I would just like to add my voice to the growing audience of folks who find that Lightroom 4 is slow, I mean really slow.  I haven't changed a thing on my hardware/OS configuration - Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q9300 with a 6MB L2 Cache running at 2.5 GHz, 8GB Memory, Nvidia GeForce GT220 (1GB) Graphics card,  1TB HD running under Win 7 Premium Home, 64 bit.  How slow is it - well I would say things that were done almost instantaneously under LR3, now take a few seconds or more under LR4.  It is slow to the point of being absolutely frustrating.  I did not use the Beta version.  I am using my "old" catalog that I imported.  Not sure if that is an issue or not.  As well, I am converting images to the "new" process as I go along, with new imports being done under the new, 2012, process.

If this is the best they can do, then I will go back to LR3 until they can make it move faster, but I guess I can't do that can I as I have imported my old catalog - lessons learned - I supposed I could always return to one of the backup versions as I do a backup every day - hmmmm.  I am not really interested in work-arounds - shades of Microsoft???

WesternGuy

In following some of the instructions that I've seen people post, I have created 1 to 1 previews of the wedding I'm editing, upped the cache to 200gb, cleared out over 300gb of images on my main hard drive and now I'm back to working on these pictures and I honestly believe that LR4 is slower now than it was 2 hours ago. It's so unresponsive that when I select an image, it takes 3-5 seconds before it actually shows as the selected. If I try to move a slider, it hesitates and eventually moves after a few seconds, often times yielding various results because I want minor tweaks as I'm looking at the image but I can't get them. When trying to Sync the develop settings across a handful of images, you might as well forget it. You'd think I'm trying to render a Hollywood blockbuster on a laptop. I have a machine that is more than capable of running this software, which has all been detailed on a previous page.

When my clients demand the best from me and we get such a questionable upgrade from Adobe, it really makes things difficult.

Thanks, Brett, this was really helpful. I'm on a 4 year 24" iMac, and it was approaching unuseable for Lr4.

Read the article first, since your machine & mileage may vary.

Here's what I did:

- set preview size to 2048 for my 1920 screen.

- increased the ACR cache to 20 GB.

- turned off modules I'm not using, unchecked showing them in the contextual menu.

- switched everything to solo mode.

- closed Navigator & Histogram (when I'm not using them).

Faster, newer computers might only need the first 5. I also did:

- trying to minimize other apps open (including Safari, which can be a hog).

- eliminated started items I don't really need.

Finally, one I saw a couple of years ago. Do a G them minimize thumbnails so they all show, watch that the "..." in each image is done. Scroll through sections of thumbnails for a large folder.

This seems a lot better. Thanks again.

I know Adobe is working on it, so I'm not trying to throw them totally under the bus. It just makes me wonder how much testing in different environments is done, it seems like the beta testing would have provided this same info that they're 99% there, but not quite .

OP said

Lightroom is slow... My system is:

2.10 ghz Intel Core i3 Sandy Bridge

8 GB Ram

640 GB Hard Drive

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit

Not to poke you with a stick, but that's honestly not a very robust system for something as demanding as Lightroom. Your performance would increase dramatically with a fast i7 processor, night and day

Bob, let us know.  Mine LR4 is fine on single monitor, and while I can temporarily live with it that way for a while, I hope Adobe fixes it. Sliders in develop are instanteous (altho screen refresh takes about a quarter of a sec - a guess) with the one monitor.  

I also hope (ADOBE -  IF YOU ARE LISTENING) that its not an issue when CS6 comes out as I DEPEND on two in Photoshop!!!!!!

Brett,

"Not to poke you with a stick, but that's honestly not a very robust system for something as demanding as Lightroom. Your performance would increase dramatically with a fast i7 processor, night and day"

My LR 3.6 works find on a 32bit Win 7 system with a mere 2gig of RAM. At times I have even had LR4 working perfectly on it from time to time. Snag is the software is not stable as we all are concluding.

It makes a mockery of a 60 UKP upgrade if one needs a new PC to run it on.

I well understand you folk with these PC's with enough chips to run Cape Kennedy but that's not what good software is about.

Tony

I well understand you folk with these PC's with enough chips to run Cape Kennedy but that's not what good software is about.

Tony

MS Notepad is good software, so is Maya. One is free, tiny, and could run on a calculator processor, the other is huge, $3,500, and needs a powerhouse workstation for optimal perfromance. Not all software is the same.

Tony

My LR 3.6 works find on a 32bit Win 7 system with a mere 2gig of RAM.

There's no way in the world you can fairly expect LR to perform on a system with 2gb ram. I've seen LR 4 using 11gb of my ram all by itself, not to mention the operating system. This isn't 2005

Dennis...

You did not say what disk you are using...  for LR

If it is a raid disk system... then you will get great response.  It is

my belief, LR4 has increased the writing to disk ( or changed how and

when) and that has impacted the performance for even beefy systems with

average disk drives.

Simple raid (2 drives mirrored) will not improve performance at all -- no effect

Once the develop is open, there are no more disk accesses.

I don't write .xmp files or .dng files, so the only updates are to the catalog which is on c:\

I have USB-3 ports so I could upgrade, just never felt the need to.

Export?  I guess it has to access  the main phopto, never thought of that -- but if I export 5 or 10 photos I don't see it slow,

more might be, but I see that as a background activity so I don't worry about it.

At first I kept the originals on the C:\ drive, but had space issues -- moved them to USB-2 on Win-XP and did not notice

much change.

"There's no way in the world you can fairly expect LR to perform on a system with 2gb ram"

But it does. Well 3.6 does.

Sorry to challenge the opinion with fact.

Tony

"There's no way in the world you can fairly expect LR to perform on a system with 2gb ram" But it does. Well 3.6 does. Sorry to challenge the opinion with fact.

Tony

If you're used to X speed, then it will become satisfactory. And if it is then good. And of course having X speed in LR3 and LR4 being much slower isn't acceptable.

I prefer to run software at the fastest possible speed I can so I don't waste time, and since you can get a vertiable supercomputer at $1k for an excellent win764 tower for example, there's little reason to spend three times as long doing everything on your computer. Plus memory is about the cost of a nice dinner, and it's never been more useful. I can't imagine you aren't swapping all the time with 2gb ram, and that makes performance tank.

I am curious -- of those who have serious slowness problems with LR4 -- how many are using SSD's for the drive holding either the catalog or the photos??

I ask this because we ran into a problem with an object database we use running on SSD's -- its lightning fast except when we do a long series of writes, the longer

the sequence of writes goes, the slower it all gets, and attempting to run anything else while that is happening is terribly slow.

Just a thought.

Hi all,

I just solved my issues by doing 3 things, as suggested above:

• Updating nvidia drivers: Win7-64bit, 2GB GTX-560 by updating to 296.10, from whatever version was out in Nov 2011.
• Moving Catalog and ACR cache folders to SSD - not moving previews folder.
• Excluding lightroom cache and catalog folders from MS security essentials anitvirus.

Issues were:

- long time switching to develop module

- very inconsistent performance on 36MP Nikon D800 raw images

- laggy and slow performance generally

I think the updated drievrs helped problem 1 more than anything, but can't be sure.

This is on a SR2 - dual hexacore /24GB RAM at 4.0Ghz.

Hope this helps somebody.

bob frost wrote:

 

From: "shamus1585

Any readers using two monitors where it's slow with the second, what type

card are you using?

 

I noticed BoHandsome and I are both using GTX260 NVidia cards.  Mine was a

special that came from Dell with 2 gigs onboard.

 

 

Mmm. Mine is a nVidia too -  GTx460. I don't have any ATI cards to swap it

out.

 

Bob Frost

Just bought a Radeon 6870 card. It doesn't make a lot of difference compared to my previous GTX460; slightly faster, but then the  card is faster overall.

Also tried an older 8800GT card, and various ages of drivers with all three, but no magic effect on the secondary monitor problem.

Bob Frost

Thanks for the tip, but on my system, didn't seem to make a difference.

I contacted NVidia and was advised:

"Lightroom 4 does not use any GPU acceleration for its User Interface or filters nor does it use it for RAW file decoding. Were not aware of this being a NVIDIA bug.

Adobe seems to be aware of this problem and is investigating it along with a few other hot issues. "

Guess we'll have to wait for 4.1

Like others, I also wanted to add my voice to complaints about how slow LR4 is. I'm on a Mac Pro, 8-core, 2.26 MHz, 16 GB RAM, 256GB Solid State Drive, four fast HHDs, etc. It's a pretty fast machine, but LR4 is a DAWG! It often takes 4-5 seconds for sharpening to show up in the detail tab, another 4-5 seconds for a new image to display, etc. Sliders are herky-jerky and slow. This is NOT real time performance. I'm processing Canon 5Dmk2 files that have been imported as DNG files.

I also created a new catalog, hoping it would help. If it did, it isn't enough. Turned off the Catalog Preference to Automatically write changes to XMP. The catalog and previews are in the same folder.

Performance is unacceptable, which is a shame, since many nice features have been added. It needs some serious rework to speed it up. Adobe should be ashamed to release a product that is so obviously slow. It's not possible that they didn't know this before rushing it to market.

Lou

I would like to report in with success in getting my LR4 running very smoothly including dual monitor activity even 'Live' at 1:1 zoom on 2nd monitor. I did upgrade computers toward the end of the beta so it is a little hard to keep track of the performance changes linearly but after some spotty periods LR4 seems to be running much better than LR3 ever did on the earlier computer I had and that was certainly not the case a few days ago. Unfortunately, as I have done quite a few of the optimizing suggestions, there is no one magic bullet I can point at. This is a powerful computer that did run as a laggard for a bit so this seems to be a case that says that even if powerful processors are tripping up somehow this can be 'tuned' around.

Configuration:

i7-2600k

8 gigs 1600mhz Ram

p68 Intel motherboard

nVidia GTX 460-2

Dual Samsung Syncmaster 2493 HM 24" monitors @ 1920x1200

C: 64gb Samsung SSD drive = WIndows OS only

D: 250 meg 7200 HDD = Program Files/User Folders/LR Cache@35Gb (now holds catalogs/previews)

E: 1 Tb 5600 HDD = Newer Photos and other data (previously held catalogs/previews)

F: 2 Tb USB 3.0 External = Older Photos

3 USB 2.0 External Backup Drives

Environment:

Windows 7 64bit Professional, Adobe Design Premium CS5, MS Office Pro 2010

Windows managed swap file (highly researched with my SSD, might do differently with HDD OS)

Main Lightroom Catalog = 94,000 images most being 12mp Sony .ARW Raw files

Secondary smaller Catalogs (not tested, one not converted yet)

jfSmugmug Publish/ Picasa Web Publish Services

History:

I installed LR4 beta on my previous Core 2 Duo/4 gigs ram and that gave me the kick in the pants that it was time to finally bite the bullet and upgrade hardware as it was pretty clear that Lr4 was going to be too demanding on that one. Had a lot of performance trouble at the beginning especially with photos imported from LR3 catalogs, less with fresh photo imports. During the beta period I built the new computer spec'd above and then ran the beta on that for just over a week until the final release came out.

With the final release installation I failed to uninstall the beta before running the final install so my install was an 'overlay' from the get-go. This is counter to procedures that have been suggested subsequently of making sure to uninstall the beta and to do a fresh install but I didn't notice any problems doing it this way. My first catalog conversion was from the beta catalog I had been using for a couple months. Performance seemed not too bad as I recall, though not as fast as I had hoped. After testing this I then did a conversion of my main catalog which held 87,000 photos at the time. Speed was not ideal after this so after watching the forum patter I followed a recommendation (from Victoria?) to export out of 3 first and then do a fresh import from the exported file. I trashed the original conversion and started over with as little baggage brought in as possible. This may have helped a bit. I have now combined the main catalog with the converted from beta catalog to a total of 94,000.

Key Points:

- My catalog was running so-so at the beginning but then seemed to suffer a slow-down last week which finally peaked at 1.5-25 second delays. It was not this slow at first.

- I also did not do much early dual monitor work so my baseline on that is lacking a bit.

- My LR Cache is on my fastest HDD drive D: where my program files are (including LR). The cache is set for 35Gb although less than 5 are in use.

- My previews are and have been set to build at 2048.

- In thinking back to what I may have done that could have contributed to my biggest experienced slow down there are two things that have a timing coincidence that I wouldn't have expected to be a problem. First is I optimized the catalog. Second is I turned on and setup my Exif Overlays. Most likely coincidental but my brain keeps going back to the overlays for some reason.

What I have done, all or any of which may have helped cure the sluggishness:

Followed Subdoods excellent advice on page 6 of this thread (thanks dood!):

- Created exceptions in my Norton Internet Security for .lrcat files and excluded the catalog and preview folders from any Norton scanning. [ I am a MSAccess programmer and I know how critical this can be in improving database performance for Access .mdb files. This could be a significant factor and I wonder if there might be other SQLLite exceptions that might be implemented on top of this?. ]

- Disabled Windows indexing services on the catalog folder trees. Makes total sense to me. 

- Disabled the CPU Power down and Sleep modes.

- Bumped LR's CPU thread usage priority to High! under Services. Another one that makes tons of sense. I did download and install Prio Priority Saver to facilitate this as suggested. This could be important.

Other things I have done:

- Following another suggestion I downloaded the latest nVidia driver for my GTX 460 v2. It appears that this driver is only a few weeks old. Always good to do.

- I moved my catalogs to a different drive than any of my photos are on. I went back and forth on this setup as I kind of wanted to have the catalog and the cache on different drives and these two are my fastest outside of the SSD OS drive. I went with the catalog and photos together and the cache separate but now I think that moving the catalog to the fast drive with the cache away from the catalog may have been a big contributor to speeding things up. I have not yet played with moving the cache.

- When I built the system my research had led me to believe that LR would be relying on the processor much more than the ram as long as I had around 8 gigs. I went strong on processor and medium on ram. What I see now though is that my Task Manager shows good utilization across all of my cores but also that my ram usage has regularly crawled up to 7.5 out of 8. I have 8 more gigs coming UPS tomorrow as I think LR4 may actually put to use more than 8 if it is available from the looks of what I am seeing.

What I did not try that has been suggested:

- Turn off reverse geo-coding. Never got around to it, my photos aren't gps tagged and I haven't dropped that many on the map yet.

- Rebuild all of the preferences folders. I was going to but hadn't gotten around to it when things kicked into gear for me.

Other notes:

- I am sure I have left out some things here.

- I have not yet had a chance to experiment with Lee Jay's findings on the image scaling. With my resolution and image sizes my views should be less than 1:2 naturally. I will look forward to playing with that.

- I am knocking on wood that nothing changes for now!!!

Ciao,

Gary