9 Replies Latest reply: Sep 20, 2012 7:38 AM by areohbee RSS

    Is Lightroom 4 slower?

    guy from NM Community Member

      I read where Lightroom 4 is slower. is it?

        • 1. Re: Is Lightroom 4 slower?
          c.frans w Community Member

          No,no,no,yes,no,yes,no,no,no,no no,yes,no and so on and not necessarily in that order !

          • 2. Re: Is Lightroom 4 slower?
            Victoria_Bampton CommunityMVP

            LOL  In other words, some people are seeing performance issues, and many more are not. 

             

            There are some things that are slightly slower because it's doing much more processor intensive calculations, but the result is usually better too. 

             

            The best thing you can do is try the trial on your own computer and confirm that you're happy with it before upgrading.

            • 3. Re: Is Lightroom 4 slower?
              Oliver P.Smile Community Member

              On my win7 64 bit 6G ram system, LR 4 is MUCH SLOWER. However, I find so many improvements in this version, that I gladly put up with the slowdown

              • 4. Re: Is Lightroom 4 slower?
                Keith_Reeder Community Member

                guy from NM wrote:

                 

                I read where Lightroom 4 is slower.

                 

                Great! Could you tell us where it's slower? I'm sure that lots of people would love to know...

                • 5. Re: Is Lightroom 4 slower?
                  areohbee Community Member

                  At some things it's actually faster.

                   

                  Adobe fixed some critical performance issues in Lr4, starting with the beta, which speeded some things up, especially plugin performance, but also native Lightroom.

                   

                  As has been mentioned, at some things it's slower due to opting for better quality (e.g. rendering PV2012, auto CA, noise reduction etc in all views...).

                   

                  The big fuss however is primarily due to abnormally slow performance which is affecting some users.

                   

                  Why don't you just try it, and then tell us what you think.

                   

                  Rob

                  • 6. Re: Is Lightroom 4 slower?
                    writersbloc

                    Yep, develop module, especially spot healing and brushes are quite laggy for me, even on a very solid system (OSX, 3.4GHZ, i7, 12GB RAM, Dual- Radeon 6970m).

                    • 7. Re: Is Lightroom 4 slower?
                      areohbee Community Member

                      On my system (AMD Phenom II X4 965, 3.4GHz, 8GB, win7/64), it takes about 2/3 to 3/4 of a second to do a spot. That's "laggy", but not unreasonably slow, in my opinion. Brushes have no significant lag if only one adjustment is being painted, and a noticeable lag if all items are being painted (a small fraction of a second per stroke, so not too bad, but definitely noticeable). Bottom line: the laggy-ness depends *way* more on whether there is something in the system that is tripping it up, than on horsepower. Put another way: horsepower only matters when there is not something in the system that is not playing nice with Lightroom, or if you prefer: that Lightroom is not playin nice with.

                       

                      Can you (or will you) quantify the lagginess you are experiencing?

                      • 8. Re: Is Lightroom 4 slower?
                        Oliver P.Smile Community Member

                        Some would argue that nothing changed in the hardware/software from LR3 to LR4.

                        On my Win 7 64 bit, at least this was the case. I hesitate a lot to upgrade, but I am glad I did it.

                        It's slower when it imports the photos, much slower generating the previews, much slower in editing, and the WEB module is really slow.

                        But all the new stuff I found in this version is well worth the slowdown so I am sticking with it

                        • 9. Re: Is Lightroom 4 slower?
                          areohbee Community Member

                          Well, the more you can quantify the slowness, the better, if it even matters at this point. - could be Adobe has all the info they need. As we all know - they don't always keep us in the loop...

                           

                          The thing is: Lr4 is substantially slower in some regards when it's running normally. And sometimes people say A LOT, when another might consider it A LITTLE..., and sometimes A LOT means 2 or 3 times slower, and sometimes it means 10 to 100 times slower.

                           

                          Anyway, this subject has pretty much been beaten to death at this point, so feel free to ignore this post...

                           

                          Bottom line: if its a little slower (by my definition) in the expected ways, its normal.

                          If its a lot slower (by my definition), then you are having abnormal performance issues.

                           

                          R