Improved Lightroom Performance

[Janet_L_Stoppee]

How would you feel about Adobe’s Lightroom getting a performance boost? You can help with that. Some of the technology press has picked up on what Tom Hogarty, on Adobe’s photo product management wrote, ”I would like to address concerns recently voiced by our community of customers around Lightroom performance, as improving performance is our current top priority."

Adobe Lightroom? Yes, we’re [M2 Media Studios] known for Adobe Bridge. But, we’ve been enthusiastic supporter for both apps before either of them were released into the marketplace. The downside to Lightroom has always been speed. The performance has been too slow. When Adobe released Bridge 6.2 (February 23, 2016) the rewrite dramatically ramped up our editing efficiency.

So, if we’re working in Bridge, why do we need Lightroom? It has some very cool web gallery features which nicely integrate with Adobe Dreamweaver for web and mobile gallery exhibits. Users can design other cool Internet exhibits for their Lightroom galleries with Adobe Muse and Adobe Animate.

Have you tried Lightroom on the iPad? It’s a great way to carry around an editable library of your images.

The bottom line is that the full Adobe CC subscription (or even the smaller photography subscription) is part of a greater media technology ecosystem, which all works together. If Lightroom can overcome the performance issues, it’s going to be a more active member of the CC family.

If Lightroom performance is holding you back,  how can you get involved in the improvement process? Adobe wants your feedback. Please visit this quick survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/LrDesktop_performance

[dj_paige]

Really? Adobe needs to conduct a survey on this matter? It's not obvious where there are Lightroom performance bottlenecks? It's not obvious that some people are angry about this, and that something needs to be done? Do people at Adobe read their own forums on their own website?

[Conrad C]

While it's obvious that what users want is a release with faster performance and not a survey, the reason for the survey (and the Adobe blog post it’s linked from) is the alternative:

Would the Lightroom user base have a more positive reaction about such an important topic if Adobe never acknowledged the problem, and asked no users for details?

The blog post says, among other things:

We already understand many of the current pain points around GPU, import performance, certain editing tasks and review workflows and are investing heavily in improving those areas...If you have feedback or would like to work with the Lightroom team on your most pressing issues...

Not sure what the downside is of that approach.

[99jon]

I agree Conrad; I like consultation. Thank you Janet. I had already submitted the survey.

[dj_paige]

The downside is that it appears that now, just now, more than 2 years after LR CC 2015/LR 6 has been released, Adobe is getting around to doing something, and the first (and most visible thing) that Adobe is going to do is conduct a survey. I think this is just terrible PR. (And what happens if the survey doesn't have clear conclusions, or it shows that most users are happy with LR performance?)

Instead, they could have had someone like Tom Hogarty assure users that not only is Adobe aware of these issues but they have been working diligently, ever since Lightroom CC 2015 was released, as their number 1 priority, on making major improvements to Lightroom performance.

[Brian Stoppee]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Conrad+C  wrote

Not sure what the downside is of that approach.

100% agree, Conrad. Adobe also does field work. That's especially important for enterprise users.

People who work for big corporations or government agencies may not take polls.

It's all important response collection.

[Brian Stoppee]

dj_paige  wrote

Really? Adobe needs to conduct a survey on this matter? It's not obvious where there are Lightroom performance bottlenecks? It's not obvious that some people are angry about this, and that something needs to be done? Do people at Adobe read their own forums on their own website?

Adobe gathers input from a variety of sources.

Janet & I do maybe 100 or so of these public topics a year and the results are always all over the map. Sometime we write what we think is a hot topic and even create a cool visual just for it, and we get ZERO response. Then a few days later we get some analytic data which says something like 7,500 people saw it.

Similarly, we have seen a bunch of people bothered about something on public boards and when we want to do deeper research, and put a survey in the field, the hot topic goes cold and some completely unrelated matter gets all the chatter.

Does that mean the previous board chatter no longer counts? Not at all. Various response venues bring out different kinds of respondents.

[dj_paige]

My concern isn't your specific survey.

My concern is the wording of the request, and the underlying connotation of the request, making it appear that Adobe is just now realizing for the first time that they had better do something about this lack of performance, and they have chosen a survey to begin the process of figuring out what to do.

I say "making it appear" because that's the impression people will get from reading this request. I have no doubt in my own mind that Adobe has been working on this issue diligently for a long time, but not everyone will agree with me. As I said, I think this is terrible PR for Adobe's Lightroom users.

[Brian Stoppee]

dj_paige  wrote

I have no doubt in my own mind that Adobe has been working on this issue diligently for a long time, but not everyone will agree with me.

As Janet noted, Adobe's Bridge team set out to completely rewrite that app. Bridge went dormant for a while.

Since Lightroom cannot go silent (Camera Raw is baked into it and that needs constant updating) ramping up major performance changes isn't as easy. So, yes, I think it's been in the oven for a long time and they're getting ready to move forward with a solution and want to see if there are any pain points they have not heard about.

[Janet_L_Stoppee]

I like how the new Camera Raw User Interface now resembles the Lr User Interface, making the jump between the two much easier.

[john beardsworth]

To be frank, people are generally better off not making that jump too often. If you are managing your workflow with Lightroom, adding adjustments in ACR is just making work for yourself. It's surprising that Adobe continue to put so much effort into the ACR dialog box.

[Brian Stoppee]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/john+beardsworth  wrote

It's surprising that Adobe continue to put so much effort into the ACR dialog box.

By "ACR dialog box" do you mean the revised user interface (UI) for the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in?

They updated it earlier in the 9.0 release cycle but I didn't know any more work was planned to the UI. Of course, Adobe continues to pump in new updates to it just like they do with the ACR components which are baked into Lightroom.

[john beardsworth]

Yes, I do mean the interface for Adobe Camera Raw, and I'm thinking over the longer term - Before/After view, for instance.  

[Brian Stoppee]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/john+beardsworth  wrote

Yes, I do mean the interface for Adobe Camera Raw, and I'm thinking over the longer term - Before/After view, for instance.  

Adobe's complete photography subscription's app integration would appear to reflect Adobe's long range view of user needs. It's going to take a while for the Bridge, Camera Raw, and Photoshop users to begin to see the unique resources which Lightroom brings to the table.

Janet & I discussed a few aspects to starting this discussion and encouraging that kind of understanding was part of her motivation.

[john beardsworth]

Integration is one thing, duplicating features is another. If photographers who continue to use Bridge haven't seen the sense of using Lightroom by now, I'm not sure continuing to pander to them will help anyone.

[Brian Stoppee]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/john+beardsworth  wrote

Integration is one thing, duplicating features is another. If photographers who continue to use Bridge haven't seen the sense of using Lightroom by now, I'm not sure continuing to pander to them will help anyone.

Janet & I travel with weird company but the value of Lightroom is slowly becoming more apparent to the Br, CR, Ps crowd we chat with.

That gets us back to the performance issue. Such an improvement might earn Lr some new friends if the speed bump is significant.

[Janet_L_Stoppee]

Lr mobile is really cool to create a library of roughly edited raws, to then further fine-tune with the client. We have explored many uses of this.