RAW to JPEG .... Slow, Slow, Slow

[wrdmrn]

12 seconds to process a simple RAW to jpg file. 3 to 4 hours to process a wedding. Becoming very unacceptable to me now. Fellow photographer friends can do this in 20-30 minutes for 500 images.

Is this an issue with my current computer set up; i5, 6gb RAM, SSD drive installed. The computer was purchased 4 years ago.

Or is it something that I can solve by upgrading some hardware without the expense of a new computer? (and I've no interest in buying a MAC)

[JP Hess]

What version of Lightroom? You might be a little short on RAM. I'm using a i5 computer with 8 GB RAM, Windows 10, Lightroom CC 20 15.10.1 installed on a SSD, images are on conventional drives. Do you have more than one hard drive? How much free disk space?

[wrdmrn]

I should've said, I use ACR to do most of my work, I'm not a lightroom fan but one takes as long as the other to produce JPGs.

I have about 60-70% of my SSD free at all time, where both LR and ACR are installed, both are upto date on the latest versions!

[JP Hess]

Sorry, but "up to date" and "latest version" doesn't satisfy us here because the updater doesn't always work and many users come here and assuming they are up to date when they really aren't. What is the actual Camera Raw version installed on your computer? I don't mean to seem to be talking down to you. We just need to make sure that you really are up to date.

[wrdmrn]

No problems at all, here is the info

ACR - 9.10.1.60

PS - 2017.1.1

LR - 2015.10.1 / 6.10.1

Although, the long processing time has been the norm for me for as long as I can remember. It's just having conversations with other photograhers that's making me question the 12 second process time.

[JP Hess]

Have you tried turning off the graphics processor option in the Lightroom preferences and in the Camera Raw preferences in Bridge? Unless you have a 4K monitor turning off that option isn't going to affect anything, and it "could" improve performance.

[wrdmrn]

Yeah it's switched off in both LR and ACR

[Just Shoot Me]

I'm on a 5 year old i7 with 16GBs RAM and Samsung 500GB SSD. LR installed on SSD, D drive (Partition), and all my images are on a 7200 RPM rotating HDD, my E drive. Running Win 7 SP1.

This image took 5-6 seconds from 48MB Fuji RAF to a  13.66 MB JPG after edits including some brush work.

[wrdmrn]

If I buy a new computer, what is it i should be looking for, I assume that RAM is probably more important than the processor?

[JP Hess]

You would want to get a i7 processor, but no more than four cores. At least 8 GB RAM, maybe 16 GB but I don't know. I'm getting by pretty well with 8. I would hate to have you by my word because you can go out and buy a supercomputer and bring it home and really be disappointed. It's one of those things that it just depends. My computer is an off the shelf HP computer ordered online. And it just runs and does the job. It's nothing fancy. You almost need to be able to install Lightroom on a machine and give it a try to see how it's going to perform.

[wrdmrn]

i know that is exactly the problem. If there was an option to try before buy then that'd be ideal and solve a lot of problems.

Until i was chatting to other I didn't know any different, but, this is my full time job, shooting 40-50 weddings per year plus 300-350 studio sessions, time is of the essence. If I don't need to wait around for 3 hour of RAW to JPG then it can only help!

[richardplondon]

Are you perhaps saving your images to fit within a certain file size? If so, you might try un-checking that option - just set a reasonable JPG saving quality, say 8, and let the file size be whatever it turns out to be.

Otherwise the software may take several goes at each image, before it decides it has succeeded well enough.

Also: it takes a lot longer to export-process and write a full res image version, than a small version (say, screen size). It is always worth focusing export, on the actual relevant requirement IMO. OTOH if you are exporting at original full resolution, IMO you can turn off output sharpening which should help.

[Conrad C]

wrdmrn  wrote

12 seconds to process a simple RAW to jpg file. 3 to 4 hours to process a wedding. Becoming very unacceptable to me now. Fellow photographer friends can do this in 20-30 minutes for 500 images.

Another factor that could be affecting processing times is the type and number of edits being applied. This should be taken into account in addition to the hardware configuration.

I just did a quick export test that confirmed some of the suspicions I've had. I tried raw files from 3 cameras (9.5, 16, and 18 megapixels) at varying stages of edits. I only spent a few minutes on it so it wasn't that rigorous a test, but generally, the results were pretty consistent:

• Export time per image could vary from 2 seconds to 7 seconds depending on the combination of pixel dimensions (megapixels) and the edits applied.
• For the same number of megapixels with no edits applied, export time could vary from 2 seconds for the 9.5MP camera, to 3.5 seconds for the 18MP camera.
• Across all cameras, export time basically doubled when comparing an image with no edits, to an image with basic edits, noise reduction and sharpening, and local adjustments. What seemed to add the most time was applying noise reduction and sharpening, but this needs to be studied more closely.

The takeaway is that if you're comparing how long it takes your images to export compared to other photographers, the comparison might only be useful if the images are comparable in pixel dimensions and the way they're edited. If you really want to compare the effects of different hardware, it has to be the same set of images.

I ran my brief tests on a 5-year-old i7 MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM and an SSD.