For everyone else on here:

Post what edits you are doing/have done on on your photos when Lr is working slow.  Does your photo have a lot of heavy editing? Or mostly simple things like white balance and tone? Does Lr slow down after a specific number of photos, or specific amount of time? During what processes it it slowest and/or fastest? Etc... The more detailed information, the better.    

Wait - let me explain what we found first as this may help others.

The pattern you need to be most careful of in using Lightroom: lots and lots of brushing or spot heals are what typically cause problems. Remember that Lightroom has to re-apply every edit you make every time it renders a photo. And we render with every slider change, every crop, etc. The more local corrections you have, the 'heavier' the photo gets. This is different from how Photoshop works, where edits typically get baked right into the file as you work.

If you look at your History panel for a photo and see hundreds of steps, you'll get some quick relief by clearing the history panel. Your latest settings are still saved, you just can’t jump back to a specific point in time once cleared. Alternatively, if there are specific points you want to save, you can always make Snapshots for those stages and then clear the history.

If you're having to do serious masking work on a particular shoot, such as replacing backgrounds, Photoshop might be the better tool if you have access to it.

Julie, those are good suggestions but for some of us, or at least myself; the problem was sudden with the update from LR 5.4 to 5.5, and then worse from 5.5 to 5.6.  This means that our workflows were just fine before the update and something in the program is now not functioning as well.  I know I was not experiencing such slowdowns before the update, because I deeply regret updating.  I thought it may have been a plugin I downloaded but I've since disabled all plugins but one that I've always used.  I did recently install Paddy, but again I've disabled the plugin.

I don't do any serious stuff, some images do have LOTS of spot healing, but in my current culling job none are that extensive.  I understand and recognize when those types of images cause slowdowns.  What I've been doing lately is going through a few thousand images, and when I updated to 5.5, and then 5.6, Lightroom stopped occasionally crashing and started behaving like molasses.  More details below:

5.4 would crash when I would occasionally hit CTRL+Z after dragging the view in the navigator without letting go.  I'd be holding the navigator, peering around the image with my tablet, then I'd hit CTRL+Z and it would crash.  Sometimes it would crash for no reason what so ever.  I thought perhaps I corrupted the program because I had some RAM issues.  I've sorted that mostly and I'm running on a seemingly good 8GB. 

Now when I updated to 5.5, no more random crashes, but it began to lag.  When I'd be going from Grid to Loupe view or switching from Loupe to Survey on my second monitor, it progressively got worse.  I didn't notice it so much until I updated to 5.6, thinking "oh good another update should help."

Once I updated again, after about 30 minutes to an hour of working, Lightroom will take about ten seconds or longer to respond to CTRL+F, for fullscreen.  it will often take me a whole minute or MORE to go from fullscreen to windowed mode, or vice-versa.  It's so bad sometimes the program will gray-out (not responding) and I will have to get up from my desk for five minutes while my i7 3770k CPU tries to sort through the mess Lightroom is making, I assume.  When I get back things are sitting there as they should be, but still slow to respond.  I also notice possible slowdowns after using another program, like Internet Explorer. I will try a session without using any other programs but I believe it happens regardless.

After a slowdown, I close Lightroom, let it back my catalog up encase it's screwed up, then I restart the program.  Once restarted I get another 30-60 minutes before it needs help again.  Anywhere from 60-150 photos of mostly culling and cropping, but honestly just basic tone adjustments to groups of images (20-100) and some crops.  No severe touchups.  It's a SEVERE slowdown especially for the job I'm on (few thousand images) and I'm nervous to attempt a downgrade because I've never done that before and I have a client waiting on these images, so any troubleshooting will sadly have to wait.

Finally, I do see slowdowns after switching from the crop tool back to loupe, I think it feels like slowdowns correlate to me switching modules and switching views.  It works decent, albeit a bit laggy, and after about 45 minutes on average it goes horribly wrong and I have to promptly restart Lightroom.

I hope this helps I'm very tired, it's been a very long day.

I'm also getting horrible lag and high CPU/RAM usage with LR 5.6. I have to close it and restart it when it starts hogging up all the resources. Sometimes it gets stuck at 100% CPU usage, and using up about 4GB's of m 16GB's of RAM. Never had this problem with LR 5.5, so something is definitely broken.

do you have any add-ons/extensions/plugins associated with or installed in lightroom, robertotaylor?

Temporarily delete the preferences file, if you haven't already tried it - that will eliminate all (non built-in) plugins from loading, and other things.

its a long shot but this worked for me Problem solved

I have no add-ons/extensions/plugins installed. It's 100% stock and I never had these issues with any of the previous releases. The program is constantly locking up now, so I have to force close it and restart it about every 20 minutes.

Very frustrating! Is there a way to downgrade to one of the previous releases?

robertotaylor wrote:

 

Very frustrating! Is there a way to downgrade to one of the previous releases?

If you've tried "everything" (you haven't), you can down-grade by installing a previous version and using it instead. If you need to re-download:

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/updates.html

(look for 'Lightroom', and choose platform..).

Thanks for the link Rob.

I know I haven't tried "everything", but the whole point here is that I shouldn't have to be doing anything different if it's been working fine before this release. I'm clearly not the only person having this issue, so it's a software problem. Adobe doesn't pay me to troubleshoot their problems, so I will just downgrade to a previous version until they can get things sorted on the next release.

Thank again.

robertotaylor wrote:

 

Thanks for the link Rob.

You're welcome.

robertotaylor wrote:

 

the whole point here is that I shouldn't have to be doing anything different if it's been working fine before this release.

Understood before, and understood now.. but, you realize this is the user-to-user forum, not the Adobe feedback forum, right? Our understanding may help you feel warm and fuzzy but won't change anything.. - we mostly want to help you use as best you can given the software as is.

If you want to bend Adobe's ear, you can do it here:

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/products/photoshop_family_photoshop_lightro om

PS - I realize Julie Kmoch (of Adobe) has participated here too, but your reply was to me (granted others will be reading too..).

Cheers,

Rob

maybe I spoke to early; my LR5 'crashed' again today

Mine is slower than molasses now,,and crashes. Either have to do a soft reboot or even a hard reboot..I think its been restarted about 15 times in the last month.

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/

I have run into some very weird performance issues with Lr 5.6, as well. Working on a brand new tricked out to the max 27" iMac 3.5GHz / 32 GB /1TB SSD / OS X 10.9.4 - 2 new 3TB Lacie thunderbolt and 2 new 3TB OWC USB 3.0. Using Lr on large 24 mega pixel Leica M240 files, with lots of applied masks in radial filter, gradient filters and adjustment brushes, the more masks and algorithms applied, the slower the performance, to a point of continuous waiting and beach ball spinning. I have optimized the catalog and purged the cache, multiple times. At first the issues appeared on the Lacie thunderbolt drives. Then we switched to the OWC drives and all was well, the performance was like a hot knife going through butter, until eventually the same slow down and delays occurred on the OWC USB 3.0 drives.  Any additional suggestions?

question: do you (those with LR5 dramas) import new files from the card reader/camera or do you down load files to bridge/windows first and then import into LR5?

I thought I fixed my dramas but after importing 300 12mg Lumix lz200 files  from the card to LR the drama returns.

To try anything; I removed the files from LR (stuffed up the 'save folder as cat' .) and imported the files from window; and no more dramas!!

Yesterday I added more lumix and canon 5D11 files via windows and although too early to say but no dramas.................YET

It seems to spot remover/radial/brush tools are the problem; however I did use the spot removed as PS clone tool on this file AFTER Edwardian Shoot 2014 July -done 1 jpg-2 | Flickr - Photo Sharing! And the original BEFORE LR5. Edwardian Shoot 2014 July - DSCN1334 | Flickr - Photo Sharing! The file was imported from windows after being emailed to me

anything and everything has to be considered to solve these dramas.

I will add the lappy is working MUCH better since running the vacuum cleaner over the understand.

I always transfer photo files from my camera to Windows first and then import them to LR and I've been having a ton of problems.

Earlier in this thread, it has been stated that heavily processed photos are the problem - and such processing does involve large amounts of masking, and large numbers of spot healing/cloning/etc. The reason (from my understanding) is that each time you apply an edit, Lr has to recalculate and reapply all the previous edits. If you happened to apply a giant mask to the background of a 25mb photograph - then Lr has to recalculate every pixel each time you apply yet another change to the photo. My understanding is that Adobe is working to remedy this issue.

For now, the best advice I can offer is to reduce your edit-intensive steps by setting up the shoot more efficiently. Or if that's not an option, then try to save your edit-heavy steps for last. Get the majority of the light edits out of the way like DNG conversion, white balance, tone, cropping/straightening, keywording and culling out bad shots. Leave the brushing, and especially any major masking, for last.   Also, for large masking, consider using Photoshop for destructive editing. Use Lr for edits that you may need to reverse in the future (color/tone/noise/etc...). If there's a large crease on your backdrop in 200 photos - just get rid of it in Photoshop - you'll never need it again. Processing it out in Lr will simply slow the program down (for now).

This is all assuming you provide Lr plenty of memory, a fast scratch disk, and clear your cache as necessary. Standard Adobe optimization suggestions here.

The thing that seemed to help me the most was increasing the cache size

Increase the Camera Raw cache size

Every time you view or edit raw images in the Develop module, Lightroom generates up-to-date, high-quality previews. It uses the original image data as its foundation, and then updates the preview for any processing or adjustments that have been applied. The process is a little faster if the original image data is in the Camera Raw cache. Lightroom checks the cache for the original image data and can skip early stage processing if the image data is cached.

By default, Lightroom sets the Camera Raw cache to 1 GB. If you increase the cache size, it can store more image data, which in turn speeds the generation of previews of those images. Some Lightroom users find that increasing the Camera Raw cache to 20 GB or more can dramatically speed performance in the Develop module. To increase the Camera Raw cache size, do the following:

rtc1 wrote:

 

The thing that seemed to help me the most was increasing the cache size

Makes almost no difference in performance on my machine. In fact, I made cache folder read-only, to disable it completely - can't tell a difference without scientific measurement..

Don't get me wrong: if it makes a difference for you, then great, but if Lightroom is functioning normally and healthily, the difference should be relatively minor.

One thing to consider: delete cache contents to see if it helps - bad cache entries can sometimes cause problems..

Rob

so much for the importing ideas .

BTW: when using the tools I turn the mask on and only use the sliders after brushing>>was a tip from JulieanneK who also suggest cache to be set at 20gb

The slowness is certainly a confusing and frustrating drama; glad photography is only a game for me these days. Hope to get PS/efex up and going soon...... daughter does it for

I have had problems with freezing Lr 5 from the first version of Lr5. That still happens, especially after several use of Spot Tool.

One day I observed, Lr is not trying to use more than half of the RAM (in other words, Lr was ignoring second bank of the two existing RAM), what was strange to me, because Ps CC and Lr 3.6 & Lr 4.x used RAM without any problem that time.
I checked the RAMs and decided to swap banks each other. After that Lr starts to use whole RAM and work, especially after installing 5.4. But the same, after use several Spot Tool instances (from 5.4 a little more than before), especially not that point but irregular spots and spots covered other spots, Lr freezes as usual.

Lr 5.6 applies whole job doing before to the files a little quicker (e.g. while opening the catalog or photo in Develop Module), but any move in the history on the file with Spot Tool gives the same dramatic waiting time to see result (30 sek is average) and I observe artefacts (black boxes) during apply in that place, where bars overlays calculating photo. What I think is the problem of the app with graphic card and with this Spot Removal Tool. I did not the same with old version of Lr, but I have the same card and other hardware. So, find the guilty

So, what I think, Lr 5.x is really strange app hardware sensitive and has bad behaviour, performance issue included.

I do, what you write here, especially whole Spotting job I use to leave at the end. I know only one step more, which I have to do: return to Capture One…

I am also having issues since upgrading to 5.6 in regards to slowness in the develop module.  All I am doing is a simple crop adjustment and straighten.  Once I have set the crop and go to do the straighten LR spins for 5-8 secs with pegged cpu; after I straighten and select done, same thing happens before returning the image.  I am on a new macbook pro; am using imported jpg's from CF card.  I have deleted my preferences file and still have the same issue.  No LR sync to mobile is enabled.  My workflow time has gone up by hours and I cannot afford to keep working like this.

Any help Adobe would sure be appreciated.

Wait, let me explain some important elements from your story, Dear Julie.

You wrote:

"Remember that Lightroom has to re-apply every edit you make every time it renders a photo. And we render with every slider change, every crop, etc. The more local corrections you have, the 'heavier' the photo gets."

I think, Picture Publisher have had a piramid program in mid of '90s, which was working on the same idea and was very slow, but after, when app was calculating the result under the command Export File, not during creation! Try to check the name of this program, maybe your idea about program was fine, but realisation wasn't?

Next, of course, Lr calculates any move during some next moves, but… for god saken, it is not working on original file, instead it uses system of previews in jpg and dng, the files counted in KB, sometimes in MB maybe, am I right, yes?
So, what Lr so much calculates and how much ist that different than 2GB Ps file, which Ps is calculated not on preview but into the file, but in miliseconds?!

You wrote:

"If you're having to do serious masking work on a particular shoot, such as replacing backgrounds, Photoshop might be the better tool if you have access to it."

Come on, when we do something in Lr, that is no-permanent, what is very difficult to say about Ps job, sure?
Isn't it the basic difference between this 2 kind of work conception, one based on the file without (almost) physical sizes, which I can send in the future to different format and sizes with the same changes on board (Lr) and second, based on physical scale of the file (Ps), where is very difficult to change starting format?
Maybe an example: what is first move into Lr and what is first move in Ps (what a set of question I receive after click File>New)?
Stop sending us to the app, which is not equivalent and you know that!

So, why I think, your story is only excuses, sorry.

P.S. Thank you for advice with cleaning the history. That's is good point, of course so long, you do not need this history, e.g. if you aren't teacher…

Dear iszunia,

Lightroom may be working with a small "preview" file, but the non-destructive nature of the program means every-single-edit you make is done in a "virtual" space. So every time you make an additional edit, your computer has to virtually recalculate that edit over and over. The larger your original photo, and the more edits you make, the more your computer has to keep all these changes in its memory as it applies the new ones. Lets say you applied a mask to the photo increasing the saturation, then you applied a blur brush to the background, then you applied a spot-heal to part of the background - your computer has to recalculate what the spot-heal would look like with the saturation and blur brushes applied. Every single edit becomes additive. This is why Lr works fast when you first start working with a photo - and progressively becomes slower.

Photoshop is faster because it applies one destructive edit after another. If you applied a blur-filter to a Ps document, then it's applied to the original and it's done. Next, if you apply another filter or a healing brush, Ps does not have to virtually simulate the previous blur-filter. It focuses on each edit separately - as is the nature of destructive editing.  This is why Ps remains fast while editing a document, and doesn't slow down like Lr.

Julie is recommending if there is major editing you need to do that is not important for recovery, then simply do it in Photoshop. That saves Lightroom the trouble of having to recalculate those edits every time you make more changes.

Lastly, Julie acknowledged that heavily edited photos are causing problems. She can't make up a new release/patch over night. Her "story" is not provided solely for excuses, but is to help us understand the problem and to provide a possible work around while Adobe tries to find a solution for us.     

Having the same issue with excruciatingly slow performance on a Macbook Pro (details below) and 5.6. I haven't really edited much in past versions, so I have no way to compare to 5.6. But I do find a direct correlation between a highly edited photo and slow performance. The more edits I make, the slower the performance. By slow I mean small mask change........4-5 seconds to apply. Zoom in with "Z" key.....2 seconds to apply. Move within zoom range.......3-4 seconds to apply. I delete history and no noticeable improvement. The more layers of adjustments on a photo = slower performance. Seems to make sense if Lightroom is not built for lots of edits. By lots of edits I mean:

- masking background for color temp adjustments (mixed lighting)

- facial spot clean ups, brighten eyes

- lens corrections

- Detials

- Effects (mostly vignetting)

So I am not using every adjustment module, can only imagine it would get worse.

Recent project with lots of CR2 RAW head shots, I like to carry over adjustments from Previous photo. Nice feature. I tried turning off all adjustment modules except for the one I was working on at the time. No noticeable improvement, plus not a work-flow friendly method.

I also trashed preferences, increase RAW cache to 50GB, repair permissions. No noticeable improvement. The more edits you have the slower performance.

I am going back to Photoshop for my editing, works like a champ. Will use Lightroom as an image library only. Shame with so many nice editing tools. Good idea if and when these tools will work well.

My setup:

MacBook Pro early 2011, 2.3Ghz i7

Processor  2.3 GHz Intel Core i7

Memory  16 GB 1333 MHz DDR3

Graphics  AMD Radeon HD 6750M 1024 MB

Software  OS X 10.9.4 (13E28)

Creative Cloud Photography subscription

I share your frustrations although mine is working sort of OK but then I'm not doing full on work PP. The thing I don't understand is I need to turn off computer; not just LR .

Mine has worked better since cleaning out the rubbish that had been sucked into the underside of the lappy; but it's not THE FIX we all want. I would hate going back to PS for editing so I feel for you

I guess adobe will have it sort when they release LR6. If they don't get it sorted there may be no LR6

I see that most people here are having issues in the Develop module.

I have delays of between 5-10 seconds and CPU spikes of up to 172% in the library module when simply selecting a new image by clicking or using the arrow keys. I'm running 10.9.4 on a MBP Retina 13 with 8GB of RAM. This happens on any of the folders in my single large (150,000 images) library. When I load up any of the image folders in Bridge, image switching is instantaneous. Anyone have any experience with such slowdown by merely switching images? I have a delay of about 4-5 seconds switching modules, which I've come to expect, but I can't imagine why merely switching images is causing such a problem.

Thanks for any help anyone can offer me!

Phillip Torbert wrote:

 

I have delays of between 5-10 seconds and CPU spikes of up to 172% in the library module when simply selecting a new image by clicking or using the arrow keys.

 

Thanks for any help anyone can offer me!

Always, when Lr is behaving ridiculously slooooooow, it's due to something about your system (hardware/software/data) Lr doesn't like, or vice versa if you prefer. In your case, I have no idea what. Video driver? Have you tried renaming prefs file and/or other critical Lr data files to see if they are "depositing sludge" (so to speak)?

just an interesting note: Lr has been running OK for awhile until I added more small 12mb raw files from the Lumix 200 last night. For some reason it went pair shape again. Seemed to battle adding key words (??). i usually add a basic one or two keys and then do some editing, sorting, deleting before getting more serious with keywords. Last night I added most keywords before editing, sorting, deleting.  (??????)

I didn't have too much drama with some recent 5D11 raw files

LOL I posted the above; went back to LR and noticed 'solo mode' was off, but still ticked (??) Computer shut down fixed it but .............

we have to  or go crazy!

When you import new photos, Lr will generate small/medium previews to use in the Library module. When you switch to Develop module, it will generate a full sized 1:1 preview on each image that you open. So it could be possible that you're switching between photos so fast that you activate multiple preview generations and thus your computer slows down.    Part of my work flow is to import and immediately convert to DNG, and then generate 1:1 previews immediately.  This is done in the Library module. Select all the photos you want to work with, select Library --> Previews --> build 1:1 previews.  For 500 20mb-sized photos from my Canon 5d m3 it usually takes no more than 10 minutes to generate all of them.  Make sure to dispose of them after you're done editing by repeating the same steps except selecting "delete 1:1 previews" - or set Lr to auto-delete every 30 or so days (usually this is enabled by default).

The same thing happens to photos already in your catalog. If you are trying to rapidly scroll through 30 large photos you took 3 months ago (especially while in the develop module), the 1:1 previews were already probably automatically deleted. So each time you open the photo to see it full size (especially in Develop), Lr will generate a new 1:1 preview. Same scenario applies - if you're scrolling too fast, you could be triggering multiple previews to be generated and that can lock up your computer for a bit. If these photos are all-over your hard drive, then your drive is trying to write as a scratch disk while trying to read the photos to generate the previews.

Solutions? Try to generate previews for files you want to develop, prior to developing. Also consider using DNG's with embedded preview data to speed up generation for previews.    

A few notes which might help clarify:

* DNG's embedded preview is not used by Lightroom, other than initial display before any other preview is available, if it exists (like any other file type). After import, DNG library views come from Lr library preview cache, like any other file's. In fact, the embedded preview will grow stale (or be forever absent) if not explicitly updated by manual invocation of the menu command to do so (or via DNG preview updating publish service).

* DNG's fast-load data is just the ACR cache data embedded in source file instead of stored separately. It will help a tiny bit when developing for the very first time only (I mean every time, but if not available first time, they have to be created) to have those available in the DNG, or in the ACR cache. The ACR cache entries will also be created when building 1:1 previews (e.g. during import), and are NOT removed when 1:1 preview is removed (or ever, short of purging the ACR cache..).

Conclusion: DNG has no advantage performance-wise over non-DNG file types. But if you use DNG, embedding fast-load data will help first time development loading speed, a tiny bit. Likewise, if not using DNG, then building 1:1 previews (e.g. upon import), so the cache entry is created, will help first time development loading speed, a tiny bit.

The only time DNG's fast-load data has a significant advantage over ACR cache entry is when you sent it to someone else for development, since their system won't have to re-create the ACR cache data.

To be clear: ACR cache (or DNG fast-load data) should make only a tiny difference. If it's making a big difference, then something is "amiss" (wonky..).

(embedded previews make no difference, other than initially - as mentioned)

PS - Lr does not create or initiate creation of a 1:1 library preview when selecting photos in the develop module. It creates a "for develop module only" view each time you select a photo in develop module, whether 1:1 library preview exists or not. Therefore, creating 1:1 previews in advance won't help develop module performance (unless it's never been done before, in which case ACR cache entries will also be created, which does help a tiny bit). Also, if you select photos in rapid succession in develop module, it aborts creation of dev view it's working on, before initiating creation of the next, thus you can't backlog them.

observation from today

>uploading some photos [only 40

>>before adding keywords to the new files I decided clean up a small section of keywords  which basically killed the lappy [400 file>>17 k/words reduced to 4 keywords]

>>let Lr/lappy sit for 5 minutes to catch up but that didn't help (still in library mode)

>>turned lr off/on [5 minutes]; library/keywording better but not perfect.

Dramas may have something to do with the library/keywording/finding old files via k/words (???)

Just a thought.

I like your explanation of how DNG's function. I was simply looking at it from a hardware point of view. When I converted my 10k of CR2 files to DNG, I gained about 7gb or so of free space on my drive. For Phillip's case with 150k photos (assuming they're all RAW) I' sure he would save a ton of space on his drive. The smaller the files, the faster the drive will be able to read them. Even if each individual file is not that much smaller, collectively, his drive will need to read less data in the long run. Therefore it should help just a little bit. Then again, it could be unnoticeable just as you said. That's why it's just something to consider.

Yikes!

In reading through all of the comments and suggestions, I get the impression that there are little or no Lightroom speed improvements on the horizon.

And to address a few comments I find particularly disturbing:

Lightroom cannot do serious masking or replace backgrounds. You may be able to do some basic masking or change the color of a background, but it's not designed do multi-element photo-comping. I can’t even imagine that an Adobe employee would suggest so.  But you did.

And the comment about "baked right into the file as you work" in Photoshop –

Using layers and masks is the non-destructive method of working in PS, so nothing is baked in (is there something I don’t know?) unless you’re working directly on a single layer. Plus, I have my PS preferences set to 100 undos without any speed issues. Most of my LR work is less than 100 actions and it comes to a crawl even with a few dozen – giving many (most?) power-users grief. LR IS NOT PHOTOSHOP. (I may be running on a dinosaur, but I don't have any of the speed issues with PS that I have with LR - Early 2008 Mac Pro Tower, 32GB RAM, 256GB SSD boot drive, ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB, 12TB-4 drive Raid 5)

And this –

The mention that burning and dodging, cropping and adjusting sliders - the exact thing Lightroom is designed to do - makes the program run slower and slower. So this seems like an admission that Lightroom is SLOW when used it as it was designed, to operate like a darkroom.

In my naïveté, I was certain that the speed issue would get better, after all Photoshop is looking pretty good these days. But I’m feeling pretty certain that LR 6 may be more of the same speed issues. I do love Lightroom and it’s integration with Photoshop. In fact, I never touched Aperture because I’m well aware of Apple’s disposition to discontinue a product. And, sure enough, they did.

Lightroom is a pretty good program. If Adobe can remedy the speed issues, LR could become a great program.

I read through all of the explanations on why LR's Develop module is slow. Thanks for the info. But it really doesn't matter, either it works well enough to use, or not. For me not. It's nice that Adobe can tout all of these great features in LR, but if you provide them you should expect people to use them. Maybe we'll see more video editing tools and compositing features inside the next release of Lightroom that we can't use.

Lr's develop module is fast and responsive for many of us. OK, it takes a few seconds to load a raw photo, but then it's quite brisk (responds almost instantaneously to every adjustment I make) - it's one of the things I really like about Lightroom.

Yeah: if I paint n' paint n' paint etc..., it'll eventually bring Lr (and my whole system) to it's knees. So, if I need to do a lot of painting (and/or spot removal..), I export a copy for external work, or to continue painting in Lightroom. Not optimal / room for improvement, to be sure, but as the saying goes "if it hurts when you do that, don't do it".

Granted, if one wants to go through a large filmstrip, and load each photo briefly (e.g. to check/tweak detail), it can be pretty grueling due to the loading time, but whilst editing it usually flies (on my machine(s)).

Don't get me wrong: I'm really not an Adobe defender by policy, but Lr's develop module, within normal use constraints, is quite fast for many of us. So if it's really sloooooow on your machine, you've got some trouble-shooting to do (or you need a new machine). If I were you, and I couldn't get it working smoothly, I'd be shopping for a new raw editor - just sayin'..

Cheers,

Rob

No problem loading raw photos. But as a guy who's been working with digital since '84 (yes, '84) and a background as a Black and White printer prior to that, Photoshop has been my go-to program for the past 18 years until Lightroom came around. The big difference is that I can work in a "darkroom" like approach in LR - burning, dodging, etc. very expeditiously in comparison to PS. Even on my 2012 iMac with 16GB RAM, LR comes to a slow crawl. But if I paint and paint in PS, things keep chugging along, even with 1GB files with over 100 layers. I'm not braggin'. Just sayin'

In any event, can anyone from Adobe even remotely address this issue without sending us on an all day excursion of troubleshooting?

good reply rob; LR still rocks as far as I'm concerned even if I do have some dramas

been working fine; but again I'm not doing a great lot so ..................... (??)

I still want to look more into the importing/keyworking..rush rush rush...flip into develop.....back to library/keywording.

Once the computer/LR has has all the filing stuff done in the background develop seems to work much better. As I said earlier I bogged LR while sorting out a section of k/words..removing files>>adding files>>deleting k/words>>moving file into less k/words. What we see on the screen often hasn't happened in the b/ground.

Last lot of 200+ file where imported with 1 keyword and I had no dramas in develop. I added keywords later and still no dramas. ROF LOL now if have dramas today it will be ^%$#)(%&($##%^*(*)$#%%^ LOL

Maybe those having dramas could go back to some old files and see how things work on those files and let us know. I give the spot removal tool a real work out because to use PS I need to use another computer; so can't be bothered so I take it out on the Sr tool.