Lightroom 3 Slow, Advice?

[Mark Elberson]

I am running LR3 on an iMac with 12GB of RAM and almost 70% of my HD is available. I have noticed that LR has progressively gotten slower to work with. My biggest beef is simply viewing images within the Library, generally for the purpose of culling. I often create 1:1 previews to expedite rendering when zooming to check for critical focus. This helps but there are many times when it still takes a while before the images de-pixelates.


I am not a power user so overly technical suggestions may be over my head. Is there anything that I am overlooking? I thought that the combination of RAM and HD utilization heavily influenced processing speed on such applications?

[HDNitehawk]

The RAM would affect speed if you didn't have enough, it would slow it down. You probably have 3x the amount you need. The amount of space on the HD isn't going to make it faster, again unless you do not have enough then it is going to slow you down. So both would slow you down, but once you have an adequate amount it isn't going to go faster. Neither of those are your problem, unless you have some bad memory or something wrong with the hard drive. I doubt that is the case.


You said it has gotten progressively slower, which to me means at some point it worked fine. But, you said you had an iMac, you might elaborate a bit more it might be helpful to someone reading this. Processor speed, number of processors, how old it is ...etc... (really if you have a iMac that holds 12GB of RAM, I would think it should be screaming when it runs LR)


I do not use LR, but other adobe applications. When doing review isn't there an option to view at a lower resolution so you can review faster?I think there is on Bridge but I have it toggled off, my Mac Pro never bogs down when doing full screen reviews. Maybe there are some other functions that get toggled on that other members will know about.


I am not on my Mac now, but there is a force quit option (not sure of the exact name)that you can use to shut down applications. Go to it and make sure nothing else is running while your working in LR and see if that helps. I doubt it will, but worth a check.

[Mark Elberson]

The machine is about 1.5 years old. Here are the tech-specs:

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac10,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 3.06 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 12 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz

I feel as if it's gotten progressively slower. Maybe I've gotten progressively less patient :-) I also thought it should be screaming! You can review at lower resolutions so that the images load more quickly but if you need to view at 1:1 they load very s-l-o-w-l-y. Maybe it's just a compromise. I just feel that things used to run more quickly and LR is the only program on my machine that I feel this way about. Also, there are only about 20k images in my library so that should not be an issue I don't think.

[HDNitehawk]

Here is a thought since you say 20k images.


In Bridge if I have a folder that has 200 photos in it, it will load all 200 as previews. If it has 1000 it loads all 1000. So if I am loading from a big folder, it lags if I start viewing when it loads.


Maybe it is a stretch, but can LR be doing something similar.

[Sheiky]

Oh my, an Apple user with a problem? :P





Nah sorry to hear that you're having problems. RAM with broken sectors was the first thing that came to my mind, but then you'd probably be having screen freezes or something like that as well.


The hard drive free space sounds more than enough. The speed will get down when the harddrive gets fuller, but with 70% free that would not be noticeable unless you'd measure it.

You can review at lower resolutions so that the images load more quickly but if you need to view at 1:1 they load very s-l-o-w-l-y.

Maybe this is because the 1:1 isn't rendered yet? Lightroom/Adobe Camera Raw adresses a certain amount of hard drive space for 1:1 rendering. Called the Camera Raw Cache.


I believe it's normally 2GB.


When you render 1:1 it will create a file in this cache where it can load the image quicker, simply said. If the cache is full and you'll render different photos it will delete the oldest in the cache and it will create new ones instead.


Increasing the Adobe Raw Cache definitely increases the speed, but more importantly increases the amount of 1:1 rendered photos that you can store.


I'm not sure how this works in an iMac, but in Windows it's in the option menu of Lightroom. Just look for Camera Raw Cache.


Since you've got so much space left on your hard drive, it doesn't hurt to increase the Raw Cache a little bit.





Hope this works out for you,


Jan

[Rocco]

Yep, I experienced the same and agree with what they Jann and HDNighthawk are saying. But a reformat and re-install ended up solving my problem. I'm sure I had my previews set to too high a quality.


This article has some good tips that might solve your problem though.


www.oreillynet.com/.../five_ways_to_speed_up_lightroo.html





edit: Looks like this was for lightroom 1. heh. My bad. Still might be worth a shot though.

[Rocco]

Here we go. Taken from: blog.bretedge.com/.../speed-up-lightroom-3-in-two-easy-steps


Also, the thumbnail preview has a lot of weight when dealing with slowness in import and library views.


1) Optimize your catalog. This alone helped a little bit, but I didn’t see significant improvement. I’ve got Lightroom 3 set up such that every time I quit the application I’m prompted to back up and optimize the catalog. Not a bad idea, really.


2) Increase the Camera Raw Cache. The default setting for this cache is 1 GB. Unless you’re using a 3.2 megapixel camera from 2001 this likely won’t be enough. The maximum cache is 50 GB. I set mine to 30 GB. Problem solved. I’ve had no issues with LR3 being sluggish in about a week now. Making this change seemed to have the most profound effect on Lightroom 3 performance. To increase the Camera Raw Cache, on a Mac, follow this click string: Lightroom > Preferences > File Handling. At the bottom of the dialogue box you will see “Camera Raw Cache Settings”.








I just changed my cache to 25 gig and like him, I saw an immediate performance increase and i wasn't even really having issues to begin with. It's snappy now.

[jrw]

You did say that it seems to have gotten progressively slower. One question would be whether all of your photos are being placed into one folder or into subfolders during import? I do notice a difference in the rate that LR takes which seems to depend on the number of photos in the subfolder being worked with at the time. When I am working with photos from a sports event, which can be several thousand per day for bigger events, there is a definite lag in the time to create 1:1 views. In less substantial folders things do move quicker, especially if I have recently looked at a 1:1 view recently, which are created and stored for an adjustable period of time. The cache can only hold so much before needing rewriting, which is where the time seems to be going.


JRW

[Mark Elberson]

Maybe this is because the 1:1 isn't rendered yet? Lightroom/Adobe Camera Raw adresses a certain amount of hard drive space for 1:1 rendering. Called the Camera Raw Cache.


I believe it's normally 2GB.


When you render 1:1 it will create a file in this cache where it can load the image quicker, simply said. If the cache is full and you'll render different photos it will delete the oldest in the cache and it will create new ones instead.


Increasing the Adobe Raw Cache definitely increases the speed, but more importantly increases the amount of 1:1 rendered photos that you can store.


I'm not sure how this works in an iMac, but in Windows it's in the option menu of Lightroom. Just look for Camera Raw Cache.


Since you've got so much space left on your hard drive, it doesn't hurt to increase the Raw Cache a little bit.


Hope this works out for you,


Jan

The default is 1GB. I will bump this up and see what happens. Thanks for the tip!

[Sheiky]

The default is 1GB. I will bump this up and see what happens. Thanks for the tip!

I'm glad I might have been helpful Let us know how it turned out for you. And if it does turn out well, enjoy it! I personally use 5GB and have no problems with rendering 1500-2000 photos on that amount of storage.