Hello!
I use LR 5.7 on Win7, laptop with Intel i7-2620M, 8Gb RAM (not extendable, unfortunately), 2xSSD in Raid0 (for system, LR and catalog), external video card Radeon 6650M with 1Gb RAM in docking station and display connected to the laptop through this docking station.
I use LR for portrait photography. I have catalog (5.8 Gb) with ~20 photos, 1 processed and 1 almost processed among them. I did like this: at first, adjusted lights, colors, turned off modules "details", "effects" and others not needed. After that I started doing "Dodge&Burn" with lots of adjustment brush strokes. I didn't finish this and LR slowed down and was not responding for some time (~4-5mins). After it was back and alive, I closed the application, optimized and backed up the catalog and decided to check what is going on with LR.
Look at the first picture. At point 1 I started LR (library mode). At point 2 I changed to Develop module and started watching RAM (I didn't do anything after point 2, just monitoring). While RAM usage was "on top", LR did not respond.
Some RAM was fried after a while, then full again for some reasons (I did not do anything, just monitoring).
I waited until point 3 (5-10 min totally) and then there was some RAM free and LR responding.
I added one brush stroke at point 4 and LR ate decent part of RAM. Then (point 5) I continued doing Dodge and Burn. After RAM was full (It took 30 sek), I could add 2-3 little brush strokes, wait until LR responds again (10-20 sek) and continue like this further. But it is kind of not comfortable workflow.
I deleted all the photos except one I work with from Catalog, optimized it, however the size of the catalog remained the same, 5.8Gb, and I still had all these mentioned troubles.
Actually, this is disaster and makes me regret I paid for LR. I can't process photos in LR having recommended 8 Gb of RAM!
Is there a way to solve this problem or I should forget about LR until I buy a new computer with more memory?
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Replies
https://forums.adobe.com/people/Just+Shoot+Me wrote
And as far as I know every notebook made that used that CPU has 2 memory slots that can handle 8GB sticks in each slot to give you a total of 16GBs. That includes Apple MacBook Pros of that era, 2011 into 2012.
The Sony Vaio Z Series laptop memory is soldered on the motherboard and cannot be upgraded. BTW- During my career I worked directly with Intel on memory certification for new chipsets. http://www.cmtlabs.com/2012/index.asp 
Crucial is the most prolific memory provider, but I can't find an upgrade:
Memory & SSD Upgrades | Compatible Upgrades | Crucial.com | Crucial.com
https://forums.adobe.com/people/Just+Shoot+Me wrote
How do you have 2xSSD's in a RAID 0 array in a notebook.
12qwer233 wrote
I just had a thought on if it could be realated to "write to XMP file" setting turned off (it was not turned on when I deleted the settings file).
I'll try to import this .dng to a new catalog with XMP turned on.
Well, still the same behaviour.
Enabling 'Automatially Write Changes into XMP' is not necessary and will make LR run even slower with all of the Adjustment Brush and Spot Heal applications you are applying.
I was hoping to find something unique with your DNG file that would explain what's happening (High Memory Usage and Catalog File Size Inflation). I downloaded the DNG file, placed it in a separate folder, imported the folder into LR, and created a few virtual copies for testing. This brought my normally well behaving R 2015.10.1 system to a crawl before doing any editing. Both the Library and Develop modules were very sluggish!
After examining the settings applied and eliminating them one-by-one it appears the high number of Spot Heal applications are causing the performance issues. LR's memory usage never went above 3.5 GB, but I'm on LR 6 (CC 2015). Also the LR catalog file only increased by about 70 MB (1.78 GB> 1.85 GB). Again this may be something unique to LR 5 that was fixed in LR 6. Even though I couldn't duplicate your issue (Memory Usage & Catalog Inflation) the credit goes to
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1) It appears many of the Spot Heal applications are almost on top of each other. You might try using a larger Spot Heal Size to reduce the number of spots required.
2) I also noticed you are applying a large number of Color Corrections, which are most likely conflicting with each other and probably not required. This article may be helpful for establishing a more natural skin tone:
https://petapixel.com/2014/10/01/colorchecker-how-to-get-perfect-skin-colors-with-every-camera/
3) You can also trial test LR 6 to see if it reduces the memory usage and catalog file inflation. You can have both your current LR 5.7.1 and LR 6 installed at the same time with no conflict. You an also test Photoshop if the issue persists.
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the only suggestion
I was investigating a similar performance complaint this morning and looked further at your portrait image. I reset the Spot Clone tool remove all applications and found LR still very laggy. I next reset the Adjustment Brush to remove all of its applications. Performance returned to normal with no other settings changed. After examining the Adjustment Brush spots it looks like you had Auto Mask selected on some of the brushes. This created a very "complex" mask, which requires considerably more data to be stored in the LR Catalog file and much higher memory and processor utilization to render the image real-time. Below is the mask overlay visualization for the Adjustment Brush spot underlined in red (forehead area). I would suggest not using the Auto Mask setting for this type of retouching since it really isn't helpful and causes performance issues.
With your permission I would like to share the portrait DNG for further discussion with Adobe Engineering concerning performance issues. Is that OK?
Not sure what you are trying to accomplish with all the color correcting. I reset the image and what you applied makes that very attractive young lady look like a vampire or someone that has been bled of most of their blood. Here is that same image with the color restored and some minor spot healing and one adjustment brush applied.
12qwer233 wrote
I have catalog (5.8 Gb) with ~20 photos, 1 processed and 1 almost processed among them. I did like this: at first, adjusted lights, colors, turned off modules "details", "effects" and others not needed. After that I started doing "Dodge&Burn" with lots of
If you only have 20 photos imported into LR and the catalog file is 5.8 GB something is wrong. Try this:
1) Select ALL 20 files you are currently working on.
2) Go to menu File> Export as Catalog, give it a unique name, and Save to your LR catalog folder or desktop. Make sure the below options are checked:
EDIT: 3) Go to menu File> Open Catalog, select the .lrcat file in the new catalog folder, and try editing those 20 files again.
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