Lightroom 4 becomes slow again with 4.2

Sorry to hear of your issues.  Although your computer is within the minimum specs for Lightroom to run, that doesn't mean it will run well.  It's a minimum specification.

As you were happy with 4.1, we can talk you through going back to it, if you'd like some help with that.

Most users on these forums have reported an increase in speed with 4.2, myself included. Moving between Library and Develop is now almost instant. The Gradient and Adjustments brushes are also much quicker, and Sliders are snappier. Sorry about your woes.

I understand your emotions. Some time ago I used LR4 and LR4.1 on a 32-bit PC (W7, i7 870@2.93Ghz, 4GB ddr3 dual channel memory) but LR was nearly unusable; out of memory errors when rendering 1:1 previews (nefs), out of memory errors with web export (nefs), 1:1 previews blurred (nefs), using the brush was tricky because it could crash LR. The problems did not occur with jpegs or tiffs. 

I changed to 64-bit W7 with the same hardware but increased memory to 8GB. The out of memory errors are gone and I am a happy user of LR; so my advice change to 64-bit and more memory.

I'm with you on this one. Lr 4.1 ran very well and 4.2 made the program very slothlike. In the Develop module just switching between pictures can occasionally take 5 seconds or more at a time, the Exposure brush pins don't all reappear for many seconds after switching on the brush among other little things that add up to significant time leaks.

Unfortunately, I think the trend with most software manufacturers today is to have their consumers throw more and more memory and cores at their software to overcome their own architectural shortcomings. In that sense, many of these programs turn out to be a lot more expensive than their retail prices would have us believe.

In answer to Thincuts above, who said "...Unfortunately, I think the trend with most software manufacturers today is to have their consumers throw more and more memory and cores at their software to overcome their own architectural shortcomings. In that sense, many of these programs turn out to be a lot more expensive than their retail prices would have us believe..."

I don't think there are any substantial architectural shortcomings in modern software, it is that as file sizes grow larger and development requirements increase in sophisication, it is necessary to create ever more complex routines to satisfy our requirements. This in turn necessitates beefier hardware - which many people have, but not everyone.

If software was to remain at the more modest levels of capability to be able to run well on modestly specified equipment, then we would all be the poorer for it and progress would falter and eventually atrophy altogether..

Anthony.

Anthony, I agree with your point, but it is not that point I was disputing. Throughout Lr's entire history performance has widely varied, not only between major releases but between minor releases as well, i.e., x.1 vs. x.2 - not necessarily positively. This should not be the case, and it's not just an Adobe thing. If someone ran version 4.1 without issue and 4.2 (minor release) slowed everything down on the same system that ran 4.1 without issue, should that not raise an eyebrow? In this case the constant is the hardware and the variable is the software.

If 4.2 incorporated feature/functionality well above and beyond 4.1, that is a different story.

My point is not that software should remain modestly capable. My point is that hardware requirements should not have to be significantly altered to accommodate software which has only been modestly enhanced.

The only problem with your point - which I fully understand, is that not all of us have experienced a slowdown between LR4.1 and LR4.2. To the contrary - my experience has been to see an increase (albeit modest) in the 'snappiness' and general responsiveness of the latest iternation of Lightroom. I have not changed any hardware at all.

By the way, this has been on a Win7-64 machine.

Anthony.

I'm not sure I would call it a "problem" with my point necessarily. I think you highlight that there are a lot of  interactions between software and hardware. Some interactions are easily measured, such as memory consumption, CPU utilization, etc. Others are not so easily measured. I accept that others are successful with this release and I'm pleased that folks are being productive with 4.2.

It is because of all this complexity, however, that I would discourage the quickness with which people turn to memory as a "fix." Often extra memory merely delays the reemergence of old problems.

I am Win 7/64 as well. Maybe a couple of tweaks to my system can settle me in - I remain hopeful.

I have an older quad core machine with 8GB of ram that LR4.2 was very responsive on. In the last week it has slowed to a crawl. Upon examining the resource monitor in windows, I noticed an excessive amount of hard dirve read/write data as well as a very large page file size. As an experiment, I set the page file to 0, rebooted and Lightroom ran as slow as before. I then set the page file to let windows manage the size and over right the old page file. Rebooted and LR is snappy again. Not sure if the page file had been corrupted or what, but this solution worked for me.

Just another opinion.......

I have been using Lightroom (all versions) for many years now. I am currently on lr 4.2 along with Photoshop CS6 standard.

I use a Windows Ultimate 64 bit dual xeon 2.6 processor using 12GB RAM And a 1GB ASUSGTX550 Ti graphics card. RAID disks and separate disk as a scratch disk.

I work primarily with Canon EOS 5d MKII raw files. 21MB each. I make colour corrections in LR then use photoshop for more creative enhancements.

For the most part my experience with Adobe software is a positive one. For me moving from LR 3 to 4 I noticed a performance drop in the software. However I rationalised this against the software could do more. I cam sympathise with some of the other posters as areas of decreased performance for me are:

Slower 1:1 Renders

Slower export of JPGs. (Although I've noticed the more enhancements I make in Develop mode, the slower the export time)

latency when making adjustments

As a submitter of stock libraries, the performance decrease is an incovenience but not a show stopper and doesnt impact my workflow to heavily.

Interestingly Ive noticed the performance of CS6 increased for me when I upgraded. Ive watched a lot of Adobe/Linda tutorials on setting up Photoshop and they all mention the Mercury graphics engine in CS6. Now I'm not sure on the technology of Lightroom, but would it perhaps benefit from the same technology?

The biggest bug bear for me is the latency on making adjustments. For example if I open a picture in Develop. Then adjust Exposure. The slider acknowledges the new value but the preview needs time to catch up.Again it's not the end of the world for me. But if ayone know of tweaks or enhancements I could make to LR to improve this area, that would be greatly appreciated.

I would like to close by saying. I believe LR is a great product and along with Photoshop they compliment each other very well. IF LR performance could take the same step as Photoshop I believe LR would become a fanstatic product not just a great one.

Thanks for reading.

Neil

is it suppose to take 60 seconds for an image to display without being blurry? and to click from image to image? My imac is just a little over a year old with newly upgraded softward & a 16 gb memory. Surely it shouldn't be this slow?

poteat_3177 wrote:

 

Surely it shouldn't be this slow?

Of course not - but for many of us, it's not slow at all.

well how do I fix it?  It's completely putting my business on standstill & with adobe support closed & Thanksgiving next week- I'm getting very behind!!!!

You might try the Lightroom 4.3RC which 'seems' to be a little sharper than 4.2 and stable too. The usual caveats with RC software apply of course.

Anthony.

For the issue that Brush crashes Lr, try to upgrade your Mac OS to latest version, say 10.7.5 now.