Lightroom Painfully Slow

[andystock]

Hello,

I'm having some performance issues with Lightroom CC 2015, the latest update.  It's slow to show edits and load the previews.  I have a powerful PC but it seems to be really slow.  See my specs below and tell me if I should be expecting better performance.

i7-5930K CPU, overclocked to 4.2GHz

64 GB RAM

2 (yes 2) AMD Firepro W9100's with 32GB VRAM each

I feel like it should be faster.  Photoshop and Première Pro run very well.  Any ideas?

Thanks!

[Jeffb2009]

Hi Andystock. you are not on your own with this issue, quite a few are having similar performance issues. Unfortunately I don't have a solution.

you could try switching off Use GPU in preferences. A couple of people have had some success in deleting the cache folder and rebuilding (can take a seriously long time though - someone's here took 3 days, and they had to keep stopping and starting LR)

For many its been getting progressively worse over the last few releases. I've given up on looking for a solution and moved to a different software and have been astounded at the performance difference. Of course, its a big learning curve to move to something else, plus a cost.

It's almost like since Lightroom comes bundled with Photoshop the support team thinks of it as a free program and not to dedicate too much resources to it - I hope that isn't the case but that's how it feels as a user.

Hope switching off USE GPU helps you.

[scott-david-weaver]

I noticed yesterday (March 14, 2017) after installing the update (2015.9) LR was running more slowly. I'm in a good position to evaluate that performance, after spending most of the last ten days working on assignment post-production. I saw a definite decline in speediness after installing the new update. Yes, I have restarted the computer! I work on Macbook Pro, 16 MG RAM, and very fast everything.

[F. McLion]

It's probably due to the count of cores of your CPU.

LR does not play nice with more than 4 cores.

Please read this thread: Terrible performance in LR - Fantastic in PP. What gives?!

[Jeffb2009]

Limit to 4 cores??? dang, no wonder I had so many problems. Silly me upgrading to a powerful 12 core.

Having to switch off GPU , limit to 4 cores...seems a little ...er.....amaturish?? which is precisely what many of us are saying - this supposed pro software cannot handle being run an a professional computer system. Kinda seems like a bit of a joke to be honest.

Any software that requires a top level computer to actively be throttled back because it's too powerful gets the "uninstall" treatment from me.

Best software move I have ever made was ditching lightroom. COne is light years ahead in performance. I just wish Adobe would/had listened to its customer base.

[Panu_79]

I am heading back to bridge from Lightroom. I know bridge and ACR is very limited but I don´t want to waste my time jerky workflow. LR has came so pompous and freaking slow. Bad coding? I have reasonably capable desktop computer and still I have to wait ages before I can ever dream of selecting images. Iam very disapointed!

[MarVar]

Huh, this is ridiculous. I think I'll just cancel my CC then, Lr and it's cataloging features was the main reason for me to take this path. There's Affinity Photo to blow Lr away, there's Inkscape to sideline Illustrator, there's Htifilm instead of Premiere and AE. Audition has excellent audio retouching features, which will be hard to replace, but I can live without those. I can do everything I need to with a fraction of the money I'm paying for dysfunctional software, again.

[Panu_79]

"Audition has excellent audio retouching features, which will be hard to replace, but I can live without those."

You should give a try to Reaper. I have used it many years and compete well even with mighty ProTools.

https://www.reaper.fm/

[MarVar]

Reaper can edit and restore audio clips like Audition? I had no idea, I'll check that out. Been aware about this software for a long time, never tried it. Going a bit offtopic now, so let's get back on track. Thanks!

[Abambo]

In Germany they have a proverb: "Reisende soll man nicht aufhalten!" (don't stop a rolling stone).

I think Adobe is aware, that the current performance of Lr is not satisfactory:

On Lightroom Performance .

On the other hand we have some known issues:

• GPU processing involves some overhead, if that overhead is not offset by the GPU advantage, you have a slower processing.
• Multiprocessing involves also some overhead and not all operations can be accelerated. See also Amdahl's law - Wikipedia
• If the algorithms have been optimized for a certain architecture, putting in more resources will not get more performance. A pregnant woman needs 38 months before delivering birth. Putting in 2 women does not cut this time by 2. (I use this example, when people claiming that putting more resources into a task will accelerate that task...)

[LePetitPecheur]

hi,

i found a solution for my really slow lightroom cc catalog (about 40000 pictures).

Perhaps this would help:

- change setting of your antivirus solution: exclude the lightroom cache folder

- change setting of windows indexing: exclude the lightroom cache folder  

[F. McLion]

I also suggest to exclude the catalog (*.lrcat) as well as the file format of your RAW image files (i.e. *.NEF) next to the preview folder.

[Abambo]

true, when my virus scanner kicked in on my machine, starting anything was quite impossible because of the catalog et al. scan.

[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:

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.

[Roland_Rick]

Setup:

Lightroom 7.4 / Camera RAW 10.4.0.976

iMac 5K Late 2015, 4 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB 1867 MHz DDR3, AMD Radeon R9 M395X 4096 MB, 1 TB SSD.

Disk: Super fast SSD G-Drive USB3 connected

Work to do:

Trying to do a spot removal on a panorama 26476 x 3791. It's a DNG, created by Lr's panorama merge.

Issue:

Never ending story. Impossible. Takes infinite amount of time.

Complaint:

This is so worse. Fact is: Adobe give a sh?t on customer feedback and/or satisfaction. They are arrogant and do not listen.

Point. That's the story. Take the money and slap right into customers face. Left and right cheek at once.

[Roland_Rick]

Update: to me, it looks like Lr and Bridge/Camera RAW have a serious issue by asynchron read/write disk operation.

Question to all: I am on Mac, is this also an issue on Windows computers?

Appreciate all reply.

This is a disaster, a trivial operation like spot removal ends up in totally blocking the computer. Please have here a screenshot of the activity monitor:

[F. McLion]

Did you follow all the suggestions?

Same with GPU on and off?

[Roland_Rick]

Yes, of course. I already had that tweaked like so before your suggestions

[dj_paige]

Doing large amounts of spot removal is known to be slow. To make it faster, you need to turn OFF GPU Acceleration (uncheck "Use Graphics Processor"). If you have a large (4K or greater) monitor, this is yet another cause of slowness.

[Roland_Rick]

Turn OFF (????) GPU acceleration? Are you kidding me? What for do I have a GPU, if Adobe Software does not utilise this extra hardware/performance?

[dj_paige]

Spot removal and brushing are faster if you turn off GPU acceleration. Of course, turning off GPU acceleration can make other things slower if you have a 4K or larger monitor. That's the state of affairs of the programming of Lightroom, it's not close to ideal, but that's what it is.

[Abambo]

GPU acceleration is known to slow down all operations because of the overhead induced. Only on high resolution monitors you experience speed-ups, because there the amount of data that needs to be shuffled around is very huge and the set-up overhead is relatively less important.

[Roland_Rick]

Abambo​, @dj_paige, thanks for your reply guys but this is a contradiction to

Adobe Lightroom GPU Troubleshooting and FAQ

However, at the moment I am facing a way more ugly problem: since over an hour I am waiting for Lr to quit a tiny catalog with about 1000 wedding images I edited. But the only thing what's going on is boiling the CPU:

I have no clue if I can force quit Lr without losing all my edits in the catalog... FYC: there are no hardware, issues, all other software is running as expected.

Cheers,

Roland

[dj_paige]

As stated by Eric Chan, the GPU slows down brushing and spot healing. Eric Chan is the lead programmer for Lightroom. The information you show from the Adobe web site is for marketing purposes, and is not technically correct regarding spot healing and brushing. Yes, the GPU speeds up other operations of the Develop module if you have a 4K or large monitor.

GPU notes for Lightroom CC (2015)

Regarding your current problem, I have no clue either what your CPU is doing at this time.

[Roland_Rick]

Hi dj, thanks for your reply.

The current problem is: I clicked "Quit" in the Lr menu and since over an hour, I am waiting for Lr to quit.

Greetings to Eric: can I send you a log file and where do I find it?