Memory Card Readers - USB 2 vs 3

[Kayaker72]

I use a free program for culling called faststone image viewer. It displays the small jpg that is attached to the raw file so there is no delay at all loading images. Also if you click and hold the mouse it zooms to 100% again with no delay , and back to full screen once you release the mouse. I use it to scroll through and tag the keepers , then select the tagged files and put them in their own folder. This way i dont have to import 3000 photos into lightroom which takes forever.

Thanks...I may give that a try.

I bought Photo Mechanic a couple years ago, at a time when Lightroom was a lot slower than it is now. Photo Mechanic offers immediate full-resolution views of raw files, which makes it quite easy to scroll through and find the best images in your pile. It's pretty handy for wildlife photography, where the keeper rate is less than 10% and the "trophy" rate is usually around 1%. You can flag your keepers in Photo Mechanic, and then when you import them to Lightroom the flags remain in place so you can easily find them. The only catch is that the program costs $150, so you have to be pretty seriously annoyed with the Lightroom delay before investing in it. Right now with Lightroom being a lot faster than it was in earlier versions, I find that I don't even bother using Photo Mechanic much at all. But I have a pretty fast computer which probably helps make LR as fast as possible.

Thanks. I remember you talking about Photo Mechanic. But, right now, I am focusing on your last sentence. I am still working on my home build from 2011. Overall, I think it is great and am very pleased it is still going strong after 8 years. I had started looking at current systems to see how they had improved and had focused in on transfer speed, new memory type (M2), etc.

But, I just looked at Window's "Resource Manager" while scrolling through images at 100% in lightroom. My CPU is ~50-60%, data transfer is ~50 MB/sec....but RAM. I am really pushing my RAM. As soon as I get going in lightroom, my RAM usage goes from 4GB to ~7+ GB of my 8GB sticks (which, in 2011 was pretty good).

I am thinking I may need to drop some new sticks into my system. Anyone that is more computer savvy that myself have thoughts?

[Jonathan Huyer]

But, I just looked at Window's "Resource Manager" while scrolling through images at 100% in lightroom. My CPU is ~50-60%, data transfer is ~50 MB/sec....but RAM. I am really pushing my RAM. As soon as I get going in lightroom, my RAM usage goes from 4GB to ~7+ GB of my 8GB sticks (which, in 2011 was pretty good).

I am thinking I may need to drop some new sticks into my system. Anyone that is more computer savvy that myself have thoughts?

I think you've nailed it there. I'm running with 32 GB of RAM, and when LR is chugging away I've seen the resource monitor go up as high as 16 GB usage. So when your system starts to top out at 8 GB, I'm guessing it begins to use the hard drive instead. Or maybe it just throttles back the processing to keep within the RAM limit. If your system can handle 16 GB RAM, it would probably be your most cost-effective upgrade.

[Kayaker72]

I think you've nailed it there. I'm running with 32 GB of RAM, and when LR is chugging away I've seen the resource monitor go up as high as 16 GB usage. So when your system starts to top out at 8 GB, I'm guessing it begins to use the hard drive instead. Or maybe it just throttles back the processing to keep within the RAM limit. If your system can handle 16 GB RAM, it would probably be your most cost-effective upgrade.

Thanks Jonathan. I checked and my motherboard can actually handle 32 GB. Knowing that you see up to 16 GB while using LR, I ordered 32 GB.

I am sure my 2011 home build will begin to fail at some point. But, right now I am hoping to get several more years out of it.