Advice for upgrading Windows PC for Lightroom use

[moopoints]

Hi there - I'm an avid Lightroom user but am hitting performance limits of my Windows PC. I don't mind too much if an export task takes a while but I do get frustrated whenever it takes Lightroom very long to open an image (simply loading the preview in high quality when moving from one image to the next in e.g. Develop mode) or to switch from Library to Develop mode (which I do frequently). Especially odd do I find it that Lightroom on my iPad Pro opens images much faster than my Windows PC. I am constantly rebuilding 1:1 previews whenever I notice these strong lags but that doesn't seem to do much really.

This is my current setup:

• Windows 10
• Intel Core i7 6700K (4 core) CPU
• 32GB RAM DDR4-2400
• Asus GeForce GTX 1070 8GB
• Lightroom 6 latest version
• Geekbench result
• Main hard drive (SSD) for Windows
• Separate hard drive (SATA) which holds my Lightroom library

This is what I am contemplating:

A) Get a 2 or 4TB SSD and put my entire Lightroom library onto that SSD.

B) Overclock my current CPU to ~4.4Ghz

C) Replace my motherboard and CPU all-together for e.g. an 8 core CPU like this one.

D) A second video card?

Which (or combination thereof) is my best strategy at this point? Or the other way around, which one will NOT add performance to Lightroom usage?

Much appreciated,

Jan

[dj_paige]

A) Get a 2 or 4TB SSD and put my entire Lightroom library onto that SSD.

If you mean putting your photos onto the SSD, this is a waste of money, this will not speed anything up, except by trivial amounts that you will not notice.

C) Replace my motherboard and CPU all-together for e.g. an 8 core CPU like this one.

There are many threads recently about how Lightroom seems to work best on 4 core CPUs, and that perhaps the poor performance on 8 core CPUs is a bug

D) A second video card?

Lightroom cannot make use of a second video card.

You gave us a rather long list of specs of your current computer, but you didn't say what size in pixels your monitor is. Sometimes, this is the key to the entire problem. Also, have you tried turning OFF the GPU acceleration to see if the speed problems improve?

[moopoints]

Good point. I have a Samsung 4k monitor, currently the resolution is set to 3840x2160.

Hoe does affect the performance? Wouldn't Lightroom after building the 1:1 previews simply load the highest available preview, no matter what resolution of the screen?

[dj_paige]

In the Develop Module, previews are always generated at the time, it doesn't use stored previews.

The problem, it seems to me from reading this forum, is that many people have large screen monitors, in your case a 4K monitor, and the hardware just can't generate enough performance, even though you have a relatively state of the art CPU and GPU. Some people, however, do not have these performance problems. One person has reported that turning off his firewall and virus checker enabled him to isolate the problem. Other than that, I am not aware of a possible cause or possible solution.

Would you be kind enough to try an experiment? Try turning off your virus checker and firewall and see if the problems go away.

Experiment #2: Set the monitor resolution to 1920x1080, and run Lightroom and see if the performance problems go away.

[moopoints]

Great tips. I ran both experiments and both of them had a substantial impact on performance. Most of which was the screen resolution but even after just turning of the firewall and virus checker I was a lot happier already.

Any idea why the firewall and virus checker is slowing down local Lightroom usage so much?

[dj_paige]

Any idea why the firewall and virus checker is slowing down local Lightroom usage so much?

Sorry, I cannot explain this at all.

I would recommend, however, that you try firewall off and virus checker on; and vice versa, to see if you can isolate the offending piece of software.

[moopoints]

Today I am very confused again. I have the resolution turned down to 2560x1440, firewall and virus checker are off and yet I am plagued by a very low performance again. Yesterday it seemed that those changes have increased the usability of Lightroom but now after a full hour of editing it seems I am still having severe issues. I can't seem to identify the culprit.

In the Develop module I am looking at on average 5 seconds from clicking an image until I see the high resolution version of that photo, sometimes more. When I apply a preset it takes on average 3-4 seconds on top of that. Applying single edits is usually very laggy as well.

My question at this point, are you sure that a SSD will not improve the performance here? Most performance tests I have seen online analyze the performance increase with a SSD for computing tasks (e.g. exporting photos) but not editing performance and usability. Would a SSD not significantly improve how quickly a preview image is being loaded?

[dj_paige]

are you doing a lot of brushing and/or spot healing on individual photos?

Yes, I am sure that SSDs will not help your problem, the speed in develop module is based on CPU and GPU (if turned on). The disk speed is irrelevant, it will make such a trivial difference that you will never notice. SSDs will not help exporting, either, it's all CPU speed.

[moopoints]

...the speed in develop module is based on CPU and GPU (if turned on). The disk speed is irrelevant, it will make such a trivial difference that you will never notice.

Does that mean that the previews of a single image are built on the fly, every time I load the image? Otherwise how is the CPU involved in loading the high resolution image? And if so, what exactly are the 1:1 previews for that I keep re-building?

My biggest concern really is how long it takes when I move from one photo to the other, the 5 seconds until the high res image has been displayed.

[dj_paige]

In the develop module, yes, previews are built every single time you want to work on a photo. In the Library Module, the previews that are built and stored in the preview cache are used.

You did not answer my question about doing lots of brushing and/or spot healing.

[moopoints]

I do, but only occasionally. I can't see a correlation between spot healing and the long loading times in my case. Any photo, no matter if I have applied any spot healing or local brushes or not, will take very long to load.

In the develop module, yes, previews are built every single time you want to work on a photo.

I'm curious why these aren't cached as well.

[dj_paige]

I'm curious why these aren't cached as well.

You'd need to ask the designers/programmers of Lightroom.

Switching from photo to photo in the Develop Module with the GPU acceleration turned on will be slow, especially if you have a larger monitor.

So, even when the screen resolution is set to 2560x1440, you still have problems. Did you try 1920x1080?

[moopoints]

dj_paige wrote:

I'm curious why these aren't cached as well.

You'd need to ask the designers/programmers of Lightroom.

Switching from photo to photo in the Develop Module with the GPU acceleration turned on will be slow, especially if you have a larger monitor.

So, even when the screen resolution is set to 2560x1440, you still have problems. Did you try 1920x1080?

Yes, even at 1920x1080 it takes Lightroom 4-5s for each image to load in the Develop module.

I did notice that I have GPU acceleration turned on in LR performance settings (default setting). Should I turn that off?

[dj_paige]

If you could try an experiment, set the screen resolution to 1920x1080 and turn off the GPU acceleration. I'm sure the scrolling will improve.

I have no idea what you should do if you set your monitor to full resolution, this seems to be a problem for many people even with high-end GPUs, and there is no obvious solution.

[D Fosse]

moopoints wrote:

I'm curious why these aren't cached as well.

That's the way it has to be. Every time you make an adjustment, the preview changes. So there's nothing to cache, the old preview is no longer valid.

I think this is the basic weakness of parametric editing, and why there's always this small but annoying delay: The application has to rebuild and recalculate everything from scratch every time.

[moopoints]

D Fosse wrote:

moopoints wrote:

I'm curious why these aren't cached as well.

That's the way it has to be. Every time you make an adjustment, the preview changes. So there's nothing to cache, the old preview is no longer valid.

This doesn't make much sense to me. If I don't make any edits, and all I do is literally open one image and then open another image in the same collection, why would the previews not be cached in this case? It makes absolute sense for Lightroom to keep the most recent version of the image in a cache and replace it when a user has actually edited it again.

[dj_paige]

I don't think there's any point to debating how Lightroom was designed in this user-to-user forum, because it's not going to change. If you want, you could submit a feature request to a location that is checked by the proper Adobe staff Photoshop Family Customer Community

If all you are doing is scrolling from one image to the next, do this in the Library Module, where the cached previews are used.

[moopoints]

dj_paige wrote:

I don't think there's any point to debating how Lightroom was designed in this user-to-user forum, because it's not going to change. If you want, you could submit a feature request to a location that is checked by the proper Adobe staff Photoshop Family Customer Community

If all you are doing is scrolling from one image to the next, do this in the Library Module, where the cached previews are used.

I think it's worth to discuss if it helps to identify where the performance lag is coming from and how hardware or other settings can help overcome it.

And it's not that all I'm doing is to scroll through images so using the Library module isn't an option. As mentioned earlier, the part that slows me down the most in my workflow is when I edit a set of photos that it takes 5 seconds each time to open the next image (or previous) while editing a collection.

[Todd Shaner]

moopoints wrote:

And it's not that all I'm doing is to scroll through images so using the Library module isn't an option. As mentioned earlier, the part that slows me down the most in my workflow is when I edit a set of photos that it takes 5 seconds each time to open the next image (or previous) while editing a collection.

1) Do you mean that the image is literally not open (NO IMAGE - GRAY SCREEN) or that it takes 4-5 sec. for it to take on full-sharpness. On my lower-end system with 2560x1440 monitor and Canon 5D MKII 21 Megapixel raw images it takes about 2 sec. to full-sharpness when selecting the next file in the Develop module. This in in Fit Zoom View, which is what you should be using when doing basic editing. Yes, you need to use 1:1 View for the Detail panel, but that's the last step...and the image is already sharp! So I am still unsure as to what you are describing  as the issue. What specific camera model raw files are you editing? Do you use dual monitors?

2) What exact monitor model are you using and are you calibrating it with an i1 or Spyder device? Also Windows 10 has been known to assign a monitor profile that is incompatible with LR. This can cause rendering and/or performance issues.

[moopoints]

trshaner wrote:

1) Do you mean that the image is literally not open (NO IMAGE - GRAY SCREEN) or that it takes 4-5 sec. for it to take on full-sharpness. On my lower-end system with 2560x1440 monitor and Canon 5D MKII 21 Megapixel raw images it takes about 2 sec. to full-sharpness when selecting the next file in the Develop module. This in in Fit Zoom View, which is what you should be using when doing basic editing. Yes, you need to use 1:1 View for the Detail panel, but that's the last step...and the image is already sharp! So I am still unsure as to what you are describing as the issue. What specific camera model raw files are you editing? Do you use dual monitors?

I'm referring to the time until it appears in full sharpness, that takes with my system about 5s on average. I am using Fit zoom view as well.

No dual monitors, just one. RAWs are from a Sony A7RII (ARWs usually around 85MB per file).

2) What exact monitor model are you using and are you calibrating it with an i1 or Spyder device? Also Windows 10 has been known to assign a monitor profile that is incompatible with LR. This can cause rendering and/or performance issues.

Samsung U28E590D 28-Inch UHD LED-Lit Monitor. Connected via display port, no i1 or Spyder. I am on Windows 10, how would I find out whether it's been assigned an incompatible profile?

[Todd Shaner]

moopoints wrote:

I'm referring to the time until it appears in full sharpness, that takes with my system about 5s on average. I am using Fit zoom view as well.

No dual monitors, just one. RAWs are from a Sony A7RII (ARWs usually around 85MB per file).

That would indicate you are using Sony A7RII "uncompressed" raw file format. I couldn't find any uncompressed ARWs on the Web to check, but did download a number of compressed ARW files (~42MB). It takes ~3 sec. on my system for the file to attain maximum sharpness when selecting the next image. This is with a 2560x1440 (3.7Mp) display resolution versus 3840x2160 (8.3Mp). So if I extrapolate 8.3/3.7 = 2.24 x 3 sec. = 6.7 sec or ~ 7 sec. full-sharpness render on my system.

On my system the downloaded Sony A7RII "compressed" ARW files (~42MB each) respond well to the Basic panel controls with virtually no lag with GPU enabled, and very slight lag with GPU disabled, but still very usable. Keep in mind your system (i7-68K and GeForce GTX 1070 is about 2x the performance of mine (i7-860 and Quadro 600). So your Develop module render times should be about one-half or 7/2 = 3.5 sec. at 3840x2160 resolution. That's not too bad!

I want to reiterate again that this need not slow you down when applying Basic panel edits since you don't need a critically sharp image to make those adjustments (Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, etc.). All that said the only way to confirm if there is some other performance issue I can't see using "compressed" files is to test actual Sony A7RII "uncompressed" raw files on my system. If you can upload about four image files that have this issue to Dropbox or other file sharing site I'l be happy to test them on my system. They can be ANY subject matter as long as the files exhibit the issue.

Before doing that you can check the monitor profile as outlined below for replacing it with the sRGB profile. Make note of what profile is currently assigned so you can change it back if no improvement:http://www.lightroomqueen.com/articles-page/how-do-i-change-my-monitor-profile-to-check-whether-its-...

[Todd Shaner]

moopoints wrote:

Today I am very confused again. I have the resolution turned down to 2560x1440, firewall and virus checker are off and yet I am plagued by a very low performance again. Yesterday it seemed that those changes have increased the usability of Lightroom but now after a full hour of editing it seems I am still having severe issues. I can't seem to identify the culprit.

Are you using the latest LR version 6.7? Try closing LR, relaunch LR, and see if that helps. You may also want to try closing all applications and rebooting (restarting). Then open only LR and no other applications.

[moopoints]

trshaner wrote:

Are you using the latest LR version 6.7? Try closing LR, relaunch LR, and see if that helps. You may also want to try closing all applications and rebooting (restarting). Then open only LR and no other applications.

Yes, I have tried that many times. And it does seem that for the first few minutes performance is better, but after having done some editing in a collection Lightroom just gets really sluggish.