fast ready access). And dual GTX 1080 Video card. Editing only on 1440P on my screen.

I'm able to edit 4K DCI video content at 60pfs live on my system, but I'm not able to edit a shooting of 200 RAW pictures without having to wait and wait and wait to lightroom to came alive.

I have monitored CPU, Hard drive access, memory access, and nothing even get 25% of the system resources.

I have build and tweak my system to get better performance on Lightroom,Bbut now I really suspecting huge mistake in the code. I already saw (and this is history for Adobe) huge memory leak when using it. But even there this is not a problem, because have have plenty of RAM. I have even try to start with fresh Lightroom data without any sucess.

It is now slow as some time, image remain stock, even if we are switching to another one.

Very hope Adobe will fix this problem.

Frank

[dj_paige]

For some reason, dual Xeon CPUs have been reported to be slow; and furthermore somewhere in the forums a solution has been posted. I suggest you search for it.

[ThaiBear]

Fixed!

I wish I could find the all the places I have posted about Lightroom on large files and 4k being unusable.  I bought a couple of new camera bodies that are 30meg and 50 meg pixel sensors and have started shooting a lot of 4k video.  I could see that Lightroom was slower with the larger files (some 60megs), but I wanted to see the increase in clarity that I thought I should see.  So I bought a couple of 4k  (4096x2160), 99.9% adobe 1998 screens with 2 Nvidia 1070's.  My machine was a I7 2790 4 core with 32 megs of ram.    Although Photoshop showed me detail that I had never seen before on my HD monitors, LIghtroom became all but unusable. 3 seconds to spot heal or load a new picture. So many times, the screen would just blank for a couple of seconds.  It was very frustrating.  I was loading full size previews and using the GPU.  I tried various changes in the setup, turning off the GPU, increasing cache, and decreasing the preview size.  All had minor effects and I just had to alter my work flow to avoid LIghtroom.... until:

I just completed another upgrade to my machine.  A new MSI G.L.G. 2011-3, x99a motherboard with an i7 6950x 10 core processor and 128megs of 3000hz DDR4. 

I still have medium previews selected, now with 8gb of cache on an SSD.  I have the GPU selected and I'm using SLI on the two Nvidia 1070's. 

So I have made a bunch of changes, and I can't be sure which are helping, but Lighroom is back to enjoyable to use as a great tool to process many photographs.  It's as if I turned back the clock to a 12 megapixel camera, HD video and HD screen resolution. 

Still to say, that it does seem as if Lightroom needs a refresh to be 4k compatible at a lower cost to the user. 4k is here and the level of detail is such a great tool to grade and edit photo's and video it has become necessary.

Win 10.0.14393

3 LG IPS LED 31MU97C monitors (4096x2160/60hz each)

2 NVidia 1070's / SLI

128gigs Corsair DDR4 3000mhz

MSI X99A G.L.G. Carbon

[MarvinHeston]

Security software of any kind really bogs LR down.  For example I started an export the other day of 5,000+ images.  It ran for 40+ hours and only exported around 3,000 images.  I stopped the export, disabled my antivirus and malware software and started the export again and all the images were exported in less than 6 hours.  I know that 6 hours sounds like a long time, it was flying when you understand that it was doing fisheye correction, rotation 1°, noise reduction, in addition to normal color and lighting.

I really hate disabling my protection, but it really messes with Lightroom.

Hardware

Windows 7 64bit

64 Gigs of RAM

2 - Xeon E5-2640 CPU - each with 8 cores

PNY Quadro K5200 with 8 Gigs of VRAM

10,000 rpm drives with over 200 gigs of free space

100 Gigs of Cache

[F. McLion]

Instead of disabling simply exclude the folders with your catalog, previews and the photos and see if this helps.

[MarvinHeston]

Good suggestion, but for people like me who create a different catalog for every event, excluding individual folders is not really practical, especially since I move catalogs to other drives when not active.

Marv

[F. McLion]

I don't know your workflow. However, for most situations a single catalog is far more convenient.

Most AV solutions also offer to exclude file types next to folders. I have set these exclusions for the real-time scanner:

[Jeff_Owen77777]

Adobe needs to do something. There are way too many people saying the same things. There is a serious problem with CC. You forced us all to go to CC and pay monthly and now the program is nothing like what we used to buy and run on our machines.

If you can't get it fixed then give us back the option to buy programs again or better yet support the ones we already paid for so we can keep using them.

There is nothing we are doing wrong with our computers or lightroom settings. I have read hundreds of threads by people with wildly different set ups and nothing works for any of them (or at best they get a marginal improvement that only works for a short time). You have ruined a good decent program with CC. Please do not act like you don't know it too. It is obvious from the responses that we all read from  adobe techs that you are clueless or hiding the real reasons as to why it is happening. Why don't you just tell everyone that you all use macbook pros because that is what adobe gives us to use and if don't use the same setups we are out of luck.

One of the most advanced programs on the planet is not working and you are doing nothing.

[F. McLion]

Adobe has officially acknowledged that there are performance issues in LR and is working on solving these with utmost priority.

I'd expect to see a substantial  improvement soon.

[Jeff_Owen77777]

Ok so I will put in my 2 cents on how I have sped it up. If you read my last comment I am still upset with Adobe for lack of attention to working with this issue. They say they are working on the problem so let's see what happens. I do love the program.

Several things to make sure do and don't do.

The number 1 thing you can do to speed up lightroom is use a separate internal ssd for the catalog and smart previews. I create a new catalog for each new event, and put that with my smart previews on an internal, separate SSD drive from operating system and raw files.

After editing I import the catalog into a master catalog. This keeps my catalogs small and fast when initially editing.

After importing files into lightroom and generating smart previews, I rename the raw file folder slightly forcing lightroom to use the smart previews (after smart previews are generated). Checking the check box for using smart previews in preferences isn't working. You can tell in develop mode when you look under histogram that it is still using the standard preview first. When I rename the raw file folder it forces smart preview usage. Before exporting I change the folder name back so lightroom uses the raw files for exporting and not the smart previews.

There are lots of preference settings that people recommend and I suggest you research those too but the above is by far the best performance increase I have been able to consistently get.

Another thing that will happen is when editing is that lightroom will begin to slow down the more changes to photos you make (especially brushes). Not sure what is causing this (maybe history steps?) but if you shut lightroom down and restart the performance returns. 

Graphics processor can actually slow down lightroom unless you have a 4k monitor and fast graphics card.

[harriet_el]

Lightroom CC has been running much slower for me since the last two major updates. I am planning to upgrade my machine and have landed on a mulititude of these discussions about Lightroom slowness and how it is worse with a faster machine. This is unsettling because I need a faster machine with more storage and RAM but am now concerned that I will have more problems with Lightroom. Hopefully Adobe will have fixed this problem by the time I upgrade. Every commment I have read talks about the problems occurring and becoming worse with a faster machine. I assumed it was because I have an older machine. The primary areas of slowness for me are using the adjustment brush and the heal/clone tools. It does not matter the order in which I use these tools, how many photos I have, size of catalog, etc. What does affect the increasing slowness is how long I'm in the program. Because of the age of my machine I have no other programs running while using Lightroom (taking a photo into Photoshop is a challenge). I have done some things that have helped alleviate the issues with the adjustment tool and healing/clone tool. The main problem with the adjustment brush is that the mask would not show no matter how long I brushed or erased (with visibility on). Often when lifting the brush away I would get a mask streak across the screen. My semi-solutions: For Masking: 1) Turn off auto mask. This makes a HUGE difference. Use Ctrl key when getting close to an edge. 2) Brush before using any adjustments or presets. 3)Turn off all pins. Also makes a big difference 4) Never use GPU acceleration--this is a useless tool and I believe the cause of most of the slow-down problems across all of Lightroom. For Healing/cloning: 1) Never have pins on. With pins off I can heal/clone endlessly and on top of others. However the more work the slower the changes occur, but I can keep on using the tool. 2) If I need to move the pin to a better source point, only turn on selected pin, move to new spot and turn off pins again. 3) If clone or heal continue to pick a bad source, switch from one to the other then back, i.e. healing source is bad, change to clone to get better pixels, turn back to heal. I call these semi-solutions because I shouldn't have to go through all of this to use Lightroom's tools. Also Lightroom eventually gets tired and I have to quit for the day. Other areas of slowness: stepping back in history, sliders not sensitive. I absolutely believe that the majority of Lightroom's slowness problems increased dramatically with the last 2 updates. The GPU acceleration is useless and any "animated" tool or button causes serious issues. It also seems that a faster computer should not worsen the problem. Faster computers don't seem to have problems with other Adobe programs that I'm aware of. I have seen hundreds of people leave for other programs, especially Capture One. This is a years long software issue that Adobe needs to fix. By the way, these issues are similar in Adobe Camera Raw and their adjustment pins, which are large and ridiculous, are so touchy it takes forever to hit the right one to make changes. If Adobe is going to update their programs, those updates have to be able to run on faster computers. I hope some of this info helps.

[gschlact]

Thanks for the Lightroom  tips in this last post, especially about turning off pins to clone over cloned areas!

Performance Issue fix: TURN OF GPU

I recently went from LR 5.7 to CC and saw performance drop on my machine. (Internal and external SSD s)  Develop mode switching photos was slower. But what was unusably slow was simple Crop mode. Each photo took 4 second simply to enter crop mode. This seemed to happen whether I was using medium smart previews or full image. I mean 4 seconds simply to enter the crop mode (not the actual cropping or rotating !) Imaging 300 shots to edit , that 20 minutes of doing absolutely nothing but waiting to do your edit 😞

I made one change, turned off my Intel 4000 GPU AND VOILA, INSTANTANEOUS entry to crop mode and next photo in Develop mode.

So FWIW, LR seems inhibited by using gpu despite having the option in preferences.

-Guy

gschlact

[LePetitPecheur]

hi,

check your antivirus solution.

I had massive performance issues only with Lightroom on two computer: laptop (i5, 8gb, ssd, intel HDgraphic) and workstation (i7, 16gb Ram, SSD, nvidia 1060 with 6gb)

Use of graphic card disabled in LR on laptop and enabled on workstation ()

Other software like Visual Studio, Office, Video editing etc.. worked fine.

I used Bitdefender Antivirus 2017/18, but i think this could be the case with other antivirus software, too.

The antivirus interferes like this:

1. it checks LR Catalog/pictures  and preview cache (which is under heavy use of lightroom, this leads to a lot of i/o traffic (and antivir action)

2. it checks loaded exe and dll of lightroom application (this leads to seconds of "what the hell is it doing?" in develop module when moving sliders or flipping through images)

2 Solution^s:

1. make exclusions in Antivir for LR Catalog/pictures  and preview cache AND  Lightroom app folder/subfolders. Just everything that has to do with LR

2. use another antivir which is less stressing for Lightroom

I tried the second approach: Uninstalled Bitdefender and used the default ms defender solution of windows 10.

In short:  Now my lightroom is fast, even on my small laptop with mediocre hardware.

[J_Maness_Photography]

What is the MS Defender solution?  I'm willing to try that.

[F. McLion]

That only applies if you use Microsoft Defender (Anti-Virus software) on your PC.

Whatever Anti-Virus solution you use, make sure to have the LR catalog, the preview folder as well as your RAW format on the exclusion list (see above).

[marim63222609]

Lightroom is taking 300% of my CPU especially when using masking, cloning, cropping or other tools.

I tried to turn off everything in preference - performing ( thanks for the tip even tho it didn't help).

This has already postponed two days of my delivery time to a client, it's incredible how slow my working now is when I have to wait 30 sec the brush even to show up!

Lightroom is now just a super expensive catalogue system. Does anyone know any other good editing programs?