LR4 speed fixes?

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LR4 speed fixes?

beccaquint
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p.1 #1 · LR4 speed fixes?

I've done extensive searching trying to fix my LR4 speed issues, but am still coming up empty so I thought I might try coming here.

I'm running LR4 on a 6-core Mac Pro with 24GB of RAM. I have all the images locally on my 2TB (not SS) hard drive, which is only half full. I've done ALL the optimizing that Adobe suggests...optimizing catalogs, rendering 1:1 previews in advance, etc and LR4 is STILL more than 2x slower than LR3. Just to clarify, I'm working with all RAW files.

It's not a cache problem, because I have LR3 and 4 caching into separate folders, the cache is large, and I purge it often.

Trashing and regenerating previews does not help. I create a new catalog for each wedding, so catalog size is definitely not a problem.

Both LR4 and my OS/software are all updated. If you have any ideas, please let me know!

Jul 30, 2012 at 08:03 PM

James_N
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p.1 #2 · LR4 speed fixes?

Delete the Lightroom 3 Preferences file. Its called com.adobe.Lightroom3.plist file and located in the [user name]/Library/Preferences folder.

Jul 30, 2012 at 09:49 PM

beccaquint
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p.1 #3 · LR4 speed fixes?

Hey James,

Thanks for the response, but I've tried that already to no avail.

While I am experiencing a bit of slider lag, most of the lag is when switching from image to image...what was an instant transition in LR3 is a 1-3 second process in LR4.

Jul 30, 2012 at 10:05 PM

mogul
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p.1 #4 · LR4 speed fixes?

LR 4 is much slower than 3

Jul 31, 2012 at 01:22 AM

15Bit
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p.1 #5 · LR4 speed fixes?

Upgrading from a Core 2 Quad to an i5 Quad really sped things up for me. In raw performance the CPU is only twice as fast, but the memory subsystem is quicker too and that helps a bit i think.

I also tried transferring my catalogue and the images i'm editing to an SSD, but that didn't really make much difference beyond improving the initial catalogue load time a bit. Certainly moving from image to image is no faster, from which you can conclude that LR is CPU bound.

I would also agree with previous posters in saying that LR4 is just inherently slower than LR3.

Jul 31, 2012 at 08:47 PM

beccaquint
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p.1 #6 · LR4 speed fixes?

Yeah...I hate to think that I need to put more money into my machine just to get LR4 to work at what I consider reasonable speed. I've talked to several others who have it running at comparable (though slightly slower) speeds to LR3...it just seems to be a fluke on random computers for some reason.

Hopefully Adobe will find a fix soon. I'll keep everyone posted if I find something that works better.

Jul 31, 2012 at 10:54 PM

anomalyconcept
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p.1 #7 · LR4 speed fixes?

In some informal testing, it appears that the newer process version in LR4 is more processor-intensive than that of LR3. The average CPU usage was around 10% higher on a quad core (i5 750) using PV2012 over 2010, with the worst being noise reduction and sharpening sliders. It was common to hit 100% CPU usage on at least two cores when they were being changed.

RAM usage, at least in the develop module, was pretty constant at around 1.5GB. I think LR4 manages memory usage pretty well. Most of the time you're working with one image at a time, so there's no need to load more photos into memory. More RAM will certainly boost performance, but only up to where there's enough to not have to swap anything to disk.

From this small observation, I would say that the biggest chance for improvement would have to come from Adobe in the form of optimizing their algorithms in the new Lightroom processing engine.

Aug 01, 2012 at 02:51 AM

quismond
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p.1 #8 · LR4 speed fixes?

James_N wrote:
Delete the Lightroom 3 Preferences file. Its called com.adobe.Lightroom3.plist file and located in the [user name]/Library/Preferences folder.

Thank you very much, James!
After following your advice I can use LR4 with (almost) the same speed as the previous version, at least in the Develop module.
Before that, I experienced a lag of 10 to 15 seconds every time I moved a slider, making it basically unusable.

Aug 01, 2012 at 11:20 AM

Ian.Dobinson
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p.1 #9 · LR4 speed fixes?

I built a new machine because my old one could not handle LR4.
I went for an i5k (2500) 16gig of ram (+ a new mobo etc) .
But I found the single biggest influence was the SSD drive I went for at the same time.

I managed to do a short test on my old system with the new SSD as my new motherboard was DOA (so I had to wait for a replacement)
So I installed win& Ult on the SSD on my old dual core machine (cant remember teh exact proccesor specs but it was about 4years old) with 4 gig of ram.

what I found was that LR4.0 (not even the faster 4.1) was pretty usable on the SSD .I still had a bit of lag when I moved a slider but it was not bad. but on the normal Hard Disk it was unusable.

On my (modest by some specs) machine now its fine.
My images are on a platter 2Tb drive , and everything else is on the SSD . to save on a bit of space i do have LR4 purge the previews quite quickly .

Aug 01, 2012 at 06:04 PM

morganb4
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p.1 #10 · LR4 speed fixes?

Delete preferences file
Make a new Catalogue
Move your Cache onto an SSD
A workflow 'fudge' is to set all noise and sharpening to zero and perform this step last
A less satisfying fix is to also maximize the size of the control panels (i.e. reduce the size of the main image window)
Change your platform if possible to an i7/Xeon or whatever but thats no guarantee.

For me the real fix was increasing the performance of the memory controller in the BIOS but you cant do that on a normal Mac unfortunately.

beccaquint wrote:
I've done extensive searching trying to fix my LR4 speed issues, but am still coming up empty so I thought I might try coming here.

I'm running LR4 on a 6-core Mac Pro with 24GB of RAM. I have all the images locally on my 2TB (not SS) hard drive, which is only half full. I've done ALL the optimizing that Adobe suggests...optimizing catalogs, rendering 1:1 previews in advance, etc and LR4 is STILL more than 2x slower than LR3. Just to clarify, I'm working with all RAW files.

It's not a cache problem, because I have LR3 and 4 caching into separate folders, the cache is large, and I purge it often.

Trashing and regenerating previews does not help. I create a new catalog for each wedding, so catalog size is definitely not a problem.

Both LR4 and my OS/software are all updated. If you have any ideas, please let me know!

Aug 01, 2012 at 11:20 PM

morganb4
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p.1 #11 · LR4 speed fixes?

anomalyconcept wrote:
In some informal testing, it appears that the newer process version in LR4 is more processor-intensive than that of LR3. The average CPU usage was around 10% higher on a quad core (i5 750) using PV2012 over 2010, with the worst being noise reduction and sharpening sliders. It was common to hit 100% CPU usage on at least two cores when they were being changed.

RAM usage, at least in the develop module, was pretty constant at around 1.5GB. I think LR4 manages memory usage pretty well. Most of the time you're working with one image at a time, so there's no need to load more photos into memory. More RAM will certainly boost performance, but only up to where there's enough to not have to swap anything to disk.

From this small observation, I would say that the biggest chance for improvement would have to come from Adobe in the form of optimizing their algorithms in the new Lightroom processing engine.

Disagree with all but the last sentence:
The adobe forums (and this forum) have people with new multi-die boxes and are still struggling.
Overclocking significantly, yields almost no benefit
Improving memory throughput yielded a big improvement for me.
With four cores and 8 threads and only 2 hitting 100% says that the application isnt written to take advantage of multi threading very well (not a fully qualified opinion that last bit)

Aug 01, 2012 at 11:33 PM

beccaquint
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p.1 #12 · LR4 speed fixes?

Can anyone recommend a reasonable SSD on the cheaper side that's compatible in a 2010 Mac Pro?

Either way, I find it ridiculous that most photographers' fixes are upgrading hardware...an $100 program should be able to run just fine on your average machine. It should not require a SSD, a i7/Xeon processor and massive amounts of RAM. I just can't get over that!

Aug 02, 2012 at 05:47 PM

morganb4
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p.1 #13 · LR4 speed fixes?

^ Why not? THink about what its doing in Develop module. How big is the average RAW file vs the average on chip cache size.

Not at all surprising that there is a potential memory bottleneck.

Aug 02, 2012 at 11:47 PM

andrewho
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p.1 #14 · LR4 speed fixes?

LR3 is fast though with the same average RAW file, so i don't think its a memory bottleneck.

Aug 06, 2012 at 08:07 AM

Ho1972
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p.1 #15 · LR4 speed fixes?

No wonder the LR4 upgrade was so cheap.

Aug 06, 2012 at 01:29 PM

trevanian
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p.1 #16 · LR4 speed fixes?

Adobe with LR is really torquing me. I don't get how every new verson of PS works perfectly fine witt my old duo core, and lr 2 works pefectly fine, then lr 3 just kills my system to a crawl? I'm in the process of deciding a new build because of this crap, but on the other hand it might still suck with LR4 regardless? LR needs a real competitor to get their crap together.

Aug 06, 2012 at 06:45 PM

luminosity
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p.1 #17 · LR4 speed fixes?

I'm really surprised that no one has suggested running things off an external drive, which is what I do. I think it helps a lot.

I'm about ready to close up shop on this hard drive and move to a new one, with a new catalog. I actually use several catalogs right now, and I'm sure I'll soon have multiple ones on a new drive.

Aug 06, 2012 at 06:47 PM

Daboyle
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p.1 #18 · LR4 speed fixes?

Luminosity -

external drive is only good if you have a thunderbolt or ESATA connection, and even then you will never be faster than an ESATA 6gb/s connection directly into the MOBO, unless you have a raid array in thunderbolt, which is pretty costly. USB 3 is fast, but never reaches advertised speeds and bottlenecks pretty quickly.

Multiple SSD's for the cache, catalog and OS/Programs are a better route, with your files on some sort of raid array with spinning disks. I personally have a raid 5 array of 8 2tb HDD's for my working/files drive that are connected to an Areca raid card which gives me 850 MBS read and 700 MBS write and is blazing fast, much faster than you'd ever need for LR to utilize

Always, and I mean always have backups of your working files - raid is not a backup solution, unless you are talking enterprise level, which we are not.

Aug 07, 2012 at 05:41 PM

AhamB
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p.1 #19 · LR4 speed fixes?

trevanian wrote:
I don't get how every new verson of PS works perfectly fine witt my old duo core, and lr 2 works pefectly fine, then lr 3 just kills my system to a crawl? I'm in the process of deciding a new build because of this crap, but on the other hand it might still suck with LR4 regardless? LR needs a real competitor to get their crap together.

Seriously? I haven't noticed much difference between LR 2 and 3 (except when using the local adjustment tools, which weren't available in LR 2). I haven't dared to try 4 yet because of the complaints of it being so slow/cpu intensive. Anyway, in your case I would expect LR 4 to be unacceptably slow if even LR 3 runs slow for you -- definitely don't expect any speed improvement.

@morganb4: What was it that you changed in your BIOS? Memory timings?

Aug 10, 2012 at 04:38 PM

markadams99
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p.1 #20 · LR4 speed fixes?

Use a smaller catalog and periodically sync to the main catalog.

Aug 13, 2012 at 11:43 AM

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