Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Adobe Lightroom Q&A => Topic started by: headmj on May 13, 2012, 05:20:51 pm

Title: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: headmj on May 13, 2012, 05:20:51 pm
As much as I like the output from LR4 I may have to find something else.  It is totally and unacceptable slow.  I am am using RC2.  I am running vista 32 bit, dual core 3 gigs of ram.  Lots of free HD and I have optimized the catalog.  It is just plain terrible.  Unusable.  I do something in develop and I have to wait a minute fro it appear on screen.  This machine ran LR3 very well.  If this is no longer enough machine then they should have said so before I spent the money on the upgrade.  Any other suggestions?

Mike
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rand47 on May 13, 2012, 05:58:23 pm
Your machine is spec'd a little lower than most who have reported this problem, but it doesn't "seem" to be purely a hardware spec issue. Some folk w/ very high spec machines are also having serious difficulty.

I'm 8 gigs RAM, Quad core AMD, 500+ gigs of free 7200 rpm HDD space - and after a few minutes with an A900 file can bring my machine to "black out" the 27" NEC PA monitor & have to wait for it to redraw before I can make the next painfully slow incremental move.

I LOVE what LR4 does & am confident that Adobe will get it sorted out.  Patience is in order, I think, as LR4 is ground breaking power in PP and obviously there were issues that the team were not able to anticipate prior to release.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Phil Indeblanc on May 14, 2012, 01:19:15 am
What files are you using and cataloging in LR?
What are your screen sizes?

These do play a role. 3GB of RAM sounds minimal.

Even those with 64bit and maximum ram as  Rand mentions ...we feel it is sluggish to the point of simply slow.  I hope things get better also!
Otherwise I wish they would revamp ACR and make better use of the empty space under the righ column adjustments, and make the interface more adjustable...
Add WBalance adjust in the grads and spot ...etc

I would rather use ACR than have LR Library slow me down when all the file types it supports are RAW/JPEG/TIF/ and only compatible PSD files.

I would rather have a DAM with real image managment power, and the superior developing power of LR/ACR
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Schewe on May 14, 2012, 01:58:14 am
Add WBalance adjust in the grads and spot ...etc

Haven't used ACR 7.1 or LR 4.1? There are Temp and Tint adjustments for all the local adjustments...
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: dreed on May 14, 2012, 02:37:42 am
As much as I like the output from LR4 I may have to find something else.  It is totally and unacceptable slow.  I am am using RC2.  I am running vista 32 bit, dual core 3 gigs of ram.  Lots of free HD and I have optimized the catalog.  It is just plain terrible.  Unusable.  I do something in develop and I have to wait a minute fro it appear on screen.  This machine ran LR3 very well.  If this is no longer enough machine then they should have said so before I spent the money on the upgrade.  Any other suggestions?

First, try increasing your RAM to 4GB...

But at a guess, it sounds like the CPU is now "too slow". By that I mean it is possible that LR4 is able to take advantage of newer CPUs to do things in hardware whereas on an older system like yours, all of it is done in software. I'll add that this is pure speculation.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on May 14, 2012, 04:19:10 am
obviously there were issues that the team were not able to anticipate prior to release.
No, the beta for LR4 was painfully slow, they knew they had a problem before release.

4.1rc was significantly better. 4.2rc has worse performance again, but one great new feature.
One can only guess at how the next update will actually perform.

Screen size seems to be the critical issue. As desktop resolution increases performance falls.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: hjulenissen on May 14, 2012, 04:32:59 am
Whenever performance is "erratic", i.e. 10x faster on system A compared to system B (both being reasonably fast system), this is a pretty strong indicator that something strange is going on. Undesirable calls to some quirky OS API, silly memory usage or something along those lines.

In other words: something that _could_ be fixed by some (possibly very hard to find, possibly simultaneously a single line) change of code.

Using a faster cpu with higher clock frequency, new instructions etc tends to be a more incremental upgrade, and tends to involve (in the case of new instructions) a rewrite of critical code-paths.

A clever gui can hide many of the underlying problems (seems to be partially what they did in RC1).

-h

Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: john beardsworth on May 14, 2012, 05:13:09 am
No, the beta for LR4 was painfully slow, they knew they had a problem before release.
No they didn't. It surprised a lot of people.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on May 14, 2012, 07:38:11 am
No they didn't. It surprised a lot of people.
Are you seriously suggesting that no one in Adobe took any notice of the myriad of reports of sluggish behaviour in the beta ?
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: kaelaria on May 14, 2012, 08:21:21 am
You have a crappy computer.  Big shock, current programs take it past it's max, whoa.

Upgrade.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Pete_G on May 14, 2012, 08:29:53 am
As much as I like the output from LR4 I may have to find something else.  It is totally and unacceptable slow.  I am am using RC2.  I am running vista 32 bit, dual core 3 gigs of ram.  Lots of free HD and I have optimized the catalog.  It is just plain terrible.  Unusable.  I do something in develop and I have to wait a minute fro it appear on screen.  This machine ran LR3 very well.  If this is no longer enough machine then they should have said so before I spent the money on the upgrade.  Any other suggestions?

Mike


All I could suggest is that you upgrade your Vista to the 64 bit version and add some more RAM to take you up to, say, 8GB.

By upgrading the OS you would also get a clean, faster system. Bit of a pain to do, I know.

I am running LR4 RC2 on both a powerful desktop but also a Thinkpad T61p with a Core 2 Duo ( something like 2.5GHz) with 4GB RAM Win 7 64 bit, and, while it is not as smooth as the desktop, it is perfectly usable. I'm processing Hasselblad 3FR files (roughly 30MB). The programme seems to slow down more when the DETAILS panel is used, so I add these corrections as late as possible in the flow.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: john beardsworth on May 14, 2012, 08:40:21 am
Are you seriously suggesting that no one in Adobe took any notice of the myriad of reports of sluggish behaviour in the beta ?
I'm saying what I said. Performance problems were not unusual during the public beta, and the range of significant slowdowns emerged after the full release.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: headmj on May 14, 2012, 04:15:19 pm
I am using DNG files generated by A Pentax K-5 running from 17 to 28 MB each.  The system would gain far less than 1 GB of memery if I had 4gb in the system.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: headmj on May 14, 2012, 04:18:56 pm
KAELERIA!  Nice attitude jerk!  How old are you 12?  I have a better computer than you do NYAH NYAH.  This system should be adequate.  It is 3.5 yeras old and had absolutely no issues with LR 3 or CS 5.  If the system needed a specific minimum hardware Adobe should have said so.  Your comment was SOOO MUCH help.  
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on May 14, 2012, 05:24:14 pm
If the system needed a specific minimum hardware Adobe should have said so.
They do. From adobe.com:-
"Windows
    Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon® 64 processor
    Microsoft® Windows Vista® with Service Pack 2 or Windows® 7 with Service Pack 1
    2GB of RAM
    1GB of available hard-disk space
    1024x768 display
    DVD-ROM drive
    Internet connection required for Internet-based services*"

In other words, your system ought to run LR4.
As you've found, just because it will 'run' doesn't mean it is usable.
Make sure you complain directly to Adobe about this.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: kaelaria on May 14, 2012, 06:11:46 pm
You can dislike my attitude but that doesn't make me wrong.  I didn't say what I have.  I said you have a crappy computer.  That's a fact.  Deal with it and quit bitching, since you know jack shit about technology, obviously.  3.5 years is OLD. 
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: kaelaria on May 14, 2012, 06:44:37 pm
I was told I have to apologize or be banned.  Not gunna happen, so cya!
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 14, 2012, 07:21:10 pm
KAELERIA!  Nice attitude jerk!  How old are you 12?  I have a better computer than you do NYAH NYAH.  This system should be adequate.  It is 3.5 yeras old and had absolutely no issues with LR 3 or CS 5.  If the system needed a specific minimum hardware Adobe should have said so.  Your comment was SOOO MUCH help.  
No need to compound one bad attitude with another and then add name calling and juvenile behavior as well.  These forums are better than that.

You should have listened to the message instead of zeroing in on the attitude.  It's a fact, your computer is very under powered in all respects (memory, cores, operating system, (probably drives as well)) to run LR4 with any degree of comfort.  And it's a fact that LR4 requires heavy resources to run well.  We get thread after thread after thread with people going over the same issues/thoughts.  Hint:  There is a search feature on the forums.   Or, just read down  a page or two and you'll pick out 3-4 other threads talking about LR's performance.

What performance was acceptable to you with LR3 probably won't be achievable with LR4 on your system, but it shouldn't be a huge difference.. more like incremental.  I assume you've optimized your catalog, defragged your drives, made sure the drives aren't more than 60-70% full for best performance, went over MSCONFIG and minimized which programs start by default every time you boot and consume resources, configured the caches for best performance on your system, reduced the size of your previews, and done the proper maintenance on your system to ensure it's running at full speed and isn't being throttled due to heat issues or the like?

People come here looking for the magic pill to cure cancer and it's just not available.  LR requires powerful hardware.. personally I love LR and I have no performance issues save for a 1/2 second delay it takes to apply changes to my 2nd screen.. and that's only because my video card was recently replaced with a less powerful version.  Before that there was no delay.  I'll live with it until my next computer upgrade.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: MBehrens on May 14, 2012, 09:41:07 pm
Boy these things get out of control quickly.

I was seeing some really bad performance from RC2 and "reset" my preferences file by deleting it and letting LR create a new one. Helped a lot. The link below will explain where the preferences file is stored. Let me know if this helps. Yeah, you'll have to go reset a few settings, but oh well.

http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/preference-file-locations-lightroom-4.html
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: headmj on May 14, 2012, 11:19:32 pm
No need to compound one bad attitude with another and then add name calling and juvenile behavior as well.  These forums are better than that.

You should have listened to the message instead of zeroing in on the attitude.  It's a fact, your computer is very under powered in all respects (memory, cores, operating system, (probably drives as well)) to run LR4 with any degree of comfort.  And it's a fact that LR4 requires heavy resources to run well.  We get thread after thread after thread with people going over the same issues/thoughts.  Hint:  There is a search feature on the forums.   Or, just read down  a page or two and you'll pick out 3-4 other threads talking about LR's performance.

What performance was acceptable to you with LR3 probably won't be achievable with LR4 on your system, but it shouldn't be a huge difference.. more like incremental.  I assume you've optimized your catalog, defragged your drives, made sure the drives aren't more than 60-70% full for best performance, went over MSCONFIG and minimized which programs start by default every time you boot and consume resources, configured the caches for best performance on your system, reduced the size of your previews, and done the proper maintenance on your system to ensure it's running at full speed and isn't being throttled due to heat issues or the like?

People come here looking for the magic pill to cure cancer and it's just not available.  LR requires powerful hardware.. personally I love LR and I have no performance issues save for a 1/2 second delay it takes to apply changes to my 2nd screen.. and that's only because my video card was recently replaced with a less powerful version.  Before that there was no delay.  I'll live with it until my next computer upgrade.

I did listen to the message.  I also have discovered over on the adobe forum that there are literally hundreds of folks with much better computers than mine that are experiencing the same or very similar issues.

I have over 30 years experience in IT.  I have actually done all of the items you have mentioned.  Some of it happens automatically on a recurring basis.  Thank you for actually trying to be helpful.  The problems I am experiencing actually stop the program from working properly.  So in that case the program is broke not just slow.  I understand that I don't have a "flag ship" machine.  I keep my "working" catalog small usually less than 500 images.  I also don't expect it to POP.  I think i have realistic expectations I had hoped that someone might have found a issue I could deal with.  The way it looks right now the only group that will fix this coding issue is Adobe.

Have a nice day.

Mike
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 15, 2012, 12:17:59 am
I did listen to the message.  I also have discovered over on the adobe forum that there are literally hundreds of folks with much better computers than mine that are experiencing the same or very similar issues.

I have over 30 years experience in IT.  I have actually done all of the items you have mentioned.  Some of it happens automatically on a recurring basis.  Thank you for actually trying to be helpful.  The problems I am experiencing actually stop the program from working properly.  So in that case the program is broke not just slow.  I understand that I don't have a "flag ship" machine.  I keep my "working" catalog small usually less than 500 images.  I also don't expect it to POP.  I think i have realistic expectations I had hoped that someone might have found a issue I could deal with.  The way it looks right now the only group that will fix this coding issue is Adobe.

Have a nice day.

Mike


1.  Good, because he was accurate and when you cut through all the chaff the only way you're going to get 'good' LR performance is with a more modern machine and a x64 OS.  I know people don't want to hear that, and they want programs that run well on their old computers, but with 30 years in IT I'm sure you realize when you add functions and power to a program it almost always, all else being equal, comes at the cost of stiffer hardware requirements.

2.  Right, we've established in countless threads that LR4 in general is slower than we think it should be.  I'm sure Adobe is working on it.  But when you say "better than mine" you have to understand that doesn't mean much, you are on the lowest end of their requirements.  With LR4 you need a minimum of a 4 core CPU (no more than two generations old), 12gb+ of RAM, fast drives, an x64 OS, and to be set up properly for what imo is "acceptable performance.."  I build (and subsequently fix) imaging workstations for clients and LR is a popular program.. I would guess a full 70-80% of complaints with LR could be resolved using existing equipment.  A really powerful computer not properly set up, or with other issues, is pretty much at issue with LR as an older obsolete computer.

3.  It sounds like you've went over the common things to check.  Less common things to try would be to rotate your RAM modules, often a problem can hide in one and switching them can appear to solve a problem, or make it worse.  Either way, if anything changes them something is up.  Just re-seating the RAM modules can make a big difference.  You've monitoring the temperature of your CPU under load?  On older systems the heatsink compound can get old and dried up and really lose it's ability to transfer heat.  Re-seating your video card would be something else I'd try.  Basically I'd disassemble, clean, and inspect the entire system.  It's old enough to be beneficial regardless.

4.  I wouldn't assume it's the program.. too many people are running it without stoppages, though I admit not understanding what you're claiming it does.  "stopping it from working properly" is about as vague as it gets.  The better you articulate your issues the more helpful others can be.

5.  I haven't seen any evidence LR is "broke."  Bloated yes.  Slow yes.  I could write a list of things which could benefit LR.  But I've personally installed it on everything from the newest dual xeon systems to 5-6 year old x32 bit laptops and everyone "works."  They just have different levels of performance.  You might want to consider un-installing LR completely, rebooting, cleaning out all LR registry entries.. and then re-installing.   If that fails, create a separate partition with another OS build and install only LR.. see how it runs.  It wouldn't be the first time an old Windows install, or even a defective Windows install.. caused issues with the type of program that uses so many resources.

Good luck solving your issues.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on May 15, 2012, 02:17:51 am
We get thread after thread after thread with people going over the same issues/thoughts.  Hint:  There is a search feature on the forums.   Or, just read down  a page or two and you'll pick out 3-4 other threads talking about LR's performance.
The implication here is that you think that just because others have complained about this issue no one else should add to it. It's a nice idea, but wrong.
If people see someone else has reported a problem and don't people add any more experiences it can seem like an isolated problem. All software has bugs, some can be very minor and obscure that effect very few, some can be terrible for a few suffering from them, but are so esoteric and system specific they're not practical to fix, then there are the serious problems that effect very many users and need to be resolved. These big problems only get the attention they deserve if everyone that is afflicted complains and the scale of the problem is fully understood.
The responsiveness of LR4's develop module is one of the later. It simply isn't an acceptable answer to say you need a SOTA system to be able to use it. Adobe released LR4 when this issue had been widely reported from the beta, maybe they didn't believe the reports, but nothing much changed in 4 from 4b. 4.1rc was better which suggests it can be fixed, but 4.2rc is worse than 4.1, but better than 4(b). Process 2012 works fine in ACR, so this is an LR issue.

I'd be more impressed with Adobe if they'd withheld the release of 4 until they'd resolved the usability issues rather than rushing it to market in bad shape.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: dreed on May 15, 2012, 02:37:41 am
2.  Right, we've established in countless threads that LR4 in general is slower than we think it should be.  I'm sure Adobe is working on it.  But when you say "better than mine" you have to understand that doesn't mean much, you are on the lowest end of their requirements.  With LR4 you need a minimum of a 4 core CPU (no more than two generations old), 12gb+ of RAM, fast drives, an x64 OS, and to be set up properly for what imo is "acceptable performance.."  I build (and subsequently fix) imaging workstations for clients and LR is a popular program.. I would guess a full 70-80% of complaints with LR could be resolved using existing equipment.  A really powerful computer not properly set up, or with other issues, is pretty much at issue with LR as an older obsolete computer.

There's a couple of myths here:
1) RAM. 4GB is the minimum, not 12GB.
2) Hard drive speed is not all that relevant. Look at any SSD test where the speed of the SSD makes almost no difference to the time tasks take in LR.

As has been previously established, the key requirement for good LR performance is a good CPU. So if you have the option of spending $200 more on RAM or CPU or disk space, spend it on CPU. If/when LR is able to offload some tasks to the GPU then maybe the GPU will also matter but as far as I'm aware, the architecture of the application does not currently support that.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 15, 2012, 02:52:38 am
The implication here is that you think that just because others have complained about this issue no one else should add to it. It's a nice idea, but wrong.
If people see someone else has reported a problem and don't people add any more experiences it can seem like an isolated problem. All software has bugs, some can be very minor and obscure that effect very few, some can be terrible for a few suffering from them, but are so esoteric and system specific they're not practical to fix, then there are the serious problems that effect very many users and need to be resolved. These big problems only get the attention they deserve if everyone that is afflicted complains and the scale of the problem is fully understood.
The responsiveness of LR4's develop module is one of the later. It simply isn't an acceptable answer to say you need a SOTA system to be able to use it. Adobe released LR4 when this issue had been widely reported from the beta, maybe they didn't believe the reports, but nothing much changed in 4 from 4b. 4.1rc was better which suggests it can be fixed, but 4.2rc is worse than 4.1, but better than 4(b). Process 2012 works fine in ACR, so this is an LR issue.

I'd be more impressed with Adobe if they'd withheld the release of 4 until they'd resolved the usability issues rather than rushing it to market in bad shape.

1.  No.  My implication is to read the existing information/threads and maybe add to them if you feel the need.  If you think that more threads will prompt Adobe to somehow speed up their process I can't agree.  How many duplicate threads saying the same thing do you think it will take to prompt Adobe to move faster?  I'll bet if everyone who has complained in these threads is 100% honest we'll find relatively few have contacted Adobe directly and tried to work through their issues.  If we want Adobe to listen to use then we need to make it easy for them to understand what the problems are, what system and circumstances are experiencing the problems, and if possible give them a chance to help you solve it.  It will have much greater effect if we call Adobe and spend some time with their tech support and their tech support people are providing feedback.  I'm not saying we should intentionally flood or overwhelm them, but that is something they'd notice.   But threads like this are practically worthless.  The OP starts the thread saying his machine is unacceptably slow, tells us his system is on the lower end of the minimum requirements, and later only gives us equally vague symptoms.  Even if Adobe is listening what does it tell them?

2.  And yes, I think it is acceptable to say you need certain minimum requirements and I think this is where Adobe is letting us down the most.  They should be very candid and upfront telling us what to expect with a certain level of system.  If the minimum requirements require a SOTA system for the best performance.. then say so.  Actually they have.. but not nearly strong enough imo.  It would cut into their sales and give the competition an edge.  Wouldn't everyone prefer it if Adobe said something like "for fast smooth performance of all functions of Lightroom you need a SOTA system" and "if you're barely meeting the minimum requirements expect slow performance, delays in rendering, and extended export times?"    So yes, it's acceptable to tell us we need whatever is required.  But just say it, stop being so vague because you'll lose sales.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 15, 2012, 03:23:32 am
There's a couple of myths here:
1) RAM. 4GB is the minimum, not 12GB.
2) Hard drive speed is not all that relevant. Look at any SSD test where the speed of the SSD makes almost no difference to the time tasks take in LR.

As has been previously established, the key requirement for good LR performance is a good CPU. So if you have the option of spending $200 more on RAM or CPU or disk space, spend it on CPU. If/when LR is able to offload some tasks to the GPU then maybe the GPU will also matter but as far as I'm aware, the architecture of the application does not currently support that.

Gosh.. I couldn't disagree more.  With most everything you said.  Sorry, but I build systems for clients and I know what works and what doesn't.  Yes, CPU performance is important.  But so is RAM and your RAM amount should be matched/balanced to the load you expect your CPU to perform at.  Trying to separate these is folly.

And yes, drive speed is very relevant.  So is properly interpreting test results you read on the internet.  Also important is understanding what functions in LR will benefit from increased drive speeds.  Lightroom has grown into a complex piece of software which performs many functions, it helps to understand which hardware components are being tasked for which functions, and to understand your own personal workflow and which functions are the most important to this workflow.  Unfortunately, because it is complex, most don't have a good grasp on these areas.

And the GPU makes a big difference. Not as much as it could if it was directly tasked as you mentioned, but enough to eliminate the rendering delays to multiple higher resolution monitors many are complaining about.  If it were tasked it would cost them more in time and money to directly support certain video cards, but then it would save the user money by being able to buy a less expensive but supported GPU vs. just buying the most powerful GPU they can afford. 

I've spent many hours trying different configurations, CPU's, RAM, drives, GPU's.. all the latest equipment, and since I've been doing this for a long time.. also all the old equipment (when it was the latest equipment).  Identifying the bottleneck is key, and then balancing the system to eliminate that bottleneck.  It won't do 'much' good to add more RAM when the bottleneck is a your CPU, or to add a CPU if the bottleneck is a really slow drive..   I can't count the number of systems I've checked for someone complaining of poor performance only to find a major bottleneck. 

Adobe is letting us down, but not where most people think.  This is a serious piece of software many use professionally.  We shouldn't be dependent on the reviews of others to find which componentry works best for certain functions within LR.  Lightroom's "minimum requirements" are misleading and I think this is intentional.  At a minimum they should have an area showing basic system levels with the resulting times for specific operations.  Benchmarks.

And an area where they talk about how a specific component affects specific operations/functions while providing examples using specific pieces of hardware.  They can't test it all, but properly done they could test small subsets of components and provide the benchmarks and we could use those as references.   For instance, how would a workstation GPU benefit LR vs. a gaming GPU?  Or a 4 core vs. 6?  or a cache on a dirt slow 4200rpm laptop drive that your system and data files are already on (laptop) vs. a dedicated SSD?  Or basic intel 4000 graphics vs. a mid-level 6800 series GPU?  When does more RAM start to greatly improve localized editing?  Adobe apparently wants the casual user to think LR works just dandy on any machine.  The benefit?  Increased sales. 

There's a lot Adobe could do.. and I don't know why they're not.  My guess would be because no one in the industry is doing this.. so if they said you needed X-system to get decent performance then they'd just go to the competition and complain about their software.  From a business standpoint a complaining but paying customer, is far preferable to no customer at all.. at least they think so.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: hjulenissen on May 15, 2012, 04:00:45 am
Adobe is letting us down, but not where most people think.  This is a serious piece of software many use professionally.  We shouldn't be dependent on the reviews of others to find which componentry works best for certain functions within LR.  Lightroom's "minimum requirements" are misleading and I think this is intentional.  At a minimum they should have an area showing basic system levels with the resulting times for specific operations.  Benchmarks.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/25
Adobe photoshop CS4 "retouch artist" may not be perfectly relevant, but at least it is an image editor by the same company, and anandtech have performed it on nearly every cpu available.

I think that part of the reason why Adobe set the minimum specs so low is that a large amount of users will probably use Lightroom with an older DSLR or m4/3 camera producing 8MP or 12MP files, have 1000 or so files in their database, and use the development features sparingly. Without having tested, I am guessing that you can get by with modest system specs in such a case.

I think that LR4 compared to LR3 behaves in such a way that the performance issues reported likely are the results of an oversight, not because they consciously have chosen image processing algorithms that need to be many times more expensive. Surely, Adobe would never want to irritate so many users with recent systems knowingly (12GB, i7 2600, SSD, w7-64). Again, this points to that these performance issues simply slipped under the radar during testing. At some point, the snowball had rolled too far, and they "had to" release the product, aiming to fix the performance issues in a dot-release.

-h
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Scott O. on May 15, 2012, 10:25:37 am
You have a crappy computer.  Big shock, current programs take it past it's max, whoa.

Upgrade.

It may or may not be due to the computer. Reports on this sort of performance are all over the place regarding equipment. I haven't seen any pattern. My system works fine, others do not. It is a bit too simple to blame what is probably a complex issue on a "crappy computer".
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Phil Indeblanc on May 15, 2012, 12:40:31 pm
Have you tried using ACR/Photoshop.? It does most things as LR, but not in Batch, and certainly no Library, which IS THE BEST THING ABOUT IT. LR is rather horrible as a DAM/Image manager, as it only supports a handful of image formats. It doesn't even support newer Photoshop formats, only compatible mode.  Maybe since ACR is able to separate itself from the DAM portion it is SOOo fast and easy to work with.  You can actually still load a group of images and do batch. Just not as easy as LR.

I honestly think Adobe needs to BOOST ACR without the DAM(Digi Asset Manager) part and make better use of the GUI of ACR, ...LR, no Library, let us choose a DAM that actually handles image formats. Call it ACR Pro for all I care...Charge me $29-49, etc more for all I care...I just hate one program that does an awesome job of developing, yet soooo limited on managing.

Where did the idea of the 2 LARGE RESOURCE HUNGRY TASK MERGE?!!!  A DAM is a DAM, a Developer is just that, a DEVLOPER!  NO wonder we have resource issues!

Simply dress up ACR a bit, and let the USERS make the CHOICE of DAM

LR is NOT a DAM, period. As far as I can tell it only sees RAW, TIF, JPEG, and Older PSD files.  Hello?, 4 formats???? this is far from being a DAM. Let the DAM's do their job , and the Dev's do theirs.
Idea of it in one interface is great on paper, and marketing slickness....Surely there are issues.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: dreed on May 15, 2012, 01:14:13 pm
Gosh.. I couldn't disagree more.  With most everything you said.  Sorry, but I build systems for clients and I know what works and what doesn't.  Yes, CPU performance is important.  But so is RAM and your RAM amount should be matched/balanced to the load you expect your CPU to perform at.

Let me know if/when you observe LR using more than 2GB of RAM itself and under what conditions. 4GB is going to be the minimum but anything over 8 is just overkill at present. Most likely all of that extra RAM will just get used for disk caching by Windows, not directly by LR.

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And yes, drive speed is very relevant.  So is properly interpreting test results you read on the internet.  Also important is understanding what functions in LR will benefit from increased drive speeds.

Why don't you run some benchmarks that show how LR can benefit from using a fast disk (such as an SSD) vs a slow disk (such as a traditional hard drive) and document it for us? It would be very interesting to have a counterpoint to the reviews that are saying there is little benefit from faster (SSD) hard drives.

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There's a lot Adobe could do.. and I don't know why they're not.  My guess would be because no one in the industry is doing this..

Look on the outside of any packaged game that is marketed at Windows. Last time I looked, they listed "minimum system requirements" and in some instances even document performance levels against various specifications. Of course package labelling may have changed since I last looked.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Phil Indeblanc on May 15, 2012, 02:16:54 pm
There is minimum AND there is often RECOMMENDED
RECOMMENDED should give an idea. Some sneaky MFG's avoid this.

MINIMUM is OSCAR MYERS
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Derry on May 15, 2012, 03:08:49 pm
I am running LR4 and was on an HP tower, 32 bit, 3 GB ram, Quad processor,, would say it was fair but could certainly be helped,, NX2 was slow at times,,

since I have an 800E on order and my tower is three years aged I figured I would go for a new tower,, have a good 24" HD monitor,,

todays machine is 64 bit, has i7 3770 processor with 16 GB ram,, lightroom or NX2 opens in a flash and could not believe how quick it is,, even the wife had to say WOW when I was running through some old photos as they were on the screen in a flash,, even the internet is far quicker,, our home has a 30+ MB download and 4.5 MB upload,, if the remote site is fast it is on the screen when removing my finger from the key,, the wife's Ipad is also almost instant,,

the new machine does not have all the junk the mfgs usually load on them, just the basics needed to operate,,

I'm loving it,,

Derry
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 15, 2012, 03:24:11 pm
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/25
Adobe photoshop CS4 "retouch artist" may not be perfectly relevant, but at least it is an image editor by the same company, and anandtech have performed it on nearly every cpu available.

I think that part of the reason why Adobe set the minimum specs so low is that a large amount of users will probably use Lightroom with an older DSLR or m4/3 camera producing 8MP or 12MP files, have 1000 or so files in their database, and use the development features sparingly. Without having tested, I am guessing that you can get by with modest system specs in such a case.

I think that LR4 compared to LR3 behaves in such a way that the performance issues reported likely are the results of an oversight, not because they consciously have chosen image processing algorithms that need to be many times more expensive. Surely, Adobe would never want to irritate so many users with recent systems knowingly (12GB, i7 2600, SSD, w7-64). Again, this points to that these performance issues simply slipped under the radar during testing. At some point, the snowball had rolled too far, and they "had to" release the product, aiming to fix the performance issues in a dot-release.

-h
Certainly a valid take on the situation.  The "why" is something we can all have opinions about, but only Adobe knows.  I do think it's a two part decision though.  Perhaps it was an oversight/mistake/error that it requires so much hardware, but it was a conscience and targeted decision to keep the same minimum requirements after knowing the requirements.  And i think this is purely about sales.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 15, 2012, 03:28:05 pm
It may or may not be due to the computer. Reports on this sort of performance are all over the place regarding equipment. I haven't seen any pattern. My system works fine, others do not. It is a bit too simple to blame what is probably a complex issue on a "crappy computer".
True.  It could be many things causing the OP's specific symptoms which he stated in a very vague way at best.  And we have to remember that everyones expectations/evaluation of how fast a system feels depends on their individual work flow and frame of reference in regards to other systems.  But we do know a computer with the stated specs will be a poor performer in general when used with LR4, so it's a reasonable place to start.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Phil Indeblanc on May 15, 2012, 03:40:57 pm
Win7, 64bit, Intel i7 Quad core 860 @ 3.2GHz, 16gb ram, 1gb video ram GTX-470(I think?), SSD OS, SSD Scratch, and OS PageFile, files on NAS 1K-LAN. 2 30" 2560x1600 screens.  7.8 performance score.
(Usually have ACDSee Pro, or Photoshop or other program running. But 2 or 3 at a time. No virus apps like most people need(often offline workstation).

The above I would consider very well suited for Image editing to the point of more than recommended. My files are usually 22-25mpixel cameras. Some get large in PSD.

My LR expereince is sluggish in making adjustments and seeing them happen. The sliders are a bit "jumpy" in response. Redraw is also a bit sluggish.

If any slower, It wouldn't work.....Maybe that's what the OP means by "Broken".  

The fact that some of us spend more time than we would like, searching these forums for a sollution should be enough for something to be done.
It could be as simple as stating the facts of expectation or an adjustment. with the way it behaves.

When I had issues with Adobe not able to process TIF PhaseOne files made out of 3.78, and months passed with no correction, and they emailed a resolved statment and that was it. Initially they asked for files and such, but after some time, it was as if it was resolved.  LR4, even today, cannot see past the Preview TIF on RAW files of Phase One.

I mention this past experience as my take on what might be done if enough people don't express their problems.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 15, 2012, 03:45:42 pm
Let me know if/when you observe LR using more than 2GB of RAM itself and under what conditions. 4GB is going to be the minimum but anything over 8 is just overkill at present. Most likely all of that extra RAM will just get used for disk caching by Windows, not directly by LR.

Why don't you run some benchmarks that show how LR can benefit from using a fast disk (such as an SSD) vs a slow disk (such as a traditional hard drive) and document it for us? It would be very interesting to have a counterpoint to the reviews that are saying there is little benefit from faster (SSD) hard drives.

Look on the outside of any packaged game that is marketed at Windows. Last time I looked, they listed "minimum system requirements" and in some instances even document performance levels against various specifications. Of course package labelling may have changed since I last looked.

1.  I use over 2gb of RAM in LR all the time.   When?  When building previews, outputting files, when using more than 3-4 localized editing points, when syncing files or applying develop pastes to multiple files, when running searches in my catalog based on keywords or exfil, building a reasonable size web gallery, and more.  You have to know your work flow and when it can benefit from the RAM, not everyone had the same work flow and won't realize the same benefits.  Also keep in mind that Win7's memory manager might not let you use more RAM in LR if it doesn't think you have enough in other areas, or in other words to see the RAM being used you need to be on a system which can take advantage of the additional RAM.

And let's remember most people have more than LR going at one time.  I personally have FF with 8-9 tabs open Outlook, CS5 Photoshop and Dreamweaver, Lightroom, various plug-ins, and more going.   Most of us have something other than LR open because it's a reasonable way to use a computer.  RAM benefits all of this.

2.  Anything over 8gb being overkill depends entirely on your personal work flow.  Sure, for someone with only LR open and who processes one image at a time, doesn't run batch or search operations, doesn't want the benefit from a good sized cache, etc, etc.. it would be overkill.   Know your work flow.

3.  A system is a system.  More RAM being used as a cache or pagefile or RAMdisk or any way that benefits the system, benefits LR.  This is where you either need to be knowledgeable enough about computers in general and your software to realize the benefits, or pay someone who is to do the setup for you.  I have many clients who don't want to be bothered with such things, they just want to use a system and not be hampered by bottlenecks.  Most are creative professionals and I do my best to support them.  More RAM properly deployed is just one of the ways I do this.

4.  I provided a counterpoint in the relevant thread.  I took the time to point out areas the reviewers test failed to address and what part of the LR work flow benefits from faster drives.  I know you participated in this thread, but if you weren't convinced then I don't have anything new to add other than to try and get your hands on some fast SSD's and try it yourself.

5.  I'm not sure I understand the relevance of your comment about games.  We were addressing LR.   Please expand on this a bit if you wouldn't mind.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 15, 2012, 03:56:36 pm
Win7, 64bit, Intel i7 Quad core 860 @ 3.2GHz, 16gb ram, 1gb video ram GTX-470(I think?), SSD OS, SSD Scratch, and OS PageFile, files on NAS 1K-LAN. 2 30" 2560x1600 screens.

The above I would consider very well suited for Image editing to the point of more than recommended. My files are usually 22-25mpixel cameras. Some get large in PSD.

My LR expereince is sluggish in making adjustments and seeing them happen. The sliders are a bit "jumpy" in response. Redraw is also a bit sluggish.

If any slower, It wouldn't work.....Maybe that's what the OP means by "Broken".  

The fact that some of us spend more time than we would like, searching these forums for a sollution should be enough for something to be done.
It could be as simple as stating the facts of expectation or an adjustment. with the way it behaves.

When I had issues with Adobe not able to process TIF PhaseOne files made out of 3.78, and months passed with no correction, and they emailed a resolved statment and that was it. Initially they asked for files and such, but after some time, it was as if it was resolved.  LR4, even today, cannot see past the Preview TIF on RAW files of Phase One.

I mention this past experience as my take on what might be done if enough people don't express their problems.

1.  Your work files are on a NAS?  I'd use a fast NAS for archives but not current work files.  With the system you describe I'd guess this is a bottleneck for at least some of your work flow.  If you also have your catalog/library and previews on the NAS it would affect a lot more of your work flow.

2.  It's hard to know what the OP meant from his description.. but his system is significantly less powerful than yours so I'd doubt you're experiencing the same level of whatever his issues are.

3.  Please don't get me wrong on this, I'm not saying we shouldn't voice our issues with LR.  I'm just saying that when we do, it should be done in the most effective way possible or we shouldn't expect it to matter much.  It appears from above that you contacted Adobe and worked with them.. this imo is the best way to effect change and get their attention.  And as you mentioned, being able to accurately articulate the issues you're having plays a huge part in the process.  But simply starting more threads with vague complaints imo does nothing to help.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Phil Indeblanc on May 15, 2012, 04:18:50 pm
The NAS speed fluxes between 60-80MB per second on Intel servers.
The catalog as LR likes it and doesn't allow Network for catalogs are on my SSD drives on the OS.


I see your point, and not sure if posting them doesn't help. It surely can hurt them, and thats not the intention or a good thing...
I think most people put it up so they see the feedback and scrabble to fix it.  I find it odd, that there are no Support staff folks that try and intervene and try solving problems from reputable and well managed forums such as this?!

Look at Amazon, or NewEgg...it has pushed manufacturers to take care of those issues right away. They jump in and ask to contact and resolve!

One cannot ignore the impact on Adobe from the forum threads here on LL. After all, most users here are in the business or eductors, new camera owners, with new businesses, all walks really.

Take Doug for instance, he in my opinion has done GREAT work for Phase One, and has helped many users continue with PhaseOne.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: fegari on May 15, 2012, 07:13:35 pm
Hello All,

I think this is my first post! been quietly reading and enjoying this forum for months but thought to contribute to this thread that interests me particularly. So much that I even posted on Adobes's review board...first time I ever do so but felt it was necessary.

If I may (and hope I'm not getting in trouble for this) I'm copying the LR4 review I posted in Adobe's;

"LR 4 & RC2: what's going on performance-wise?
fegari Posted:01-May-2012
First I want to say that Lightroom is a fantastic piece of software and I can only paise the general improvements in LR4 regarding processing capabilities. However I've been experiencing some glitches that are turning it into an unbereable experience. (this started with LR4 Beta, then 4.1, RC1 & RC2)
I have a very nice PC and even re-installed everyting (OS, Apps etc) from scratch again as I thought it was me but no, the issues persist and maybe even worse with RC2:
- 1:1 batch previews: the first ones take a couple of SECONDS (very nice) but as it goes on it takes forever! Right now I'm still generating previews for a task I launched 16 hours ago (2000 images)! Something's going on here, each preview takes more than the previous one. I must clarify that my processor is only used to 15% and Ram keeps creeping up. Rigt now 8GB / 16GB used by Lightrrom. All other apps run quite fast.
- Noise Reduction: A good as it is, as soon as I touch it the whole app becomes slow, refreshings take almost 20 secs and have to wait for the spiining wheel...I can even see the menus re-drawing in real time. Click somewhere else and it will almost always hang. Same as before, CPU used only to 15% and more than enough available RAM to spare.
Genrally speaking from a fresh start the app runs OK most of the time, but fiddle around with some pictures, going back from Library to Develop, doing some basic manipulation with the images and 20mins later I have to re-start, it becomes unusable.
Finally, and sorry for the long rant, I've tried with big & small catalogs both running from very fast HDDs and even from an SSD and the issue is the same. Clearly not my PC, nor CPU (severely unused) nor RAM. SOmetimes even when lauching the APP it starts using 20% CPU without me doing even the first mouse click.
Hoping Adobe is already tackling them for the next release, to be honest I feel I'm still using a bugged Beta and it is a pitty for such a great App. Without a doubt LR3 was much faster.
My PC: SSD for Boot, 2x2 HHDs WD caviar Black of 2TB each, i7 2600K & 16GB RAM. Windows7 and 27 inch Apple cinema screen.
Regards"


I've dissasembled and re-installed the PC, no other app in my PC behaves like this (all other are super fast) and more importantly it worsens with time so I don't share at all this comes from "not seated modules, bad hardware etc". I think it is a clear concern on LR4 and if you take the time to look at Adobe's forum, the vast majority of reviews express the same. Bad performance even with top of the line PC/Macs. It drives me nuts and the only half-cure to the problem, which is not acceptable in the long run, begun when I STOPPED USING NOISE REDUCTION / Lens corrections at all. Did not solve all issues (still slows downs with use) but at least makes it bearable to work with because I was really going crazy to have to re-start the app after every photo re-touch or watching menus re-draw in front of my eyes for 20 secs.

My 2c.

rgds

PS: In case this comes back, I've forgot to mention that my GPU is a Radeon 6950 2GB...more than enough.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 15, 2012, 07:37:41 pm
The NAS speed fluxes between 60-80MB per second on Intel servers.
The catalog as LR likes it and doesn't allow Network for catalogs are on my SSD drives on the OS.


I see your point, and not sure if posting them doesn't help. It surely can hurt them, and thats not the intention or a good thing...
I think most people put it up so they see the feedback and scrabble to fix it.  I find it odd, that there are no Support staff folks that try and intervene and try solving problems from reputable and well managed forums such as this?!
e
Look at Amazon, or NewEgg...it has pushed manufacturers to take care of those issues right away. They jump in and ask to contact and resolve!

One cannot ignore the impact on Adobe from the forum threads here on LL. After all, most users here are in the business or eductors, new camera owners, with new businesses, all walks really.

Take Doug for instance, he in my opinion has done GREAT work for Phase One, and has helped many users continue with PhaseOne.

1.  60-80mbps is a really nice speed for an NAS but is roughly the speed of a 7200rpm laptop drive.. if you read/write a lot of files at once this could hurt you.  The catalogs and previews on a fast SSD is ideal imo.. it should make going through your catalogs rip.  At least it has on the systems I've set up that way.  For large catalogs and previews I like using a hybrid SSD setup because the hybrid software generally favors the way we use catalogs and the extra space over a straight SSD is nice. 

2.  I think we can all agree we'd like to see Adobe doing more.  But it's just my opinion that threads such as these where the problem isn't well articulated and instead is vague and more of a venting isn't going to do much good.  And you're right, the forums here are probably more credible than most and Adobe does watch here.  All the more reason to well manage the threads and more or less QC the quality of postings.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 15, 2012, 07:59:13 pm
Hello All,

I think this is my first post! been quietly reading and enjoying this forum for months but thought to contribute to this thread that interests me particularly
Great post.  With your system you should certainly be seeing more than acceptable performance.  I've built quite a few to these specs and each has performed to a high level. 

Your symptoms concerning CPU usage when building previews and and that it takes longer and longer.. This to me is pointing to a cache or catalog issue.  When you rebuilt your system did you rebuild your catalog from scratch?  One of the checks I do on new machines is to take a fast 2tb black with approx 1.5tb of 5d2/1ds2/1ds3 raw files in a tiered folder structure, and import the entire drive into LR and build 1:1 previews.  I use this in addition to Prime95 to burn in new systems and also to check that LR is working as it should for my clients.  When I do this the CPU usage is up at 80-90% and RAM usage if nothing else is running goes to about 50% of what's available.  It imports these images, builds the catalog and previews, in a matter of hours.

Sometimes.. I've seen a converted catalog, say a V2-V3 conversion, or a V3-V4.. develop issues during the conversion.  Sometimes the optimize catalog feature fixes this, but usually not. 

You might want to try deleting your pref files (or renaming them so you can bring them back later), and building an additional catalog.. and see how your CPU/RAM usage goes.. and if you notice increased performance.  As you say, your system has all the power it needs and even your video card should be sufficient for everything but 2nd monitor lag-free redraws.. with that card I'd expect there to be a .5 sec lag on the second monitor from the time you move a develop slider until you see the change on the second monitor.  The first monitor should change instantly.  I can tell you I've built and installed at least five systems with your specs and LR4 versions in just the last three weeks and they've all worked great.

LR has always had issues converting catalogs since the V1-V2 roll out.. hard to tell if more of these issues were due to LR having issues or the user doing something during the conversion that caused a glitch.. either way Adobe could make the process more robust..
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: dreed on May 15, 2012, 10:59:29 pm
1.  I use over 2gb of RAM in LR all the time.   When?  When building previews, outputting files, when using more than 3-4 localized editing points, when syncing files or applying develop pastes to multiple files, when running searches in my catalog based on keywords or exfil, building a reasonable size web gallery, and more.  You have to know your work flow and when it can benefit from the RAM, not everyone had the same work flow and won't realize the same benefits.  Also keep in mind that Win7's memory manager might not let you use more RAM in LR if it doesn't think you have enough in other areas, or in other words to see the RAM being used you need to be on a system which can take advantage of the additional RAM.

Right. So my computer has 12GB of RAM and most of the time it uses less than a third of it. And that's with 1GB thrown at a VMWare VM. However your comment about "know your workflow" is right but similarly, just adding more RAM is not going to make Lightroom faster for everyone. If an image is taking a long time to load in Develop then simply going from 3GB of RAM to 12GB is quite likely overkill. Going from 3Gb to 4, 6 or at most 8 would likely be sufficient if there was a large amount of paging activity.

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And let's remember most people have more than LR going at one time.  I personally have FF with 8-9 tabs open Outlook, CS5 Photoshop and Dreamweaver, Lightroom, various plug-ins, and more going.   Most of us have something other than LR open because it's a reasonable way to use a computer.  RAM benefits all of this.

If you're running more than just LR, sure, more RAM can benefit all of that. But just adding more RAM won't make LR itself faster.

Quote
3.  A system is a system.  More RAM being used as a cache or pagefile or RAMdisk or any way that benefits the system, benefits LR.

I'd be interested to know if there are ways in which a RAM disk can be used to speed up LR as I believe that LR assumes everything that it writes to disk is persistent.

Quote
4.  I provided a counterpoint in the relevant thread.  I took the time to point out areas the reviewers test failed to address and what part of the LR work flow benefits from faster drives.  I know you participated in this thread, but if you weren't convinced then I don't have anything new to add other than to try and get your hands on some fast SSD's and try it yourself.

Your counterpoint was that benchmarking software used with an SSD says that SSDs are better whereas the article you are critiquing is saying that when LR is used (and not benchmarking software), there is little benefit.

Strange as it may seem, but I'm not interested in using benchmarking software to work on digital photographs, I'm interested in using Lightroom. Thus how fast an SSD might benchmark in a given test is far less important than the difference it makes to Lightroom's performance.

Since you believe that SSD is faster, why don't you put together a web page or two where you document a specific configuration and post a set of time trials for specific tasks that include Lightroom to show this?

That is I'm not interested in hearing about why SSD should be theoretically faster, I want to see you document and demonstrate with real tasks ways in which it is using real applications (not benchmarking software.) Someone showing me how long a particular task takes in Lightroom with and without an SSD is far more valuable to me than comparing read/write benchmarks of spinning disks vs SSD.

For me, own personal experience suggests that SSD is not going to make a huge difference to the "Loading..." time because the time it takes for LR to display that message far exceeds the time it takes for it to read it into memory.

I could be given to believing that using an SSD could show benefit if (say) I'm updating the metadata of 10000 images and they're all on SSD vs none on SSD. But if you want to make that argument, then I'd ask that you make it properly (using real workload testing) rather than just hand waving.

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5.  I'm not sure I understand the relevance of your comment about games.  We were addressing LR.   Please expand on this a bit if you wouldn't mind.

You were bemoaning the lack of information supplied by software houses (such as Adobe) about the real requirements to run their software. Software houses that author games have been addressing that (or at least did) with information on the outside of the box about a few CPU/RAM/GPU configurations delivering what performance (low/medium/high).
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: dreed on May 15, 2012, 11:15:49 pm
...
- 1:1 batch previews: the first ones take a couple of SECONDS (very nice) but as it goes on it takes forever! Right now I'm still generating previews for a task I launched 16 hours ago (2000 images)! Something's going on here, each preview takes more than the previous one. I must clarify that my processor is only used to 15% and Ram keeps creeping up. Rigt now 8GB / 16GB used by Lightrrom. All other apps run quite fast.
...

All else aside, I think that this demonstrates that there are a few very significant bugs in Lightroom's internal routines. If an application leaks memory (or uses it badly) then adding more does not help it run better.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Sareesh Sudhakaran on May 15, 2012, 11:46:34 pm
Does LR have a memory dump/clean and empty cache feature like After Effects does?
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 16, 2012, 02:24:56 pm
Right. So my computer has 12GB of RAM and most of the time it uses less than a third of it. And that's with 1GB thrown at a VMWare VM. However your comment about "know your workflow" is right but similarly, just adding more RAM is not going to make Lightroom faster for everyone. If an image is taking a long time to load in Develop then simply going from 3GB of RAM to 12GB is quite likely overkill. Going from 3Gb to 4, 6 or at most 8 would likely be sufficient if there was a large amount of paging activity.

If you're running more than just LR, sure, more RAM can benefit all of that. But just adding more RAM won't make LR itself faster.

I'd be interested to know if there are ways in which a RAM disk can be used to speed up LR as I believe that LR assumes everything that it writes to disk is persistent.

Your counterpoint was that benchmarking software used with an SSD says that SSDs are better whereas the article you are critiquing is saying that when LR is used (and not benchmarking software), there is little benefit.

Strange as it may seem, but I'm not interested in using benchmarking software to work on digital photographs, I'm interested in using Lightroom. Thus how fast an SSD might benchmark in a given test is far less important than the difference it makes to Lightroom's performance.

Since you believe that SSD is faster, why don't you put together a web page or two where you document a specific configuration and post a set of time trials for specific tasks that include Lightroom to show this?

That is I'm not interested in hearing about why SSD should be theoretically faster, I want to see you document and demonstrate with real tasks ways in which it is using real applications (not benchmarking software.) Someone showing me how long a particular task takes in Lightroom with and without an SSD is far more valuable to me than comparing read/write benchmarks of spinning disks vs SSD.

For me, own personal experience suggests that SSD is not going to make a huge difference to the "Loading..." time because the time it takes for LR to display that message far exceeds the time it takes for it to read it into memory.

I could be given to believing that using an SSD could show benefit if (say) I'm updating the metadata of 10000 images and they're all on SSD vs none on SSD. But if you want to make that argument, then I'd ask that you make it properly (using real workload testing) rather than just hand waving.

You were bemoaning the lack of information supplied by software houses (such as Adobe) about the real requirements to run their software. Software houses that author games have been addressing that (or at least did) with information on the outside of the box about a few CPU/RAM/GPU configurations delivering what performance (low/medium/high).

1.  "Load time" is first a function of disk I/O performance, not so much RAM.  This is the part where you need to match your work flow to the bottleneck to the hardware.  If your work flow has you loading one image every so often then even an SSD won't benefit you that much even though benchmarking software shows it's loading that image 20x faster (or whatever it may be).  But, if you're loading 20-30 images at a time.. now you'll see a big performance benefit.  And there will be a point where as you load those 20-30 images where you'll saturate your RAM and now RAM makes a difference.

2.  My point was that if you ARE running more than Lightroom as most tend to do, then more RAM most definitely will increase performance.  Again, we need to look at a system approach.  It's not enough to assume everyone is running only LR, you need to examine your work flow and other tasking and evaluate from there.  Most are using plug-ins, CS5, a browser or email in the background, watching news on another monitor, it varies greatly..

3.  I think it can for very specific work flows. 

4.   No, that wasn't my counterpoint at all.  And me building a web page on my work flow, or a specific work flow, won't help others understand their own work flow.. unless they happen to be the same.  My counterpoint was partly yes, the SSD is demonstrably faster so I/O functions will be faster.  With a work flow which loads one image at a time this will hardly be noticeable, but with a work flow that loads/saves multiple images at a time it will indeed be noticeable.  Or if you're building a catalog/previews from an SSD, and I pointed out that perhaps the biggest gain is in the catalog.. doing searches and moving through libraries is light years faster than working off a normal mechanical drive.  I could sit and pick out each function in LR where an SSD will be faster.. but this is where I said in that thread we need to look at our individual work flows and see where we can derive benefit.  Not everyone will derive the same benefit from a specific work flow which is why I found that article flawed.  It tested some, but not nearly all the functions where increased I/O performance is beneficial.  The functions they checked would definitely show a performance increase in the I/O area, but if you're only using that function for a fraction of your work flow then it will appear it's not doing much at all.

I can't stress enough how an individuals work flow needs to be evaluated and understood to know where hardware gains will be the most effective.  There are some areas were "in general" we can say most people will benefit from the same hardware.. 4 core i7, 12gb of RAM (8gb could fit many, but with the price so cheap whatever you get the best deal on makes the most sense, 8-12-16..), a fast GPU (the more monitors and the more resolution the more this benefit), and fast drives.. these things 'in general' benefit most users.  From there it's highly individualized to specific work flows.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Tom Frerichs on May 16, 2012, 04:03:30 pm
Your comments about workflow making a big difference are right on point. Actually, I think of workflow as only part of the environment that needs to be considered, an environment that is much larger than just the hardware or Lightroom.

Is there a virus scanner running in the background? Some of those can be configured to be really paranoid and scan every file, executable or not, on access.

In Lightroom, is the write to XMP stuff turned on (Sorry, not on a computer with LR, so I don't have the exact terminology).  From what I've read, if it is, every time you fiddle with a develop module control, you make changes to the XMP file in addition to the changes made in the catalog. Maybe it makes sense to have that on...or maybe it makes sense to sync metadata when you're done...but those are workflow configuration decisions that might have a significiant impact.

When you import, are you creating 1:1 previews?  That can really hit performance.

These days there are many utilities running that get auto-started and don't show up as a "program" on the task bar. It's amazing what stuff is running on my PC that I never "started"  Little things like Java updaters, Adobe updaters (so I can keep getting Flash fixes :) ), Open Office startup stuff, indexing programs.  And each one of those can steal a little performance. But each one needs to be considered as part of the environment.

Just saying Lightroom is slow really isn't enough information to judge by or give any help with.  And including hardware configurations is only part of what is necessary.

Tom
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Phil Indeblanc on May 16, 2012, 04:20:02 pm
What it sounds like you're leading to, is that LightRoom4 needs a mid to top of the line separate dedicated computer?
I agree with the technical observations you mention, such as the 1:1 preview, and background apps. etc.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rand47 on May 16, 2012, 05:51:28 pm
Your comments about workflow making a big difference are right on point. Actually, I think of workflow as only part of the environment that needs to be considered, an environment that is much larger than just the hardware or Lightroom.

Is there a virus scanner running in the background? Some of those can be configured to be really paranoid and scan every file, executable or not, on access.

In Lightroom, is the write to XMP stuff turned on (Sorry, not on a computer with LR, so I don't have the exact terminology).  From what I've read, if it is, every time you fiddle with a develop module control, you make changes to the XMP file in addition to the changes made in the catalog. Maybe it makes sense to have that on...or maybe it makes sense to sync metadata when you're done...but those are workflow configuration decisions that might have a significiant impact.

When you import, are you creating 1:1 previews?  That can really hit performance.

These days there are many utilities running that get auto-started and don't show up as a "program" on the task bar. It's amazing what stuff is running on my PC that I never "started"  Little things like Java updaters, Adobe updaters (so I can keep getting Flash fixes :) ), Open Office startup stuff, indexing programs.  And each one of those can steal a little performance. But each one needs to be considered as part of the environment.

Just saying Lightroom is slow really isn't enough information to judge by or give any help with.  And including hardware configurations is only part of what is necessary.

Tom

Tom,

I honestly appreciate what you've said, and I agree.  BUT, there are two obvious elephants in the room, IMO.

1.  3.6 ran lickety-split for most of us on these same machines, with the same inefficiencies you discuss so well - and 4 does not. And not by "a little bit," but by a whole bunch, making it borderline (and that's being kind) unusable.  

2.  I suspect that the vast majority of Adobe's customer base is like me.  I'm fairly computer literate in terms of being a user, but I'm far from a technical computer person and don't think I should be required to become one to extract acceptable performance from a piece of end-user software, the "specs" of which my current machine greatly exceeds.

That is the crux of Adobe's problem w/ LR 4 and while it is interesting, and helpful to some, to discuss tweaks and tech points on how we might get better performance from Lightroom - I find that a little like being told I need to learn to re-wire the flux capacitors on my toaster in order to have toast.

I love what LR4 can do, and respect the Adobe team very much for the incredible advances achieved.  But I don't want to be required to learn to re-wire my flux capacitors and warp-drive to be able to just "use it."

Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: John Cothron on May 16, 2012, 06:18:51 pm
Tom,

I honestly appreciate what you've said, and I agree.  BUT, there are two obvious elephants in the room, IMO.

1.  3.6 ran lickety-split for most of us on these same machines, with the same inefficiencies you discuss so well - and 4 does not. And not by "a little bit," but by a whole bunch, making it borderline (and that's being kind) unusable.  

2.  I suspect that the vast majority of Adobe's customer base is like me.  I'm fairly computer literate in terms of being a user, but I'm far from a technical computer person and don't think I should be required to become one to extract acceptable performance from a piece of end-user software, the "specs" of which my current machine greatly exceeds.

That is the crux of Adobe's problem w/ LR 4 and while it is interesting, and helpful to some, to discuss tweaks and tech points on how we might get better performance from Lightroom - I find that a little like being told I need to learn to re-wire the flux capacitors on my toaster in order to have toast.

I love what LR4 can do, and respect the Adobe team very much for the incredible advances achieved.  But I don't want to be required to learn to re-wire my flux capacitors and warp-drive to be able to just "use it."



I don't actually have a performance problem with Lr 4, but I fully agree with what you're saying here.  Some of those "tweaks" are the kind of thing you do when you're running benchmarking contests for higher scores, but you shouldn't have to do those kinds of things when running software on a suitable system.  A lot of high end systems are experiencing issues, even higher than the one I have....something seems amiss to me.  Someone mentioned that maybe some catalogs aren't getting converted correctly.  That idea has merit in my mind since it would fit with the varying range of system performance that seem to be having some problems.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Tom Frerichs on May 16, 2012, 06:50:31 pm
I think it's a mistake to think that all reported performance issues stem from the same causes, and that means you won't necessarily have the same answer.

Yep, they are tweaks. It may help some. And it doesn't hurt to look, does it?

I agree, you shouldn't have to know about inodes (sort of sounds in the same catagory as "flux capacitor," doesn't it) or RAIDZ or other arcana to know how to use a computer, but there are some thing you do need to know.  By the same token, I shouldn't have to know how to read an MTF graph or worry about Nyquist limits to take a photograph. However, I'd better know about f/stops and shutter speeds and focal length if I want to take advantage of anything other than a point-and-shoot camera.

Bad catalog conversion?  Interesting thought.  Why not create a new catalog, go wander off to where your photos are stored, and import a batch of them into the new catalog? Admittedly, any changes you make to the new catalog won't be copied to your real catalog, so don't do anything that you want to keep.  Also, if you are writing sidecar files, you may end up with a "metadata sync" issue because the XMP files may have changes that won't be incorporated into your real catalog, but you can at least do a little playing around to see if it is still slow. And I'd only work on RAWs.

You could also copy a few directories of photos to another junk location to be your source for the "new" catalog import, then you wouldn't even have to worry about metadata changes.

Is that a tweak?  I don't know. Seems to me that it wouldn't take a huge amount of time to do, provided you limit how many photos you import, and would certainly answer if you had catalog upgrading issues.

Tom
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rand47 on May 16, 2012, 07:00:53 pm
I think it's a mistake to think that all reported performance issues stem from the same causes, and that means you won't necessarily have the same answer.

Yep, they are tweaks. It may help some. And it doesn't hurt to look, does it?

I agree, you shouldn't have to know about inodes (sort of sounds in the same catagory as "flux capacitor," doesn't it) or RAIDZ or other arcana to know how to use a computer, but there are some thing you do need to know.  By the same token, I shouldn't have to know how to read an MTF graph or worry about Nyquist limits to take a photograph. However, I'd better know about f/stops and shutter speeds and focal length if I want to take advantage of anything other than a point-and-shoot camera.

Bad catalog conversion?  Interesting thought.  Why not create a new catalog, go wander off to where your photos are stored, and import a batch of them into the new catalog? Admittedly, any changes you make to the new catalog won't be copied to your real catalog, so don't do anything that you want to keep.  Also, if you are writing sidecar files, you may end up with a "metadata sync" issue because the XMP files may have changes that won't be incorporated into your real catalog, but you can at least do a little playing around to see if it is still slow. And I'd only work on RAWs.

You could also copy a few directories of photos to another junk location to be your source for the "new" catalog import, then you wouldn't even have to worry about metadata changes.

Is that a tweak?  I don't know. Seems to me that it wouldn't take a huge amount of time to do, provided you limit how many photos you import, and would certainly answer if you had catalog upgrading issues.

Tom

Just for interest, I have not yet imported an older catalog but started fresh and am using LR4RC2 with fresh from the camera RAW to DNG on import, files.  Probably a total of no more than 500 files from an a900 and a Fuji X-100.   So, in my instance it has zero to do w/ catalog conversion or any such.

Rand
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Tom Frerichs on May 16, 2012, 07:47:32 pm
Just for interest, I have not yet imported an older catalog but started fresh and am using LR4RC2 with fresh from the camera RAW to DNG on import, files.  Probably a total of no more than 500 files from an a900 and a Fuji X-100.   So, in my instance it has zero to do w/ catalog conversion or any such.

Rand

Then I think we can rule out catalog conversion corruption in your case. :D From what was said earlier, one suspected cause WAS conversion issues.

That's what I meant about having multiple causes.  Sneezing can be caused by a cold or allergies or getting too heavy with the pepper mill. Darned if I'm going to go home and lie down, Nyquil in hand, if it's the pepper.

Tom

BTW, I finally got to a computer with LR.  The section is Edit->Catalog settings...->Metadata.  There are two settings: "Include Develop settings in metadata inside JPEG, TIFF and PSD files."  The other is "Automatically write changes into XMP."  Not sure about the first one, but from what I've read twiddling the Exposure, Contrast, etc sliders in the Develop module (plus probably a lot of other things that affect metadata) causes the program to update the XMP file. I don't know if that's an issue or not; I wouldn't think so since those files are really light weight, but you never know.




Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: natas on May 16, 2012, 09:01:24 pm
A simple thing you should check is swap/virtual memory. Do you normal routine in Lightroom and check if you have heavy swapping. If you do then more memory should help. 2g is very small amount for a modern computer and upgrading to 4 should be cheap and well worth the money. Lightroom 4 is a newer application so it's going to tax your computer more than version 2 or 3. The same can be said with many applications and operating systems. This doesn't mean you need to buy a new pc it just means you may need to upgrade a few pieces of hardware to get faster results.

Btw I personally wouldn't run any version of Lightroom unless I had a bare minimum of 8 gigs. I do however work with 21, 40 and sometimes 100+ megapixel files. My MacBook pro has 12 gigs and my mac pro has 48. Before I had my Pentax 645d I was working with 10 and 21mp files..l was running fine with 8gigs of ram until I started using the 645d and scanning 6x7 negatives.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Bill Koenig on May 16, 2012, 10:21:33 pm
My PC is old as in 2004, Dell 380 work station Pentium D 930 dual core 3GHz  8GB ram Win7 64 Ultimate. ATI v5700 512Gb 80 GB dedicated scratch, system files on 149Gb partition on A 1GB SATA 7200rpm HD.

I just opened a 1.24 GB B&W pano into Lr 4 It takes maybe a minuet to render the preview, but in the develop mode I'm seeing delays of about a couple of seconds or less.
A raw file from my D7000 in develop mode, in the basic panel, adjustments are happening almost instantly.
I don't get it, why should I be having this level of performance on such a old PC? Heck, its faster than ACR was in CS5 if I ran it in 32bit mode. 
Boy am I glad I decided to get a new NEC PA271W monitor this year instead upgrading my PC.
   
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 16, 2012, 10:52:04 pm
Your comments about workflow making a big difference are right on point. Actually, I think of workflow as only part of the environment that needs to be considered, an environment that is much larger than just the hardware or Lightroom.
Tom
All good points. 

When someone calls and wants to configure a system I'll spend time asking questions like what virus scanner, software, model number of peripherals they'll be connecting, what they normally have open while working, file sizes, network connections, backup programs, etc, etc..   What I try to do is get a 360 degree view of their personal work flow, not just a single program but all of it.  And then I try to get a feel for how fast they work.  Once I have all that.. then I ask how they'd like to work if the computer wasn't getting in their way and this is often the most difficult.  It's hard to conceptualize that which you've never experienced.   

Finally, based on their information and my experience we design a system around their needs.  This is what they're paying for, you're experience.. and why going to Best Buy or asking the guy answering the phone at Dell or even a gaming shop.. isn't the most effective way to spend your money.  If you're building an imaging workstation.. then someone with day to day experience using a imaging workstation (and who builds computers) is the best choice.

Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 16, 2012, 11:25:11 pm

2.  I suspect that the vast majority of Adobe's customer base is like me.  I'm fairly computer literate in terms of being a user, but I'm far from a technical computer person and don't think I should be required to become one to extract acceptable performance from a piece of end-user software, the "specs" of which my current machine greatly exceeds.

Your point is well taken. 

I think if Adobe could make it more simple they would, they're getting a lot of grief over this stuff.   But, we need to remember that processing images and especially videos is a very hardware and system intensive task.  Tasks that requires the most important areas of a computer (CPU, RAM, GPU, Data I/O) to work at their maximum and perhaps most importantly, to work together.  Keep in mind that the hardware drivers are all in play as well, a bad driver can slow LR down to a crawl.  Or in other words, there is much more going on using LR to process images than most any other program we use.  A close relative would be running powerful games.

We all know if you want your games to run the maximum FPS at the highest detail level and resolution, you need a powerful computer.  You can run the games at their minimum requirements on 5-6 year old laptop.. but at a much lower FPS, resolution, and detail level.  LR is exactly the same in this way.  It requires power to operate at it's best and it requires the system to be in "tune."  LR can work at a low hardware level, but we can't expect it to work it's fastest or best.  If we want the best performance we need the hardware and system setup to allow this performance level. 

Gamers, those who use CAD/CAM workstations, video workstations, they're accustomed to having someone design/build their systems around their software.  Imaging is right there, the requirements are the same.  Sure, people game and use CAD/CAM on off the shelf systems.. but they don't expect top performance.  So, if you really want the top performance for your imaging workstation then it becomes reasonable to expect to either design and build an adequate system, or have someone do it for you.

A common question is:  "Why did 3.6 work so well and 4.x not so well?"  When your realize they're adding more functional capabilities you almost have to expect the hardware requirements will rise.  However, this doesn't mean that something is amiss with their coding.  If they got in a hurry and didn't refine their coding and even their design, OR if they are bugs in the coding, then things can slow down more than the progression of function vs. hardware you'd expect.  I suspect this is what's happening now. 

Yet, on the other hand I suspect the "program of the future", or the program with all the functions/features we really want.. isn't being offered because the hardware requirements are too stiff and too many people are still on older systems.  What would be great for someone with the latest system isn't good for the masses running 3-4 year old computers.  It's like web page design, I used to run a 800 pixel wide page on my site because that's what the majority of users were using.  Today I run an 1100 pixel wide page.  If my site was geared towards only professional photographers I'd consider a 1400 pixel wide page because that subset of web visitors would have monitors which support that resolution.

So.. are those with older machines holding Adobe back, or at least slowing them down,  from putting out better and more interesting software?  I think so.  But because of the nature of image processing (hardware/system requirements) and because they want their product to be the professionals choice.. they're probably pushing the hardware requirements a bit stiffer than they otherwise would.

I'm okay with this because I naturally use a more powerful system, and I fear if hardware requirements become too much of an issue then Adobe will hold back on features we want until more of their users upgrade for other reasons.

There's a lot that goes into the decision making process with such software.. our part as end users is to do our best to understand what performance we can realistically expect for a given level of hardware.  This is why I really wish Adobe would support ongoing builds vs. benchmarks for their most 'hungry' programs.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Sheldon N on May 17, 2012, 12:08:16 am
My experience with LR4 is that it certainly seems to be very demanding of a system. I upgraded my computer at the same time I jumped to LR4, so I came into LR4 with a significant bump in performance.

Currently running LR4 RC1 with a catalog of about 15k images, rollover conversion from an LR3 catalog. Computer is an i7 3770k, overclocked to 4.4GHz, 16 GB RAM, SSD for the OS/Programs, second SSD for LR Catalogs and ACR Cache, AMD FirePro 4900 video card (for 10 bit photoshop) on a Dell U2711 primary screen, Radeon HD 4850 video card for a Dell 2408WFP secondary screen, and WD Caviar Black 1TB (x2) and 2TB drives for storage. Working files for my primary RAW folder sit on the fastest partition of the 2TB drive. While I'm sure there are machines out there that are faster, this is pretty close to the top of food chain right now.

Opening LR and rolling through grid view and loupe view is very fast. In a folder of 1500+ 1Ds III and Aptus 22 RAW files, there is no lag at all moving from image to image in Loupe view at full screen (previews already rendered). It will move from image to image as fast as I can press the arrow keys.  Even full screen 27" viewing at 1:1 is pretty quick to jump from image to image, I can scroll through maybe 2-3 per second.  This is a noticeable improvement from my old machine which had the LR catalog on a regular drive instead of on a SSD. Also, scrolling up and down through a full screen page of thumbnails in grid view is much faster. Smooth scrolling up and down with almost no lag.

Moving from image to image (1Ds III RAW's) in the Develop tab takes just under 2.5 seconds for the "loading" indicator to disappear. If I cycle through the same images again (ACR Cache on the SSD already loaded for that image) it is ever so slightly faster, maybe a couple tenths of a second. It takes roughly same amount of time to generate 1:1 previews on import for each image.

Making adjustments in the develop tab using the sliders is not perfect. It's certainly useable with no major complaints, but it's not as much of an improvement from LR 3.6 as the change in hardware would cause me to expect. There is a bit of stuttering/redraw as you drag the exposure slider left and right. It will flicker maybe 5-6 times a second with image redraws as you drag the slider. Adding lens correction and noise reduction slows the redraws to maybe 3-4 a second. Having a full screen image also slows it down, vertical images that only take up part of the screen are noticeably faster. Overall, the lag forces you to slow down slightly when moving the slider, so that you are sure you are seeing the current redraw before you let go of the slider at your desired setting.

Looking at the CPU/RAM usage monitor, I've observed a few things.

It seems that moving around in the Loupe/Grid view is primary just loading previews from the disk and it doesn't demand much of the CPU. This is an area where an SSD is going to help out. Very fast seek times and high read speeds to pull info from the LR Catalog/Database.

The Develop tab is highly CPU intensive. Scrolling from image to image loads the CPU much more heavily than the Loupe view, moving the develop sliders also loads the CPU, especially as the size of the screen area to be redrawn is increased or as you increase the demands of lens correction/NR/etc.

The "Loading" moniker that appears on screen has seems to have nothing to do with pulling data from the disk, but rather appears to be generation of preview data by the CPU (both in Loupe and Develop view).

RAM usage is not much at all, never exceeding 25% of the total 16GB available.

Overall, I'm happy with LR4 on my machine. On a much slower machine I would imagine that it could be quite difficult.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 17, 2012, 02:38:56 am

Moving from image to image (1Ds III RAW's) in the Develop tab takes just under 2.5 seconds for the "loading" indicator to disappear.

Nice post!

I like the way your articulated the different information.

My system is considerably less powerful than yours, i-7 950 (old 1366), 12gb RAM, SSD system/programs, 2x3tb Seagate (their latest SATAIII models) for data, and a slower WD black 1tb for my catalog with a ATI 6870 GPU running two LCD2690's.

I pulled up a folder of approximately 1500 1ds3 images (just now with FF running with 8 tabs, Outlook, virus software, etc, etc), and went from the Library to Develop tab (about 3 seconds), but then going from image to image where 1:1 previews had already been built.. took a "blink", or .3-.4 seconds each.  Basically they render as fast as you'd want.  Your system taking 2.5 seconds I'd guess is being limited by your video card.  As you know this is relatively slow card. 

When I had my ATI 5970 (dual GPU) card in my system there was absolutely no delay from image to image while in the develop module, no delay when moving the sliders on either the primary or secondary monitor.  No flicker, no hesitation, just a smooth change as I move the slider.  Now with the less powerful 6870 card I see a .3-.4 second image to image delay when in the develop module, and when moving the sliders the primary screen is still smooth and instantaneous but the secondary monitor lags about .4-.5 seconds.

So.. with the powerful system you have, the bottleneck affecting your image to image in the develop module delay, and your slider delays.. are most likely a direct result of your video card choice. 

You didn't say what SSD's your running, what controllers you're using with them, how full they are, etc.. but it's possible you could further increase performance of certain areas of LR with faster SSD's.  I'm using a Crucial C300 (AS SSD score of 650+) which is fast for a SATA SSD.. but when I build my next system soon I'll be using a OCZ Revo 3x2 and a Revo 1tb hybrid for my catalog.  These PCIe SSD's are lightyears faster than my current 2 year old SSD..

Anyway.. if you get an opportunity to borrow a faster video card, throw it in there for grins and watch what happens to your current delays/issues..
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on May 17, 2012, 02:56:52 am
I love what LR4 can do, and respect the Adobe team very much for the incredible advances achieved.  But I don't want to be required to learn to re-wire my flux capacitors and warp-drive to be able to just "use it."
Like the analogy :)
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on May 17, 2012, 03:04:09 am
I think if Adobe could make it more simple they would, they're getting a lot of grief over this stuff.   But, we need to remember that processing images and especially videos is a very hardware and system intensive task. 
An interesting question is how much of LR4's problems stem from "supporting" video ?

I don't think LR is the place to work with video, anyone who wants to edit will have to use another program anyway.
If it's the case that by integrating video 'support' they have done has significantly downgraded LR's performance for it's core still's work, Adobe have made a very poor strategic decision.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Sheldon N on May 17, 2012, 03:36:41 am
Nice post!

I like the way your articulated the different information.

My system is considerably less powerful than yours, i-7 950 (old 1366), 12gb RAM, SSD system/programs, 2x3tb Seagate (their latest SATAIII models) for data, and a slower WD black 1tb for my catalog with a ATI 6870 GPU running two LCD2690's.

I pulled up a folder of approximately 1500 1ds3 images (just now with FF running with 8 tabs, Outlook, virus software, etc, etc), and went from the Library to Develop tab (about 3 seconds), but then going from image to image where 1:1 previews had already been built.. took a "blink", or .3-.4 seconds each.  Basically they render as fast as you'd want.  Your system taking 2.5 seconds I'd guess is being limited by your video card.  As you know this is relatively slow card. 

When I had my ATI 5970 (dual GPU) card in my system there was absolutely no delay from image to image while in the develop module, no delay when moving the sliders on either the primary or secondary monitor.  No flicker, no hesitation, just a smooth change as I move the slider.  Now with the less powerful 6870 card I see a .3-.4 second image to image delay when in the develop module, and when moving the sliders the primary screen is still smooth and instantaneous but the secondary monitor lags about .4-.5 seconds.

So.. with the powerful system you have, the bottleneck affecting your image to image in the develop module delay, and your slider delays.. are most likely a direct result of your video card choice. 

You didn't say what SSD's your running, what controllers you're using with them, how full they are, etc.. but it's possible you could further increase performance of certain areas of LR with faster SSD's.  I'm using a Crucial C300 (AS SSD score of 650+) which is fast for a SATA SSD.. but when I build my next system soon I'll be using a OCZ Revo 3x2 and a Revo 1tb hybrid for my catalog.  These PCIe SSD's are lightyears faster than my current 2 year old SSD..

Anyway.. if you get an opportunity to borrow a faster video card, throw it in there for grins and watch what happens to your current delays/issues..

Thanks, interesting info.  To answer your questions, the SSD's are both 120GB Crucial M4's, fairly empty, controlled by the Intel controller on my Z77 motherboard (ASRock Extreme 6), SATA 6 connection, and are new since the computer is only a couple weeks old.

In regards to the 1:1 previews and the develop tab, what is displayed in the develop window does not have anything to do with the pre-rendered previews. The previews are just for Loupe view. The image shown in the develop tab is rendered each time for display, only using a small chunk of data from the ACR Cache.

Also to clarify, the time I quoted to move from image to image in the develop tab was not the time it took for the image to display, that happens almost instantly. The time I mentioned was from when I jumped to a new image until the "Loading" indicator at the bottom disappeared (Total time = press button -> new image displays -> "loading" appears -> short wait -> "loading" disappears). If we're talking about just moving from image to image without waiting for the "Loading" to disappear, I can move through at a little better than 1 per second.

Note that I'm on a Dell U2711 monitor while you are on a NEC 2690. While there's only an inch size difference, there is a significant resolution difference. The NEC is a 1920x1200 monitor while the Dell is a 2560x1440 monitor. The dell monitor is effectively at the resolution of a 30" screen (same resolution width, just shorter height). I also have my develop tab set full screen so that only the right panel is showing and the image takes up almost all of the screen. That higher image display resolution is a big factor in how fast Lightroom runs.

With regard to GPU usage and Lightroom, I was not aware that LR4 had implemented any significant rendering tasks to the GPU. I don't believe that it uses the GPU at all for the develop tab or rendering capabilities. See this thread for commentary from Adobe employees (Eric Chan specifically, he's a member here too) that they don't have much going for GPU usage in LR yet.

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4171806

To confirm this, I downloaded a little GPU Gadget that shows GPU load/memory/temp/fan speed. When scrolling from image to image in the develop tab and when making adjustments and local adjustments, the GPU load is basically zero (CPU usage is very high). I double checked the widget is working by going into CS6 and flick panning around in a 60 megapixel image at 100%. The GPU is enabled in CS6 and the activity monitor shows the GPU usage spiking to 100% in that situation. However, I don't think the GPU has any effect whatsoever on how fast Lightroom is in the develop tab. It's not the screen redraw itself that's the problem, it's rendering the RAW edits that need to be redrawn each time you make any changes.

I think the only difference in speed we're seeing between our systems is due to perhaps terminology of what we're describing, and due to the higher resolution of my screen. I don't think buying a different video card would change anything for this specific situation.

Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on May 17, 2012, 03:47:11 am
I downloaded a little GPU Gadget that shows GPU load/memory/temp/fan speed. When scrolling from image to image in the develop tab and when making adjustments and local adjustments, the GPU load is basically zero (CPU usage is very high).
Seeing the same here.
Quote
I think the only difference in speed we're seeing between our systems is due to perhaps terminology of what we're describing, and due to the higher resolution of my screen.
Desktop size is definitely one of the key issues here.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 17, 2012, 04:06:39 am

Also to clarify, the time I quoted to move from image to image in the develop tab was not the time it took for the image to display, that happens almost instantly. The time I mentioned was from when I jumped to a new image until the "Loading" indicator at the bottom disappeared (Total time = press button -> new image displays -> "loading" appears -> short wait -> "loading" disappears). If we're talking about just moving from image to image without waiting for the "Loading" to disappear, I can move through at a little better than 1 per second.

Note that I'm on a Dell U2711 monitor while you are on a NEC 2690. While there's only an inch size difference, there is a significant resolution difference. The NEC is a 1920x1200 monitor while the Dell is a 2560x1440 monitor. The dell monitor is effectively at the resolution of a 30" screen (same resolution width, just shorter height). I also have my develop tab set full screen so that only the right panel is showing and the image takes up almost all of the screen. That higher image display resolution is a big factor in how fast Lightroom runs.

With regard to GPU usage and Lightroom, I was not aware that LR4 had implemented any significant rendering tasks to the GPU. I don't believe that it uses the GPU at all for the develop tab or rendering capabilities. See this thread for commentary from Adobe employees (Eric Chan specifically, he's a member here too) that they don't have much going for GPU usage in LR yet.

I think the only difference in speed we're seeing between our systems is due to perhaps terminology of what we're describing, and due to the higher resolution of my screen. I don't think buying a different video card would change anything for this specific situation.



1.  Okay, understood.  I'm at .6-.7 until the loading tab disappears.

2.  I understand the resolution differences, but I'm also rendering two monitors so I'm thinking maybe the differences are a wash.. maybe not.  I'd have to do more testing to know for sure.

3.  This is one of the issues I think aren't well understood.  You're right in that LR is not directly tasking the video card in the sense of off-loading processing tasks, LR doesn't yet support this. But, even without being tasked a video card renders screens in any program and how fast they render screens is attributable to the GPU processing power and to some extent the RAM on the video card.  I've had multiple opportunities to try many video cards in my system and other systems, back to back with no other variables involved.  There is a significant difference in how fast the screens render and how well/smoothly the sliders work.  I've tried a lower end 5450 card, 5770, 5970, and 6870 cards in the same sitting and the differences were significant and consistent.

4.  Now that I think we're on the same page with the terminology and the differences are still significant (.7 vs 2.5), and that the difference with slider controls remains, and because I've actually used different cards.. I'd have to disagree.  Other than setup of caches the only thing I can see which accounts for the better performance of those specific functions on my less powerful system.. is my more powerful video card.   I'm not trying to get you to buy a new one, but if you get the chance to try a more powerful card.. try it and let us know.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on May 17, 2012, 04:27:23 am
Other than setup of caches the only thing I can see which accounts for the better performance of those specific functions on my less powerful system.. is my more powerful video card.
So we can all keep up with what you're talking about here;
How are your monitors configured ?
Is the system driving one big desktop across two screens ? If so what's the total resolution being driven by the system ?
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 17, 2012, 06:10:45 pm
So we can all keep up with what you're talking about here;
How are your monitors configured ?
Is the system driving one big desktop across two screens ? If so what's the total resolution being driven by the system ?
Yes, a primary and extended monitor for a total resolution of 3840x1200 for 4,608,00 driven pixels.    The Dell U2710 is 2560x1440 for 3,686,400 driven pixels.  Pretty much a wash.

It seems like many are under the impression that unless a video card's GPU is being specifically tasked, all cards are equal, but they aren't.  All video cards render screens regardless if they're tasked or not, and the available power of your card allows you to do this rendering faster/slower based on the level of available power.  There's no doubt the real power is in the GPU tasking, but when you're rendering a lot of real estate the power of the card to render becomes significant.  You can see this even in your browser or office program, but to a much smaller degree, by how fast screens render.  Most don't notice this difference until you point it out and give them an A/B comparison, but once they see the comparison they can see the difference.  When you're filling the screen with image mapping vs. text the difference is much greater.  I wish I could explain this better.. next time I test different cards I'll do a Captivate video and share it.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on May 18, 2012, 03:04:03 am
Thanks for the clarification.
It seems like many are under the impression that unless a video card's GPU is being specifically tasked, all cards are equal, but they aren't. 
I've always understood that.

One complication here maybe the utilities people try to monitor their graphic cards with. I would never claim to fully understand how they work, but it's possible that they're just reporting on certain functions of the graphic card systems, eg OGL function use, so the 'normal' processing that drives normal screen redraws isn't reported.

However I think laying the blame for poor performance in the develop module just on graphic card speed is missing the point. Process 2012 flies in ACR in CS6, but is dog slow in LR4, Adobe shouldn't rely on people running the most expensive hardware to make their software run smoothly.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: dreed on May 18, 2012, 04:30:13 am
1.  "Load time" is first a function of disk I/O performance, not so much RAM.  This is the part where you need to match your work flow to the bottleneck to the hardware.  If your work flow has you loading one image every so often then even an SSD won't benefit you that much even though benchmarking software shows it's loading that image 20x faster (or whatever it may be).  But, if you're loading 20-30 images at a time.. now you'll see a big performance benefit.  And there will be a point where as you load those 20-30 images where you'll saturate your RAM and now RAM makes a difference.

How so?

Why don't you demonstrate, with a video on youtube, how using a fast disk can make loading 20-30 images faster than using a slow disk?

Or provide some timing results and document what you do so that others can do the same test as yourself to verify?

Quote
2.  My point was that if you ARE running more than Lightroom as most tend to do, then more RAM most definitely will increase performance.

Really?

Will increasing my RAM from 12GB to 16GB make a big difference?
What about going from 16GB to 32GB?

Quote
3.  I think it can for very specific work flows. 

Can you provide some specifics on those work flows that benefit from huge amounts of RAM or faster disk?

Quote
4.   No, that wasn't my counterpoint at all.  And me building a web page on my work flow, or a specific work flow, won't help others understand their own work flow..

But it will help us understand how you work and how you benefit from faster disks and more RAM. Don't you think that this is useful information?

Quote
My counterpoint was partly yes, the SSD is demonstrably faster so I/O functions will be faster.

Note that it has been previously established that for large images, CPU time far outweighs I/O time.

Quote
With a work flow which loads one image at a time this will hardly be noticeable, but with a work flow that loads/saves multiple images at a time it will indeed be noticeable.

To the best of my knowledge, LR doesn't work on multiple images at a time - that is unless you've got multiple tasks running which I've found to be a bad idea of PCs in general.

So when you decide to do X with 20 or 30 images, they each get processed in serial. That means that LR does what it needs to do with one image, throws away the temporary data and starts on a new one.

Quote
Or if you're building a catalog/previews from an SSD, and I pointed out that perhaps the biggest gain is in the catalog.. doing searches and moving through libraries is light years faster than working off a normal mechanical drive.

So let me get this straight, you're advocating using SSD because it is faster but you're not even sure where the biggest gain is?

Have you actually timed any of your work flows to show that SSD is quicker when used for part X?

Quote
Not everyone will derive the same benefit from a specific work flow which is why I found that article flawed.

Thus far, you haven't provided any solid information, never mind anything that is any less flawed than that article.

Quote
It tested some, but not nearly all the functions where increased I/O performance is beneficial.  The functions they checked would definitely show a performance increase in the I/O area, but if you're only using that function for a fraction of your work flow then it will appear it's not doing much at all.

Can you go into more details, please?

I'd very much like you to benchmark some actual work flows and show how and where benefit from SSD can be had.

Given that you know what to do, this shouldn't be very hard for you to demonstrate.

Afterall, people are adaptable and if there are better and more efficient ways for humans to work, I'm sure will adapt (or try to!)
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: dreed on May 18, 2012, 04:46:53 am
My PC is old as in 2004, Dell 380 work station Pentium D 930 dual core 3GHz  8GB ram Win7 64 Ultimate. ATI v5700 512Gb 80 GB dedicated scratch, system files on 149Gb partition on A 1GB SATA 7200rpm HD.

I just opened a 1.24 GB B&W pano into Lr 4 It takes maybe a minuet to render the preview, but in the develop mode I'm seeing delays of about a couple of seconds or less.
A raw file from my D7000 in develop mode, in the basic panel, adjustments are happening almost instantly.
I don't get it, why should I be having this level of performance on such a old PC? Heck, its faster than ACR was in CS5 if I ran it in 32bit mode. 
Boy am I glad I decided to get a new NEC PA271W monitor this year instead upgrading my PC.

I love this if only because reading what some other folks are saying here says that what you're experiencing shouldn't be possible! :)
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: dreed on May 18, 2012, 04:53:35 am
...
3.  This is one of the issues I think aren't well understood.  You're right in that LR is not directly tasking the video card in the sense of off-loading processing tasks, LR doesn't yet support this. But, even without being tasked a video card renders screens in any program and how fast they render screens is attributable to the GPU processing power and to some extent the RAM on the video card.  I've had multiple opportunities to try many video cards in my system and other systems, back to back with no other variables involved.  There is a significant difference in how fast the screens render and how well/smoothly the sliders work.  I've tried a lower end 5450 card, 5770, 5970, and 6870 cards in the same sitting and the differences were significant and consistent.
...

Here (when you move scroll bars) you're directly looking at the speed of the memory bus on the video card and the GPU speed as they're responsible for all of the blitter operations once you're using the card's driver. So what you are reporting makes complete sense.

But the same speed difference will be noticed in all applications, not just LR. If you've got a complex web page, or maybe a folder with 1000s of images (or at least several times more than the number of thumbnails you can see at once) and so forth.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 18, 2012, 07:13:07 am
Thanks for the clarification.I've always understood that.

One complication here maybe the utilities people try to monitor their graphic cards with. I would never claim to fully understand how they work, but it's possible that they're just reporting on certain functions of the graphic card systems, eg OGL function use, so the 'normal' processing that drives normal screen redraws isn't reported.

However I think laying the blame for poor performance in the develop module just on graphic card speed is missing the point. Process 2012 flies in ACR in CS6, but is dog slow in LR4, Adobe shouldn't rely on people running the most expensive hardware to make their software run smoothly.
1.  Agreed, there is a lot to this stuff happening under the hood, more variables than most of us care to understand for sure.

2.  I'm not sure I'm trying to blame the video card, more I'm trying to offer a way to improve performance because it's something that's within our control while much isn't.  Hardware is something we can change, coding and fixing bugs we'll have to leave up to Adobe.

3.  Adobe does rely on people running  certain hardware in Cs4/5/6 with the tasking of the GPU.  And I'll go back to a previous post I made in this thread, when you have a software application that draws so heavily on all aspects of the hardware just by it's very nature (gaming, CAD/CAM, Video, Imaging) then it's entirely reasonable to expect different levels of performance with different levels of hardware.  We all understand we can't run our favorite first shooter game at the maximum resolution, detail level, or frame rate on a 5 year old mid-level laptop.. yet we can still play that game if it falls within the minimum system requirements.  If you go out and get that custom builder to build you a custom gaming rig, then you can run that game at max resolution, detail level, and the faster frame rates.  We know this and accept this, gaming requires heavy hardware for the best performance and experience.. but we want imaging which uses the computer in much the same way to somehow be immune to hardware requirements.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 18, 2012, 07:19:43 am
How so?

Why don't you demonstrate, with a video on youtube, how using a fast disk can make loading 20-30 images faster than using a slow disk?


No thank you.  What you're requesting is very time consuming and I have other work that pays I'd rather be doing.  Besides, I'd just get people who would pick apart anything you have to offer while at the same time demonstrating deficiencies in basic math skills, namely addition.  If you can't add 1+1+1+1 20-30 times then my doing a video isn't going to help you.  You run across this in forums and its why many choose to not share their experiences.  I can detail the benefits of my experiences and I've done so, but it's just not my job to provide the elementary education necessary to understand it.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 18, 2012, 07:23:44 am
Here (when you move scroll bars) you're directly looking at the speed of the memory bus on the video card and the GPU speed as they're responsible for all of the blitter operations once you're using the card's driver. So what you are reporting makes complete sense.

But the same speed difference will be noticed in all applications, not just LR. If you've got a complex web page, or maybe a folder with 1000s of images (or at least several times more than the number of thumbnails you can see at once) and so forth.
1.  I'm gratified you understood this part.

2.  Of course it does and I've said as much several times in this thread.  The only way LR 'could' be any different was if Adobe tasked the GPU as it does in CS4/5/6.  I think we're fortunate to see more and more programs from imaging applications to disk utilities to virus scanners off-loading processing tasks to available GPU's since the standardization of the more common protocols.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Pete_G on May 18, 2012, 07:40:27 am


I thought this quote from Eric Chan in Charles Cramers (rather useful) article: Tonal Adjustments in the Age of Lightroom 4, on LL's front page maybe explains why LR4 is causing some performance issues.


" I recently asked Eric Chan of Adobe, one of the people behind the new Highlights, Shadows and Clarity sliders, how they achieved these remarkable results.  Eric said they had been exploring various algorithms that used edges to modify various tones, but they were incredibly slow.  Initially, these algorithms took about one minute of computation for every megapixel in a file!  Twenty megapixel file = twenty minutes.  After months of work, they had sped this up to around 8 seconds for a typical file, but that was still too slow.  After more months of work, they got it working in almost real time.  I find this new slider incredibly useful."

I think, Eric's statement and the obvious increase in sophistication of the develop tools suggest that Adobe, rather than being incompetent or lazy, are the opposite, in that they are supplying us with the newest technology they have.



Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on May 18, 2012, 08:52:34 am
on LL's front page maybe explains why LR4 is causing some performance issues.
.............................
I think, Eric's statement and the obvious increase in sophistication of the develop tools suggest that Adobe, rather than being incompetent or lazy, are the opposite, in that they are supplying us with the newest technology they have.

Nice quote, but it misses an important point;
It's not the 'process 2012' aspect itself that's the problem, demanding as it would seem, as it works fine and smoothly in ACR.
The Lightroom interface for process 2012 is the problem.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: dreed on May 18, 2012, 01:43:14 pm
No thank you.  What you're requesting is very time consuming and I have other work that pays I'd rather be doing.  Besides, I'd just get people who would pick apart anything you have to offer while at the same time demonstrating deficiencies in basic math skills, namely addition.  If you can't add 1+1+1+1 20-30 times then my doing a video isn't going to help you.  You run across this in forums and its why many choose to not share their experiences.  I can detail the benefits of my experiences and I've done so, but it's just not my job to provide the elementary education necessary to understand it.

But yet you're quite willing to engage in the very same behaviour that you don't want to have to put up with. Dare I say, pot, kettle, black?
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Phil Indeblanc on May 18, 2012, 02:03:46 pm
Maybe its because it has to do TWO VERY DIFFERENT JOBS...CATALOG AND DEVELOP

If they didn't have to share all the resources, we would all be looking at ACRAW EQUAL to LR Develop tab. On the other hand, have a nice Library/Catalog application that handles that part.

Juuuust maybe!?
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: semillerimages on May 18, 2012, 02:26:46 pm
I have a Dual Opteron system that I built back in 2006, running Windows 7 64bit, 6gigs of ram. LR4 runs plenty fast for me.  Yes, it could be faster, but I don't notice that much of a difference from LR3.
YMMV. Your mileage obviously may vary.

*steve
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: dreed on May 18, 2012, 02:33:45 pm
Please read:
http://www.computer-darkroom.com/blog/will-an-ssd-improve-adobe-lightroom-performance/

And a page from Adobe on optimizing Lightroom performance:
http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Sheldon N on May 21, 2012, 12:03:24 pm
Yes, a primary and extended monitor for a total resolution of 3840x1200 for 4,608,00 driven pixels.    The Dell U2710 is 2560x1440 for 3,686,400 driven pixels.  Pretty much a wash.

It seems like many are under the impression that unless a video card's GPU is being specifically tasked, all cards are equal, but they aren't.  All video cards render screens regardless if they're tasked or not, and the available power of your card allows you to do this rendering faster/slower based on the level of available power.  There's no doubt the real power is in the GPU tasking, but when you're rendering a lot of real estate the power of the card to render becomes significant.  You can see this even in your browser or office program, but to a much smaller degree, by how fast screens render.  Most don't notice this difference until you point it out and give them an A/B comparison, but once they see the comparison they can see the difference.  When you're filling the screen with image mapping vs. text the difference is much greater.  I wish I could explain this better.. next time I test different cards I'll do a Captivate video and share it.

I don't know if the "total real estate" calculation is the best way to look at it. After all, we know that the CPU is involved in rendering the image to be displayed in the Develop tab, and it doesn't have to render the image twice just because it's being simultaneously displayed on both screens. Rendering a larger image once is likely going to take longer than rendering a smaller image and then displaying it twice on multiple screens.

Anyhow, since I'm trying to get my computer build dialed in to my satisfaction before sitting tight and using it for the next 3-4 years, I wanted to explore this graphics card issue further. I found a good deal on an AMD Radeon HD 6950 video card, which is a huge step up in GPU performance from the AMD Firepro v4900. It will arrive later this week and I'll get a chance to try the two cards back to back. Then I'll know if the GPU really makes much difference for LR 4. It it does, then I'll have to decide if I want the better performance or if I want to be able to use the 10 bit display capabilities of the Firepro + U2711 combo in Photoshop.

Will post here once I've had a chance to try out the new card.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rand47 on May 21, 2012, 02:20:38 pm
I don't know if the "total real estate" calculation is the best way to look at it. After all, we know that the CPU is involved in rendering the image to be displayed in the Develop tab, and it doesn't have to render the image twice just because it's being simultaneously displayed on both screens. Rendering a larger image once is likely going to take longer than rendering a smaller image and then displaying it twice on multiple screens.

Anyhow, since I'm trying to get my computer build dialed in to my satisfaction before sitting tight and using it for the next 3-4 years, I wanted to explore this graphics card issue further. I found a good deal on an AMD Radeon HD 6950 video card, which is a huge step up in GPU performance from the AMD Firepro v4900. It will arrive later this week and I'll get a chance to try the two cards back to back. Then I'll know if the GPU really makes much difference for LR 4. It it does, then I'll have to decide if I want the better performance or if I want to be able to use the 10 bit display capabilities of the Firepro + U2711 combo in Photoshop.

Will post here once I've had a chance to try out the new card.

Thanks.  The weakest link in my current system is the video card.  I have not given it much weight in thinking about my LR4 peformance issue, but perhaps it is a bigger deal than I think, and an easily upgradable component.  I'll be very interested in your comparison.

Rand
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Phil Indeblanc on May 21, 2012, 09:48:09 pm
I too would be interested to know your findings. I'm sure it is more than just the GPU, the bits the memory speed, and so forth...

Saddly that new card 6950, will be using 200watts vs your 75watt FPro v4900 card. It also does 160GB a sec vs the 64GB/sec bandwidth.
So it should be no surprise, but how measurable that will be would be most interesting. time to download a desktoop stopwatch :-)
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 21, 2012, 10:12:44 pm
I don't know if the "total real estate" calculation is the best way to look at it. After all, we know that the CPU is involved in rendering the image to be displayed in the Develop tab, and it doesn't have to render the image twice just because it's being simultaneously displayed on both screens. Rendering a larger image once is likely going to take longer than rendering a smaller image and then displaying it twice on multiple screens.

Anyhow, since I'm trying to get my computer build dialed in to my satisfaction before sitting tight and using it for the next 3-4 years, I wanted to explore this graphics card issue further. I found a good deal on an AMD Radeon HD 6950 video card, which is a huge step up in GPU performance from the AMD Firepro v4900. It will arrive later this week and I'll get a chance to try the two cards back to back. Then I'll know if the GPU really makes much difference for LR 4. It it does, then I'll have to decide if I want the better performance or if I want to be able to use the 10 bit display capabilities of the Firepro + U2711 combo in Photoshop.

1.  I'm not sure either, but since it was brought up as a variable I mentioned they were approx the same.  I do think the rendering of screen 1 is separate from the rendering of screen 2 even though the same image might be displayed on both of them, often they're not.. it depends on your work flow. 

2.  I'm really curious as to your results.  "much difference" is an opinion, actual times between renderings are more factual and if those times will be worth it to you would be another opinion.  When I tested my different cards I rebooted twice between each card install.  Hope you find it worth it.

Will post here once I've had a chance to try out the new card.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Phil Indeblanc on May 21, 2012, 10:36:47 pm
looking forward.

Oddly enough my #2 screen gets priority display, then the main screen with controls a second after.

It would be a great option if you organize(Library) with both screens, which I do....When switching to Develop window, the second screen should be able to close out. Having this option would be very helpful and speed up the process in editing. And if the second is needed, you can always bring it up. For now I do it manually, and I often forget and it is irretating to deal with it for the first few then relaize, Opps, I have both screens up...hence the lag.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Sheldon N on May 25, 2012, 04:59:07 pm
So I had a chance to try out a Radeon HD 6950 graphics card with Lightroom 4.1RC. I saw no meaningful improvement in how fast I could move from image to image in the library or develop tabs, no change in how smoothly the sliders worked or how fast the screen redrew as you moved a slider. This was in comparison to a AMD Firepro v4900 video card which is a workstation class card, but only about as powerful as a Radeon HD 6670 in terms of pure GPU power. For reference sake, the difference between a 6670 and a 6950 is about 300% in GPU processing power, ie. the 6950 is 3 times faster.

I'd say that once you've selected a decent video card for Lightroom, there's no benefit to getting a super high end card. This is consistent with my observation from the GPU usage monitor - LR isn't using the GPU for rendering or calculation. The "horsepower" required to simply redraw the screen is very minimal compared to what even a mid-grade modern video card is capable of so there's no reason to assume that a faster video card is going to make it better.

Overall, LR4 runs great on my computer (i7 3770k @ 4.4Ghz, 16GB RAM, dual SSD's). Just wanted to see if I'd get any bump by improving the video card. Doesn't look like that's the case, so I'll be returning the 6950.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: leuallen on May 25, 2012, 05:10:08 pm
FWIW, a fairly high spec machine, performance was horrible with 4.2RC UNTIL I turned off 'Automatically write changes to XMP'. Then things sailed along with about the same performance as 3.6.

Larry
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 25, 2012, 10:09:56 pm
So I had a chance to try out a Radeon HD 6950 graphics card with Lightroom 4.1RC. I saw no meaningful improvement in how fast I could move from image to image in the library or develop tabs, no change in how smoothly the sliders worked or how fast the screen redrew as you moved a slider. This was in comparison to a AMD Firepro v4900 video card which is a workstation class card, but only about as powerful as a Radeon HD 6670 in terms of pure GPU power. For reference sake, the difference between a 6670 and a 6950 is about 300% in GPU processing power, ie. the 6950 is 3 times faster.

I'd say that once you've selected a decent video card for Lightroom, there's no benefit to getting a super high end card. This is consistent with my observation from the GPU usage monitor - LR isn't using the GPU for rendering or calculation. The "horsepower" required to simply redraw the screen is very minimal compared to what even a mid-grade modern video card is capable of so there's no reason to assume that a faster video card is going to make it better.

Overall, LR4 runs great on my computer (i7 3770k @ 4.4Ghz, 16GB RAM, dual SSD's). Just wanted to see if I'd get any bump by improving the video card. Doesn't look like that's the case, so I'll be returning the 6950.

1.  Curious how you're defining "no meaningful improvement?"  Any improvement to that 1.5 second time?

2.  With my testing the 5970 (dual GPU highest end card a few years back) only made a difference over a mid-range card in how fast my second screen showed the changes from moving a slider. 

3.  Out of curiosity have you tried running your CPU and RAM at default clock speeds?  It would be odd, but timing could be part of this.

It would be very interesting to put our machines side by side and see first if our observations are being described in the same way, and if so then find out why you're showing slower performance in the area discussed.  There are many variables involved so we'd have to go through them one by one.   

For the record my xmp file write is off..
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: John Cothron on May 25, 2012, 10:33:23 pm
So I had a chance to try out a Radeon HD 6950 graphics card with Lightroom 4.1RC. I saw no meaningful improvement in how fast I could move from image to image in the library or develop tabs, no change in how smoothly the sliders worked or how fast the screen redrew as you moved a slider. This was in comparison to a AMD Firepro v4900 video card which is a workstation class card, but only about as powerful as a Radeon HD 6670 in terms of pure GPU power. For reference sake, the difference between a 6670 and a 6950 is about 300% in GPU processing power, ie. the 6950 is 3 times faster.

I'd say that once you've selected a decent video card for Lightroom, there's no benefit to getting a super high end card. This is consistent with my observation from the GPU usage monitor - LR isn't using the GPU for rendering or calculation. The "horsepower" required to simply redraw the screen is very minimal compared to what even a mid-grade modern video card is capable of so there's no reason to assume that a faster video card is going to make it better.

Overall, LR4 runs great on my computer (i7 3770k @ 4.4Ghz, 16GB RAM, dual SSD's). Just wanted to see if I'd get any bump by improving the video card. Doesn't look like that's the case, so I'll be returning the 6950.

makes sense to me.  I'm running a Geforce 9800 bridged to a GTS 250 (not the latest and greatest by any means) and I'm not seeing any performance issues to complain about running two 24" wide screens. 

rest of the system: i7 930 at 4ghz, 12gb memory, no SSD's

FWIW I'm not auto writing XMP either
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: dreed on May 25, 2012, 11:40:47 pm
So I had a chance to try out a Radeon HD 6950 graphics card with Lightroom 4.1RC. I saw no meaningful improvement in how fast I could move from image to image in the library or develop tabs, no change in how smoothly the sliders worked or how fast the screen redrew as you moved a slider. This was in comparison to a AMD Firepro v4900 video card which is a workstation class card, but only about as powerful as a Radeon HD 6670 in terms of pure GPU power. For reference sake, the difference between a 6670 and a 6950 is about 300% in GPU processing power, ie. the 6950 is 3 times faster.

I'd say that once you've selected a decent video card for Lightroom, there's no benefit to getting a super high end card. This is consistent with my observation from the GPU usage monitor - LR isn't using the GPU for rendering or calculation. The "horsepower" required to simply redraw the screen is very minimal compared to what even a mid-grade modern video card is capable of so there's no reason to assume that a faster video card is going to make it better.

Great report! Makes complete sense.

FWIW, a fairly high spec machine, performance was horrible with 4.2RC UNTIL I turned off 'Automatically write changes to XMP'. Then things sailed along with about the same performance as 3.6.

Where does that setting hide? I'll have to go looking for it because that will have an impact on things.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 26, 2012, 12:05:15 am
Great report! Makes complete sense.

We need to be careful not to accept that which we want to believe without a careful and complete evaluation of the testing procedures and additional variables which could be factoring into the results.  A "great" report would have addressed as many variables as at least reasonable to try.  Or in other words, if you assume the system is operating optimally, then the report is fine.  But if you leave open the possibility it isn't.. then it leaves room for improvement.  Whether or not he wants to explore these possibilities will be key.  But it is more than possible his system's bottleneck hasn't reached the video stream yet.

From the information given we know several things:

My system which is lower powered is going from image to image faster than is his system and without issues with the sliders.

My system is using two monitors powered my DVI connections and making use of the monitors internal LUT's.  I'm not familiar if this would make a performance difference or not, but I'd investigate the possibility.

His system is over clocked.  Mine isn't.  Timing conflicts would be unusual but not unheard of.

His system is using two SSD's, both should be faster than my same brand last generation SSD but because he has the lower performing 128gb versions that might be negated.  What's more important is how these SSD's are setup.  What controller is driving them, what driver he's using, if they're setup as ACHI in the BIOS, and of course how full they are and what numbers are being achieved in the more popular utilities to confirm they're operating at their best.  And concerning setup, where the caches are, etc. 

And of course the all important setup of caches, LR, and possible conflicting CPU/RAM tasking.

It's time consuming, but if I were him I would not stop until I figured out why he's having the performance issue with his sliders.  There are too many others running lesser systems without this issue.   Once this is determined.. then we have a new bottleneck.. or set of bottlenecks.  Whether or not his system, when running optimally, could benefit from new hardware, can only be determined once at that point.  I'm more than curious.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 26, 2012, 12:07:01 am

Where does that setting hide? I'll have to go looking for it because that will have an impact on things.

Catalog settings under the Meta tab..
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: dreed on May 26, 2012, 07:30:58 am
We need to be careful not to accept that which we want to believe without a careful and complete evaluation of the testing procedures and additional variables which could be factoring into the results.  A "great" report would have addressed as many variables as at least reasonable to try.  Or in other words, if you assume the system is operating optimally, then the report is fine.  But if you leave open the possibility it isn't.. then it leaves room for improvement.  Whether or not he wants to explore these possibilities will be key.  But it is more than possible his system's bottleneck hasn't reached the video stream yet.

From the information given we know several things:

My system which is lower powered is going from image to image faster than is his system and without issues with the sliders.

My system is using two monitors powered my DVI connections and making use of the monitors internal LUT's.  I'm not familiar if this would make a performance difference or not, but I'd investigate the possibility.

His system is over clocked.  Mine isn't.  Timing conflicts would be unusual but not unheard of.

His system is using two SSD's, both should be faster than my same brand last generation SSD but because he has the lower performing 128gb versions that might be negated.  What's more important is how these SSD's are setup.  What controller is driving them, what driver he's using, if they're setup as ACHI in the BIOS, and of course how full they are and what numbers are being achieved in the more popular utilities to confirm they're operating at their best.  And concerning setup, where the caches are, etc. 

And of course the all important setup of caches, LR, and possible conflicting CPU/RAM tasking.

It's time consuming, but if I were him I would not stop until I figured out why he's having the performance issue with his sliders.  There are too many others running lesser systems without this issue.   Once this is determined.. then we have a new bottleneck.. or set of bottlenecks.  Whether or not his system, when running optimally, could benefit from new hardware, can only be determined once at that point.  I'm more than curious.

It's really not that hard to understand.

I saw no meaningful improvement in how fast I could move from image to image in the library or develop tabs, no change in how smoothly the sliders worked or how fast the screen redrew as you moved a slider.

Lets see, which of those tasks would benefit from a faster graphics card? Well, not the moving from image to image in library or develop as both of those tasks are dominated by the time it takes to load in and prepare the new image. The amount of work that needs to be done in order to prepare the data to be displayed by the graphics card far outweighs the card itself needs to do, which is quite possibly none with modern products.

As for the sliders and screen redraw, once they're "fast enough", how are you going to notice any improvement? Once the motion is smooth, any increase in the speed of the graphics card is not going to make the "smooth" motion "more smooth" in a manner that is perceptible.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 26, 2012, 03:42:38 pm
It's really not that hard to understand.

Lets see, which of those tasks would benefit from a faster graphics card? Well, not the moving from image to image in library or develop as both of those tasks are dominated by the time it takes to load in and prepare the new image. The amount of work that needs to be done in order to prepare the data to be displayed by the graphics card far outweighs the card itself needs to do, which is quite possibly none with modern products.

As for the sliders and screen redraw, once they're "fast enough", how are you going to notice any improvement? Once the motion is smooth, any increase in the speed of the graphics card is not going to make the "smooth" motion "more smooth" in a manner that is perceptible.
1.  Perhaps not for some, but I think setting up a machine to it's optimum level is something few understand the inner workings of a computer well enough to do well.  I suspect this is the cause of a large number of the performance complaints we're seeing with LR.  Image processing is a resource intensive task, it only follows the resources perform better when working together at their best.  With the great number of variations we have in hardware and even software, it becomes all the more difficult for any developer to automatically accommodate the variations.

Besides, tracking down problems like this is time consuming.  It might not be worth it to many for what they see as small differences.

2.  All you listed could be at issue.  As you mention, "once the motion is smooth."  This assumes there is enough CPU/RAM or other non-video card related resources to make this possible.. which means they'll probably need to be working at an optimum level to do so.  If the bottleneck is other than the video card then the video card won't make any difference until that bottleneck is eliminated.  You'd expect that.  In this case that the sliders are not working smoothly suggests to me it's other than a video card issue.  In my limited experience the video card affects speed and delay, not lack of smoothness described as "jerky."  And these speed/delay differences are subtle as I've always said, so in the best of circumstances the computer will need to be working it's best to see these differences.

3.  This is where his more powerful system, once the bottleneck is dealt with, 'might' make the benefits from the video card that I'm feeling not noticeable in his system. 

Still, the term "no meaningful improvement" suggests there was improvement.  Even if all the video card is doing, is rendering screens, which is probably the case in LR.. a faster card will render the screen faster.  How much faster is where what's "meaningful" for one person might not be meaningful at all for another.   I've had clients who tell me they're pleased as punch with a 1mb internet connection.. they surf the net and to them it's fast enough.  Show them a 100mb connection and you get two common responses.  a.  WOW, I never realized there could be so much difference and all the things I've always wanted to do but couldn't, are now possible (streaming video, etc, etc).  or b.  It makes no difference to me.   Which tells me their work flow and personal habits are such that 1mb maxes them out.   LR is much this way..  and to a smaller extent so is the speed at which a screen renders, though his jump in performance from a 4900 Firepro to a 6900 Radeon would be more akin to a 1mb to 5mb internet speed difference.. so even if he could see a difference it would be less likely to be meaningful.  To him.

With all that said.. I do think the issues with his sliders could be completely eliminated with his existing hardware.  Far too many people have no such issues with lesser systems including myself.  I'd find the cause of this first.. and if he hasn't returned the video card yet.. then try it.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Sheldon N on May 26, 2012, 04:00:19 pm
Steve - By no meaningful improvement, I mean no measurable difference using a stopwatch. In other words, it made no difference whatsoever. As I suspected, when a GPU monitor shows zero percent usage of the GPU, a faster graphics card isn't going to help.

I think the main issue is still screen size. In the develop tab my primary screen is driving 70% more pixels in the rendered image area, that's what accounts for any differences.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Sheldon N on May 26, 2012, 04:07:44 pm
With all that said.. I do think the issues with his sliders could be completely eliminated with his existing hardware.  Far too many people have no such issues with lesser systems including myself.  I'd find the cause of this first.. and if he hasn't returned the video card yet.. then try it.


To further clarify, I'm not having issues with the sliders. What I was describing is that if I grab the slider and yank it as fast as I can from -4 exposure compensation to +4 compensation, I can start to see individual screen redraws as the image moves from underexposed to overexposed. I'm not getting a perfect 30fps "video fade transition" as it moves through the process, but instead get a rapid flicker of redraws. I wouldn't expect any computer to be able to render the RAW data that fast at this resolution.

In normal usage, the sliders work just fine.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: John Cothron on May 26, 2012, 07:49:59 pm
To further clarify, I'm not having issues with the sliders. What I was describing is that if I grab the slider and yank it as fast as I can from -4 exposure compensation to +4 compensation, I can start to see individual screen redraws as the image moves from underexposed to overexposed. I'm not getting a perfect 30fps "video fade transition" as it moves through the process, but instead get a rapid flicker of redraws. I wouldn't expect any computer to be able to render the RAW data that fast at this resolution.

In normal usage, the sliders work just fine.

Interesting, I read your post and thought I'd try that with the exposure slider.  To give a bit of background I've never actually measured the rendering time on my system as I have no complaints with the performance.  I opened an image that I haven't previously had in the develop module, although upon import I do have a base set of adjustments applied (including sharpening and noise reduction).  Loading the image in develop took something less but very close to a full a second, with the second screen actually instantly showing the image  Once loaded I "yanked" the exposure slider from -5.0 to 5.0 several times.  Too quick to measure the time of the "yank" but probably .10 seconds less?  The effect on the screen was almost as immediate, maybe another .10 second at most.  My second screen was slightly behind the first, but the whole process with both screens is far less than a second and very smooth.

Okay, for my system, the largest time bottleneck seems to be when moving from image to image if, and more so if the image has not been previously loaded in the develop module.  It's not a large one but it's there.  So what hardware resource is being used for that particular function?  I opened the resource monitor to take a look while moving around. The only truly significant action I see happening is processor usage.  It jumps from a baseline of approximately 4% usage to a range somewhere between 45-55% usage as I move from one image to another.  You also see a bit of disk read but frankly it is just a blip and never registers as a percentage in the monitor.  Same with memory.

This leads me to believe what as has been written multiple times, that Lr is very processor intensive which makes a tremendous amount of sense to me and always has.  We know that the develop module stores a basic preview of an image in the cache after the first use. having basically nothing but the de-mosaicing performed.  All other adjustments applied to the image have to be rendered each time the image is accessed.  That takes processing power.  The image appears on screen instantly, but the "loading" message hangs around till the processor has completed this rendering task.

For me personally, it would appear that the only way I would see faster performance is by increasing processor performance.  If I did so, I might eventually see a bottle-neck elsewhere but from the basic monitoring I've done thus far I have a pretty big window before that happens.


What about the people that are having significant performance issues now?  Especially those that are reportedly running more powerful processors than mine? (i7-930 overclocked to 4ghz).  Most of the complaints I've read have been about rendering time and/or smooth operation of adjustment sliders.  For the most part the complaints are from those that were running Lr3 just fine.  We know there were significant changes to the process versions, some of those very complicated, between the versions of Lr.  If we believe these differences and issues to be processor path related then perhaps processor/memory transfer speed or memory speed itself comes into play? Although I haven't done the math that seems unlikely to me but who knows.  FWIW I'm running 12gb DDR3 1300mhz memory overclocked to ~1550 mhz.

Since my disk system is all based on 7200 rpm drives I'm having a hard time thinking that these issues have anything to do with disk access.  I'm set up with the operating system (Win 7 64), Lr software, the catalog, as well as the previews on one disk.  The Lr Raw Cache is on another single disk.  The images themselves are on a 4 disk array in Raid 10.

**I see the same basic performance whether I'm working on 12mp 5D files, 21mp 5DII files, or scanned Tiffs at over 200mb in size.  Someone pointed out to me that my huge film scans aren't the same thing as a RAW file of the same size primarily due to the de-mosaicing needed with the digital capture.  I understand how that can make a difference on the initial rendering in develop but once the cache preview is generated (which includes de-mosaicing for the digital file) the differences between the two should be minimal I would think.  All other Lr adjustments have to be performed each time for each type of image to my knowledge.


Also, I ran the above tests on my system as I normally use it, meaning I have a browser open with 7 or so tabs, TOPO software, Outlook, Excel, and Quicken financial software running (but idle) at the same time. 

 
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: dreed on May 27, 2012, 01:04:28 pm
...
For me personally, it would appear that the only way I would see faster performance is by increasing processor performance.  If I did so, I might eventually see a bottle-neck elsewhere but from the basic monitoring I've done thus far I have a pretty big window before that happens.
...
FWIW I'm running 12gb DDR3 1300mhz memory overclocked to ~1550 mhz.

To get faster you'll probably need to wait until DDR4 systems are available.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: dreed on May 27, 2012, 01:38:44 pm
1.  Perhaps not for some, but I think setting up a machine to it's optimum level is something few understand the inner workings of a computer well enough to do well.  I suspect this is the cause of a large number of the performance complaints we're seeing with LR.

If that is the case then Adobe are at fault for not delivering a package that works as well as expected for people using "out of the box" computers from Dell, HP, Apple, etc. Similarly, fault would lay with hardware manufacturers for not delivering systems optimally tuned. If hardware vendors delivered systems to the public in such a poorly configured state then you can be sure that websites would review them badly and slowly but surely, reputation and sales would suffer.

Whilst you may enjoy in tweaking and measuring the performance of everything on your system, the average person isn't going to - and nor should they need to. And nor should they need to engage someone to help them tune their system - if they want to fine, but it shouldn't be necessary as it should just work out of the box and work well.

Thus I would hope that the testing Adobe does uses "off the shelf" computers from various companies and evaluates the performance of their applications in that way, rather than using custom builds that do not reflect what the average consumer uses.

Now it may be that in their testing, Adobe have made various assumptions in their application environment that actually match up very well with what people here are doing or that some settings (such as the automatic update of XMP files) are set the wrong way. I don't know, so I'm just guessing. Similarly, there may be changes in the application that for one reason or another slow it down in ways that they didn't expect.

But what is very clear from various messages in this thread is that Adobe have some homework to do because they've created performance issues that faster hardware is only going to hide for a short period of time.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: John R Smith on May 27, 2012, 04:16:21 pm

There do seem to be a lot of short memories around here. LR 3.0 was an absolute dog when it was first released. It was slow, it crashed, it did all sorts of horrible things on my very basic laptop Win 7 PC. Each dot release got a bit better, and now vers 3.6 is running on the same machine as sweet as a nut with my big 3FR Hass files. The same thing will happen with LR 4 in due course, mark my words. Don't sweat it upgrading anything, just hang on for 4.5  ;)

John
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Keith Reeder on May 27, 2012, 05:06:00 pm
I was thinking the same thing, John - Groundhog Day.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Preeb on May 28, 2012, 12:14:17 am
As a counterpoint to so many here, LR4 (RC4.1 - I heard some things I didn't like about RC2, so I didn't update) has been quite good since I installed the first release candidate.  I even tried that exposure slider trick and the changes were immediate.  It does take about 3 seconds for a fresh .CR2 file to open in the Develop module, but for me that isn't an issue.  I did have some trouble with the Detail sliders until I learned the trick of closing the filmstrip while using them.  Now the response there is quick too.  I am quite happy with the way LR 4.1 runs on this machine.

Specs:

Sony 17" laptop with 22" Samsung LED external monitor connected by HDMI.
i7 Quad Core Q740 @1.73ghz
Win 7 64 bit
6gb RAM
1gb nVidia GT425M
640gb HDD with 400gb free plus a 2tb external

Nothing special, no $4000 hot rod.  Just a decent laptop with enough cajones to get the editing that I need done.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on May 29, 2012, 02:30:53 am
LR 3.0 was an absolute dog when it was first released.
Not here. It ran smoothly straight from release.
I never had any serious problems with previous versions since beta 1.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: John R Smith on May 29, 2012, 03:34:51 am
Not here. It ran smoothly straight from release.
I never had any serious problems with previous versions since beta 1.

You must be about the only one, then. Note that you can download every version of LR 3x from the Adobe site, except 3.0.

John
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Keith Reeder on May 29, 2012, 03:39:34 am
You must be about the only one, then. Note

No - I've had no speed/performance problems with Lr 3 or with Lr 4.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: John R Smith on May 29, 2012, 07:07:41 am
Well, good for you guys then. It's a pity we can't magically go back to the pages of Adobe Forums Lightroom at the time LR 3.0 was released. There were a whole load of pretty traumatised users on there who had been happily using 2.6 and 2.7 and who could barely use their shiny new upgrade.

The point I was trying to make, was that when I upgraded to LR 3.0 from 2.7 on my quite basic Win 7 laptop, I had terrible trouble. It crashed at unpredictable times. If I used perspective correction I could barely do anything to the file afterwards, and it was generally as slow as paint drying. Local edits with the brush were virtually unuseable. This was with my quite big 39 MP Hasselblad 3FR RAW files.

I did absolutely nothing to upgrade my PC or alter the cache sizes or anything else whatsoever. On the same laptop, with the same files, by the 3.5 release everything was fine. Smooth, quick, no crashes, perspective correction no problem. Now it seems to me somebody must have altered something, and it was most likely the clever folks at Adobe. Hang in there, ye of little faith, and wait for 4.5  ;)

John
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: john beardsworth on May 29, 2012, 07:09:54 am
I suspect you're letting your personal experience colour your memory. More people have more problems with 4.0 - there was no need to rush out a 3.1.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Alan Goldhammer on May 29, 2012, 01:43:17 pm
I'm finally putting LR4 through its paces having come back from two weeks in Italy with about 800 images.  The only thing that I've found a little slower is the Library module as I go through and assign stars/flags to images for further work but it's only a tad bit slower.  All other functions seem to be fine.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: John R Smith on May 29, 2012, 02:22:56 pm
I suspect you're letting your personal experience colour your memory. More people have more problems with 4.0 - there was no need to rush out a 3.1.

Well, I don't want to get into a silly argument over this. Of course my comments were based on my personal experience, that's the only one I can give you a first-hand account of. But there were a lot of other folks in the same boat - allow me to cite the thread "Why is Lightroom 3 So Slow?" on the Adobe forum, which got 124,595 views and 1,198 replies before being locked.

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/656635 (http://forums.adobe.com/thread/656635)

There never was an LR 3.1, it went straight to 3.2. There was also a horrible bug in release 3.4, so there was a hurried issue of 3.4.1 which sorted things out. By 3.5 the software actually started to work rather well. If LR 3.0 was so wonderful, why can't you download it from the Adobe site?

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=113&platform=Windows (http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=113&platform=Windows)

John
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: john beardsworth on May 29, 2012, 02:48:37 pm
There wasn't a 3.1 because they wanted to sync the numbering scheme with Camera Raw, and 3.2 wasn't rushed out - it came out on the normal schedule.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: John R Smith on May 29, 2012, 03:23:30 pm
There wasn't a 3.1 because they wanted to sync the numbering scheme with Camera Raw, and 3.2 wasn't rushed out - it came out on the normal schedule.

With all due respect, John, I didn't say anything about 3.2 being rushed out. And I am aware of why it was 3.2 rather than 3.1, there's nothing sinister there. In fact, rather than a rush, it seemed an age to me waiting for an upgrade to 3.0. I was having so much pain that I thought seriously about dumping 3.0 and going back to 2.7.

But like I said, by 3.4.1 and on to 3.5 things were running really well. As ever, your mileage may vary.

John
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: john beardsworth on May 29, 2012, 03:54:54 pm
As I said, your bad experience must be colouring your impression of 3.0's performance - that's why I pointed to the significance of 4.1 being rushed out and there not being any need to do so last time round.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Isaac on May 29, 2012, 10:50:02 pm
I understand that I don't have a "flag ship" machine.  I keep my "working" catalog small usually less than 500 images.  I also don't expect it to POP.  I think i have realistic expectations I had hoped that someone might have found a issue I could deal with.

Perhaps someone already mentioned ReadyBoost (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Using-memory-in-your-storage-device-to-speed-up-your-computer), if not ...

8-16GB USB 2.0 flash memory is now very cheap, and can be used as fast cache for disk access -- which, depending on the particulars of your hard-drive (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff356869.aspx), has the potential to speed up most programs you use.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on May 30, 2012, 03:44:04 pm
so 4.1 looks to have resolved most of 4's problems from what I've seen so far.

All this talk of esoteric system optimisation is really unnecessary, the real problem was down to the coding.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 31, 2012, 02:58:33 am
Steve - By no meaningful improvement, I mean no measurable difference using a stopwatch. In other words, it made no difference whatsoever. As I suspected, when a GPU monitor shows zero percent usage of the GPU, a faster graphics card isn't going to help.

I think the main issue is still screen size.
In the develop tab my primary screen is driving 70% more pixels in the rendered image area, that's what accounts for any differences.

1.  Thanks for the clarification.  Out of curiosity, as you change from screen to screen in any program, just changing screens, do you see "any" difference in how fast the screens render with different cards?  I don't think this difference will be great enough for you to manually manipulate a stop watch, but you should be able to see it with your eyes.  This is the difference you normally get with screen rendering from a faster video card which isn't tasking the GPU.   It will be there, but some don't notice it until they look for it.

2.  It is certainly possible the primary screen renders differently than the secondary screen, for certain it renders after the secondary screen.  We can watch that happen with our eyes.  For this particular area of LR we're discussing, you believe the time it takes for the "loading..." to complete, is mostly a function of the CPU?  I've wanted a PA271w.. tempted to see this testing thing through that far..
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 31, 2012, 03:09:37 am
Interesting, I read your post and thought I'd try that with the exposure slider.  To give a bit of background I've never actually measured the rendering time on my system as I have no complaints with the performance.  I opened an image that I haven't previously had in the develop module, although upon import I do have a base set of adjustments applied (including sharpening and noise reduction).  Loading the image in develop took something less but very close to a full a second, with the second screen actually instantly showing the image  Once loaded I "yanked" the exposure slider from -5.0 to 5.0 several times.  Too quick to measure the time of the "yank" but probably .10 seconds less?  The effect on the screen was almost as immediate, maybe another .10 second at most.  My second screen was slightly behind the first, but the whole process with both screens is far less than a second and very smooth.

Okay, for my system, the largest time bottleneck seems to be when moving from image to image if, and more so if the image has not been previously loaded in the develop module.  It's not a large one but it's there.  So what hardware resource is being used for that particular function?  I opened the resource monitor to take a look while moving around. The only truly significant action I see happening is processor usage.  It jumps from a baseline of approximately 4% usage to a range somewhere between 45-55% usage as I move from one image to another.  You also see a bit of disk read but frankly it is just a blip and never registers as a percentage in the monitor.  Same with memory.

This leads me to believe what as has been written multiple times, that Lr is very processor intensive which makes a tremendous amount of sense to me and always has.  We know that the develop module stores a basic preview of an image in the cache after the first use. having basically nothing but the de-mosaicing performed.  All other adjustments applied to the image have to be rendered each time the image is accessed.  That takes processing power.  The image appears on screen instantly, but the "loading" message hangs around till the processor has completed this rendering task.

For me personally, it would appear that the only way I would see faster performance is by increasing processor performance.  If I did so, I might eventually see a bottle-neck elsewhere but from the basic monitoring I've done thus far I have a pretty big window before that happens.


What about the people that are having significant performance issues now?  Especially those that are reportedly running more powerful processors than mine? (i7-930 overclocked to 4ghz).  Most of the complaints I've read have been about rendering time and/or smooth operation of adjustment sliders.  For the most part the complaints are from those that were running Lr3 just fine.  We know there were significant changes to the process versions, some of those very complicated, between the versions of Lr.  If we believe these differences and issues to be processor path related then perhaps processor/memory transfer speed or memory speed itself comes into play? Although I haven't done the math that seems unlikely to me but who knows.  FWIW I'm running 12gb DDR3 1300mhz memory overclocked to ~1550 mhz.

Since my disk system is all based on 7200 rpm drives I'm having a hard time thinking that these issues have anything to do with disk access.  I'm set up with the operating system (Win 7 64), Lr software, the catalog, as well as the previews on one disk.  The Lr Raw Cache is on another single disk.  The images themselves are on a 4 disk array in Raid 10.

**I see the same basic performance whether I'm working on 12mp 5D files, 21mp 5DII files, or scanned Tiffs at over 200mb in size.  Someone pointed out to me that my huge film scans aren't the same thing as a RAW file of the same size primarily due to the de-mosaicing needed with the digital capture.  I understand how that can make a difference on the initial rendering in develop but once the cache preview is generated (which includes de-mosaicing for the digital file) the differences between the two should be minimal I would think.  All other Lr adjustments have to be performed each time for each type of image to my knowledge.


Also, I ran the above tests on my system as I normally use it, meaning I have a browser open with 7 or so tabs, TOPO software, Outlook, Excel, and Quicken financial software running (but idle) at the same time. 

 

Nice post, well articulated.

1.  Your system is setup mostly like mine and seems to behave the same as well.

2.  Yes, it is CPU intensive and this blame can only be laid on Adobes doorstep.  Most imaging professionals and even amateurs have more powerful GPU's and SSD's in their systems, and if they didn't they would if it significantly helped performance.  It's past time Adobe starts supporting modern computers and stops depending mostly on CPU performance.

3.  No, not the "only" way, but the primary way.  Small bits of performance increases can be realized through the use of more powerful GPU's and SSD's, but only in very specific points in the workflow.  If you have a workflow that hits those points a lot it 'might' pay to increase your resources in these areas.

4.  I'd agree, the more common issues we hear complaints on would not benefit (much) from faster I/O times.  However, there are areas in the workflow where it would.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 31, 2012, 03:27:57 am
If that is the case then Adobe are at fault for not delivering a package that works as well as expected for people using "out of the box" computers from Dell, HP, Apple, etc. Similarly, fault would lay with hardware manufacturers for not delivering systems optimally tuned. If hardware vendors delivered systems to the public in such a poorly configured state then you can be sure that websites would review them badly and slowly but surely, reputation and sales would suffer.

Whilst you may enjoy in tweaking and measuring the performance of everything on your system, the average person isn't going to - and nor should they need to. And nor should they need to engage someone to help them tune their system - if they want to fine, but it shouldn't be necessary as it should just work out of the box and work well.

Thus I would hope that the testing Adobe does uses "off the shelf" computers from various companies and evaluates the performance of their applications in that way, rather than using custom builds that do not reflect what the average consumer uses.

Now it may be that in their testing, Adobe have made various assumptions in their application environment that actually match up very well with what people here are doing or that some settings (such as the automatic update of XMP files) are set the wrong way. I don't know, so I'm just guessing. Similarly, there may be changes in the application that for one reason or another slow it down in ways that they didn't expect.

But what is very clear from various messages in this thread is that Adobe have some homework to do because they've created performance issues that faster hardware is only going to hide for a short period of time.

1.  Yes and no.  Obviously they can always do better, and it appears in this case particularly.  But in general, and I've used this analogy before, image processing is a very hardware intensive task.  And so is gaming, video editing, and CAD/CAM, but these three areas have long benefited from custom builds and builders with specialized knowledge.  Where before, most image editors processed one task on one image at a time, LR is now doing much more.  From this perspective it doesn't surprise me at all that image editing at the bleeding edge now needs like attention and expertise.

2.  Again, I'll invoke the gaming analogy.  With games you don't "need" a powerful system, you don't need to hire a builder, etc, etc.. but we've long accepted that performance is directly linked to your system.  In Lightroom image editing as now reached this stage.  Where we're being let down from Adobe, is they haven't written the code/processes to take advantage of the modern GPU, SSD's, RAM, etc, nearly as much as they could have.  The should.  And when they do they'll probably make a huge deal of it and double the price..

3.  I think we would benefit either way.  I'd like to see them test/benchmark using "levels" of systems.  Say, an 3770, 16gb of 2133, 300mbps R/W SSD for system, 100mbps R/W data, hybrid catalog, 6800/560 series GPU at one level, a dual core i5/4gb laptop on another, and so on.. I'm sure we could easily agree on the necessary levels and where to place them.  Then someone would know what to expect for a given "class" of machine vs. a specific model.   And I'd bet the farm we'd have scores of independent bloggers, builders, etc.. verifying their benchmarks one way or the other and/or coming up with their version of upgrade and what difference it would make.


We need to grow used to the fact that image editing requires considerable hardware, and that increased performance is directly tied to more powerful hardware.   Image files are getting bigger, more of us are taking on video, and in general improved software in the sense that we're offered functions not previously offered.. ALL takes more hardware.  More, it requires more hardware working together which makes the "build" and "tweak" all that much more vital.

It's been an interesting educational thread..
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on May 31, 2012, 03:29:31 am
There do seem to be a lot of short memories around here. LR 3.0 was an absolute dog when it was first released. It was slow, it crashed, it did all sorts of horrible things on my very basic laptop Win 7 PC. Each dot release got a bit better, and now vers 3.6 is running on the same machine as sweet as a nut with my big 3FR Hass files. The same thing will happen with LR 4 in due course, mark my words. Don't sweat it upgrading anything, just hang on for 4.5  ;)

John
+1... I remember it well.  And with more people than ever using, supporting, and writing about LR..  it 'seems' bigger of a problem.  I'm not convinced it is.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: dreed on May 31, 2012, 07:30:53 am
1.  Yes and no.  Obviously they can always do better, and it appears in this case particularly.  But in general, and I've used this analogy before, image processing is a very hardware intensive task.  And so is gaming, video editing, and CAD/CAM, but these three areas have long benefited from custom builds and builders with specialized knowledge.

I really don't know why you keep flogging this "specialized knowledge." Every teenage kid that's into gaming knows what's important and what's required to build a good gaming system. For games and video, it is all about the video card that you can and do put in the system. To a certain extent, CAD/CAM is as well but not as much as it used to be.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: D Fosse on May 31, 2012, 10:10:16 am
Quote
From this perspective it doesn't surprise me at all that image editing at the bleeding edge now needs like attention and expertise

This is just nonsense. Software that doesn't work properly on an off-the-shelf system is badly written, because that's what 95% of the customers will run it on, no matter what people with "specialized knowledge" would like to think.

Take Photoshop as an example. It's also hardware-intensive (although in different ways than Lr), and clearly benefits from a high-performance system. But it basically works and is perfectly snappy on any cheap laptop you pick up at your local dealer.

There's a difference between basic functionality and optimized performance. What people have been complaining about in Lightroom is the "basic functionality" part.

Anyway, let's see what 4.1 has to offer. So far it looks good here.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: CatOne on May 31, 2012, 09:13:30 pm

Take Photoshop as an example. It's also hardware-intensive (although in different ways than Lr), and clearly benefits from a high-performance system. But it basically works and is perfectly snappy on any cheap laptop you pick up at your local dealer.


Note thought that comparing Lightroom and Photoshop performance isn't fair.  They are doing totally different things.

Parametric editors like Lightroom (or Aperture) start with the rendering of the original RAW file, and then apply ALL the effects dynamically over the image.  This is a TREMENDOUS amount of math and work once you add a number of complicated adjustments to the image.  Photoshop actually modifies the pixels, so it's just displaying the image.  It is WAY less work for the computer to do.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Tony Jay on May 31, 2012, 09:15:06 pm
Interesting point!

Regards

Tony Jay
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: dreed on May 31, 2012, 11:06:01 pm
...
2.  Yes, it is CPU intensive and this blame can only be laid on Adobes doorstep.  Most imaging professionals and even amateurs have more powerful GPU's and SSD's in their systems, and if they didn't they would if it significantly helped performance.  It's past time Adobe starts supporting modern computers and stops depending mostly on CPU performance.
...

I'm not entirely sure that this is possible.

For example. unless you know the specifics of how Lightroom demosaics an image, I can't see how you can make the above claim. Remember, that it is in the "Loading..." stage of develop that most people see noticeable delay and that this therefore is where performance needs to be improved. At least in my doodles, there is no way that I can see the GPU being able to assist Lightroom in the demosaic process. If you have detailed knowledge of the demosaic algorithm used and how that can be assisted by the GPU, I'd be very interested to see it.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Schewe on May 31, 2012, 11:29:48 pm
Where we're being let down from Adobe, is they haven't written the code/processes to take advantage of the modern GPU, SSD's, RAM, etc, nearly as much as they could have.  The should.  And when they do they'll probably make a huge deal of it and double the price..

You might wanna step away from this attitude...do you know Cuda? Are you aware of the problems of doing GPU for ANYTHING not related to 3d polygons and gamer's systems?

GPU acceleration for graphic processing is one of the biggest pieces of bullshyte in the computing industry...yes, if you are willing to turn yourself inside out and write for a constantly changing and non-standard OpenGL spec, you might (just might) garner some saved cpu clicks on some things but not everything. Photoshop tried to do GPU with CS4...it sucked rocks. Now by CS6, it's "ok"...but trying to port raw processing algorithms in the ACR/LR pipeline to GPU ain't a real great story. Eric Chan used to work for a graphics card company before he came to Adobe. He knows this crap inside/out...trying to speed up raw processing by use of GPU is very, VERY difficult because of the way GPU expects data. It all has to fit in the GPU correctly which means you have to taylor EVERYTHING to sending the data in the way the GPU wants it and screw you if you don't have a qualifying vid card with the correct (not always the most recent) drivers...

Bitch all you want about LR speed and ram/CPU usages, but leave GPU out of the equation until graphic card venders get their shyte together cross-platform–cause Adobe will only ever support platform agnostic solutions...Windows only shit need not apply.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: dreed on May 31, 2012, 11:37:14 pm
You might wanna step away from this attitude...do you know Cuda? Are you aware of the problems of doing GPU for ANYTHING not related to 3d polygons and gamer's systems?

GPU acceleration for graphic processing is one of the biggest pieces of bullshyte in the computing industry...yes, if you are willing to turn yourself inside out and write for a constantly changing and non-standard OpenGL spec, you might (just might) garner some saved cpu clicks on some things but not everything. Photoshop tried to do GPU with CS4...it sucked rocks. Now by CS6, it's "ok"...but trying to port raw processing algorithms in the ACR/LR pipeline to GPU ain't a real great story. Eric Chan used to work for a graphics card company before he came to Adobe. He knows this crap inside/out...trying to speed up raw processing by use of GPU is very, VERY difficult because of the way GPU expects data. It all has to fit in the GPU correctly which means you have to taylor EVERYTHING to sending the data in the way the GPU wants it and screw you if you don't have a qualifying vid card with the correct (not always the most recent) drivers...

Bitch all you want about LR speed and ram/CPU usages, but leave GPU out of the equation until graphic card venders get their shyte together cross-platform–cause Adobe will only every support platform agnostic solutions...Windows only shit need not apply.

I wasn't going to say what you've said above but yes, you're completely right.

I think that people are being misled into believing that GPUs are more capable than they really are by the various press articles people read where some researcher is using the GPU to do some massive calculation and as a result, they can do it faster than if they were just using the CPU. What people don't realise is that there are limitations to this and that the data has to be presented in a very specific manner in order to be worked on by the GPU. When the data set is large enough, the expense of data massaging both before and after is out weighed by the savings in compute time through using the GPU.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on June 01, 2012, 01:08:36 am
Remember, that it is in the "Loading..." stage of develop that most people see noticeable delay and that this therefore is where performance needs to be improved.
Maybe you should re-read the first post in this thread.
It's not waiting for files to be loaded that caused 4.0 to be unusably slow, but the response of the controls in the develop module. Two completely different issues.
Waiting for a file to load before it can be worked on is mildly annoying, waiting many seconds for a control slider's effect to be seen on screen was just unacceptable.

The bottom line has been it's Adobe's poor original coding in 4.0 that was the problem as 4.1 is very much better with respect to this and adds extra features to the develop module set as well.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: hjulenissen on June 01, 2012, 04:41:15 am
I think that people are being misled into believing that GPUs are more capable than they really are by the various press articles people read where some researcher is using the GPU to do some massive calculation and as a result, they can do it faster than if they were just using the CPU. What people don't realise is that there are limitations to this and that the data has to be presented in a very specific manner in order to be worked on by the GPU. When the data set is large enough, the expense of data massaging both before and after is out weighed by the savings in compute time through using the GPU.
Nvidia and AMD/ATI wants to sell their products, just like everyone else.

For some, very specific tasks, GPU compute show tremendous speedup. Typically tasks that can be split into a large number of threads with little inter-dependency in data-sets and code-flow, and where each thread consists of floating-point number-crunching and little else (no "if-tests", few integer operations etc). Stuff like geological processing, certain economic calculations etc seems to commonly fit well.

There are platform-agnostic GPU APIs, notably OpenCL. It seems that you still have to invest substantial amounts of time in optimizing the code for different platforms compared to straight cpu code. How much could the speedup gain be for the relevant bottle-necks if Adobe went this route? How much would the GPU capabilities limit the development of new algorithms? How difficult is it to find developers that can do both advanced image demosaicing development _and_ advanced GPU implementation at the same time? I guess only Adobe can guess at that.

-h
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: stevenskl on June 01, 2012, 12:22:57 pm
I wouldn`t call GPU in PS CS6 "OK". IMO it rocks in the areas where it is implemented. Screenredraw is much faster and things like liquify or the new blur filters are way faster than running them on the CPU only.
I don`t know, wether it`s hard to program. I only know that Capture One uses OpenCl and is running much smoother than without it or than Lightroom.
I guess we will see much higher resolution monitors, much higher resolution cameras and more complicated RAW processing algorithms when LR5 comes out. Will CPUs be so much faster then? I doubt it. Maybe Eric can give us his point of view about the GPU thing.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: nemophoto on June 01, 2012, 02:09:04 pm
LR 4.1's speed is making me want to blow my brains out! Not only is the program slow to respond and show changes when using the brush tool (now count slowly - 1, 2, 3, 4...), but the interface is a slug. I move a slider and it's the same 3-5 second count -- and usually I've moved too much. I've taken to entering values manually -- faster and more precise. I love the quality of output (I also own DxO 7.5 and Capture One 6, but I keep going back to LR), but this makes me think about trying out Corel's version of Bibble (which I also own..). There are times I feel I waste far too much time waiting for the program to catch up with any move I make. My system isn't slow: AMD Phenom II x6 1100T (six core obviosuly), 16GB of RAM, an SSD for scratch disk and cache, a fast video card, 2 - 24" NEC Monitors, tons of fast external drives. If my system, which is no slug by the minimum standards (and even by more advanced), they've got some major programming issue. I just pray PS CS6 doesn't have the same snail's pace.

As for comments regarding the use of the GPU/OpenGL, I too feel it's overrated. I have OnOne's Perfect Suite. Most of the plugins, while good, are slugs because they use the OpenGL. I use to use Genuine Fractals. I've basically stopped because of the speed issue of redraw. I now use Alien Skin's Blowup 3. Faster previews and actually better enlargements.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Simon Garrett on June 02, 2012, 05:03:30 pm
LR4.1 speed perhaps depends on the installation. 

On my machine (i7-930, 12G RAM, W7-64-bit) LR4.1 is about the same speed as LR3.6.  Both are still on my machine, so I've done a few simple comparisons.  LR4.0 was noticeably slower at some functions, but LR4.1 is back to LR3.6 speed. 
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: nemophoto on June 05, 2012, 12:55:30 pm
LR4.1 speed perhaps depends on the installation. 

... but LR4.1 is back to LR3.6 speed. 

That's certainly not my experience. When I use the healing tool, I count 1,2,3,4 and then maybe something happens. It's even worse when I try to decide for the program where I want to sample. Then add about another 5-10 seconds. Trying to move the sliders is a real effort in futility. Better to just enter numbers. To be honest, Lightroom has not been terribly speedy since version 2, and I had a lesser computer back then.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Preeb on June 05, 2012, 02:31:35 pm
That's certainly not my experience. When I use the healing tool, I count 1,2,3,4 and then maybe something happens. It's even worse when I try to decide for the program where I want to sample. Then add about another 5-10 seconds. Trying to move the sliders is a real effort in futility. Better to just enter numbers. To be honest, Lightroom has not been terribly speedy since version 2, and I had a lesser computer back then.

You have to have something going on to make it that unresponsive.  I have half the machine you have (and on a laptop to boot) and yet I get instant response with 4.1. Mine is an i7 Quad Core with 6gb ram and 1gb video ram.  All of the sliders work without hesitation.  Loading and zooming raw files takes the most time of anything I do.   If yours doesn't run it properly, then there has to be more to it than just the software. 
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: john beardsworth on June 05, 2012, 02:40:26 pm
That's certainly not my experience. When I use the healing tool, I count 1,2,3,4 and then maybe something happens. It's even worse when I try to decide for the program where I want to sample. Then add about another 5-10 seconds. Trying to move the sliders is a real effort in futility. Better to just enter numbers. To be honest, Lightroom has not been terribly speedy since version 2, and I had a lesser computer back then.
See if there's any difference if you set Clarity to 0.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: nemophoto on June 05, 2012, 04:51:49 pm
No real speed difference with Clarity set to zero. Good suggestion, though I'm not sure why that would effect things. I worked on an image and did not set clarity, but found there was no obvious speed differential.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: john beardsworth on June 05, 2012, 06:11:26 pm
In a perfect world it shouldn't affect speed, but it's something I've heard.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: budjames on June 09, 2012, 08:52:16 pm
LR4 runs great on my MacBook Air I7 with only 4gb of ram.

Cheers.
Bud
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Ovid on June 12, 2012, 05:43:51 am
I also had speed/response problems with LR4 in spite of ok spec on my pc.
I solved the problem by created a new catalog, and imported my LR3 image archive over again into this new catalog, rendered new prewiews and all.....
This took care of all my problems, and my Lightroom are now faster and more responsive then ever....... ;D

Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: dreed on June 12, 2012, 08:06:39 am
I also had speed/response problems with LR4 in spite of ok spec on my pc.
I solved the problem by created a new catalog, and imported my LR3 image archive over again into this new catalog, rendered new prewiews and all.....
This took care of all my problems, and my Lightroom are now faster and more responsive then ever....... ;D

I wonder if this speed improvement can be achieved in other ways, for example -
- delete all of your previews and force them to be rebuilt
- optimize the catalog

It isn't clear what "optimize the catalog" does, but if it is anything like traditional database operations that do "self optimisation" then it isn't really going all the way - a full text dump of the catalog contents and then restore into a clean catalog is really the best way to optimise the catalog and get rid of all the dead wood.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: nemophoto on June 12, 2012, 12:15:32 pm
I also had speed/response problems with LR4 in spite of ok spec on my pc.
I solved the problem by created a new catalog, and imported my LR3 image archive over again into this new catalog, rendered new prewiews and all.....
This took care of all my problems, and my Lightroom are now faster and more responsive then ever....... ;D



With the exception of my portfolio catalog and fine art catalog, EVERY catalog is a new catalog, and LR 4.1 is still a dog when it comes to speed of doing anything ...woof, woof. :)

Nemo
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: john beardsworth on June 12, 2012, 02:54:00 pm
It isn't clear what "optimize the catalog" does.
Mainly the SQL Vacuum command and a few integrity checks.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: jdyrek on October 09, 2012, 07:46:51 pm
I too have been experiencing LR 4 slow performance, particularly in the Develop mode.  And it was not helped by upgrading to 4.2.  I have found something that worked for me, I now have no lag time when I move the sliders in Develop mode.

And this fix is a variation on different discussions and suggestions I had found on Adobe forums and SportsShooter.com.  The problem is with the preference files, LR was, apparently, being slowed by preference files left over from earlier versions.  I use a Mac, not a clue how this would be implemented on a Windows OS. 

I went to (User Name)/Library/Preferences  and located the files:  com.adobe.lightroomX.plist.  I had one of these files for every version of LR even though I no longer had the oldeer applications installed.  I deleted the "com" and replaced it with "old" so I could find it again. I did nothing to the file for the current version of LR.

And that was all there was to it, now LR 4.2 runs in real time.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: simonsaith on October 10, 2012, 12:30:17 pm
Hi jdyrek,

We'd like to investigate this a bit further. Could you send me all versions of your Lighroom pref files, including the 4.2 one that you are currently using? Please send them privately to sichen at adobe dot com. Also, when you get your speed improvement, did you also renamed your old LR 4.2 pref file to the "old" that you start with (That is you started LR 4.2 with no pref)? We want to take a look at all versions of your pref file. Thanks!

Simon
Adobe
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on October 10, 2012, 12:57:58 pm
not a clue how this would be implemented on a Windows OS.
The preference files are easy enough to find and rename.
eg Win 7 <root>/users/<user name>/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/Lightroom/Preferences/
Deleting old preference files makes no difference here.

LR4 wasn't good, 4.1 was a bit better, 4.2 seems very slightly better, but it's still painfully unreactive at times.

Now using an i7 @3.5/3.9ghz, 32gb ram, SATA III SSDs for OS & scratch disks onto a GTX470 powered 3840x1440 desktop. It really ought to fly with that hardware.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: hugowolf on October 10, 2012, 01:09:45 pm
One of the things that seems to slow my development in Lightroom is doing lens corrections first: rotate, vertical and horizontal perspective, barrel and pincushioning. These along with vignetting and cropping would seem to be logical first steps in any workflow, but maybe there is a reason why they are so low down in the development panel.

Brian A
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: One Frame at a Time on October 10, 2012, 01:14:01 pm
The preference files are easy enough to find and rename.
eg Win 7 <root>/users/<user name>/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/Lightroom/Preferences/
Deleting old preference files makes no difference here.

LR4 wasn't good, 4.1 was a bit better, 4.2 seems very slightly better, but it's still painfully unreactive at times.

Now using an i7 @3.5/3.9ghz, 32gb ram, SATA III SSDs for OS & scratch disks onto a GTX470 powered 3840x1440 desktop. It really ought to fly with that hardware.

The files in my Win 7 folder are ".agprefs", not ".plist" - is this the mac extension of the same file or maybe plist is in a different folder (looked briefly but could not find it)?
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on October 10, 2012, 02:16:38 pm
The files in my Win 7 folder are ".agprefs", not ".plist" - is this the mac extension of the same file or maybe plist is in a different folder (looked briefly but could not find it)?
I believe the .agprefs is the correct file for Lightroom preferences on Windows systems.
The file name quoted by the OP is illegal in Win systems, too many periods. As you say .plist isn't found in any searches, so I guess the preferences are differently named in Mac systems.

Hopefully someone knowledgeable about both systems can give confirmation of that assumption ?
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: john beardsworth on October 10, 2012, 02:32:42 pm
agprefs is correct for Windows, plist for Mac.

There's not much of a track record of prefs causing problems with LR on Windows, while deleting an app's preference file is often a cure-all on Mac.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: One Frame at a Time on October 10, 2012, 02:47:47 pm
I can also make the claim that LR is slow to update changes made in Develop. Would be great if we could get this squared away. I'm running a 1st gen i7 mobile processor (Q740) with 8 gigs of ram.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on October 10, 2012, 03:01:17 pm
I can also make the claim that LR is slow to update changes made in Develop.
This is where the problems with responsiveness mainly show themselves and people have been complaining about it since LR4 beta1.
Join the club ;-\
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Kirk Gittings on October 10, 2012, 03:06:06 pm
Not trying to minimize your complaints, but I run a 6 core, W7, 24 GB ram, LR 4.2 machine and it runs fine. I had a tiny bit of occasional sluggishness till I updated the graphics driver, but nothing since. All adjustments are instantaneous.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on October 10, 2012, 03:13:21 pm
Not trying to minimize your complaints, but I run a 6 core, W7, 24 GB ram, LR 4.2 machine and it runs fine...... All adjustments are instantaneous.
On what screen size ? what file size ?

Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Kirk Gittings on October 10, 2012, 05:16:14 pm
On what screen size ? what file size ?



24" file size-native raw 5DII plus stitched files from same.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on October 10, 2012, 06:03:57 pm
24"
That's the bit that makes it work acceptably for you. Small desktops mean less pixels to change.

You won't find it so great if you upgrade to a larger monitor(s).
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: kaelaria on October 10, 2012, 07:55:45 pm
BS.  2D is absolutely nothing to pump out.  This isn't rendering or using card acceleration.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: hugowolf on October 10, 2012, 08:51:15 pm
That's the bit that makes it work acceptably for you. Small desktops mean less pixels to change.

You won't find it so great if you upgrade to a larger monitor(s).
Apart from anything else, it would depend on how many pixels, not the physical size of the display, and even then I cannot see that making much difference.
(Anyhow, it would be 'fewer' not 'less')

Brian A
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Kirk Gittings on October 10, 2012, 10:52:46 pm
That's the bit that makes it work acceptably for you. Small desktops mean less pixels to change.

You won't find it so great if you upgrade to a larger monitor(s).

If it matters I run two minitors. Both Lacie 24" one is pretty old and I use it just for tools etc.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on October 11, 2012, 02:23:21 am
BS.  2D is absolutely nothing to pump out.  This isn't rendering or using card acceleration.
You've missed the point, the size of the rendered image IS significant.
Every time you move a slider in LR every screen pixel is recalculated. Double the size of the image, double the CPU workload.

Just try it. Have LR set up for a small screen size (including all the pre-rendered library previews), then upgrade to a screen twice the size. The slow down in responsiveness is very noticeable.

Or do you have a better explanation of why some people see no problems with responsiveness on slower systems with smaller screens ?
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on October 11, 2012, 02:26:09 am
I run two minitors. Both Lacie 24" one is pretty old.
Do the sums on the data being processed. If both are widescreen (1920x1200) my desktop is about 20% bigger, if the old one is narrower there's an ever greater difference.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Tony Jay on October 11, 2012, 05:05:38 am
Every time you move a slider in LR every screen pixel is recalculated. Double the size of the image, double the CPU workload.

That is correct.

Tony Jay
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: kaelaria on October 11, 2012, 06:54:50 pm
What you fail to realize is that workload is a tiny, tiny percentage.  Turn on a CPU meter and run through things yourself.  it doesn't peg 100% at ALL no matter the screen size.  Sorry but some of you have absolutely no idea how a CPU/GPU and drivers work together or what things they are used for.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on October 12, 2012, 04:36:55 am
What you fail to realize is that workload is a tiny, tiny percentage.  Turn on a CPU meter and run through things yourself.  it doesn't peg 100% at ALL no matter the screen size.
Really ? actually I run CPU & GPU meter all the time and have been doing so since LR3 to try to find out where things can be improved.
Have a look at the attached screen shot. 7 cores over 60%, 3 cores over 70%, 3 cores at over 80% and one core at 94% and that's just a quick stab at getting a screen shot of LR4.2 in action. Given reaction times it could have been even higher.
Quote
Sorry but some of you have absolutely no idea how a CPU/GPU and drivers work together or what things they are used for.
GPU really isn't an issue with LR. Again look at the screen shot and see how much the graphics card is doing....next to nothing.


Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: kaelaria on October 12, 2012, 11:33:53 am
Really ? actually I run CPU & GPU meter all the time and have been doing so since LR3 to try to find out where things can be improved.
Have a look at the attached screen shot. 7 cores over 60%, 3 cores over 70%, 3 cores at over 80% and one core at 94% and that's just a quick stab at getting a screen shot of LR4.2 in action. Given reaction times it could have been even higher.GPU really isn't an issue with LR. Again look at the screen shot and see how much the graphics card is doing....next to nothing.




Thank you for proving my points!  If the CPU is not pegged at 100%, as you show - it's NOT the bottleneck.  In the VAST majority of cases it's the disk system.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: One Frame at a Time on October 12, 2012, 11:53:04 am
Not to be argumentative - my system is slow to update the screen, and from what I can see, my system is not reading or writting to disk when this occurs (adjusting the sliders in Develop). When I used to work in PS 5, you could tell the scratch disk was slowing things down on big files.  But with 8gigs of RAM my i7 laptop does not seem as disk intensive; as with previous machines and earlier versions of PS.

What kind of experiences are people having with the current Camera Raw in PS?  My understanding is that it is also using similar complex algorithms as the new process ver in LR?

Paul
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on October 12, 2012, 11:54:38 am
it's NOT the bottleneck.
Did I say it was ?

My point is the larger the screen the less responsive the develop module. There's simply more data to process and move around.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Bart_van_der_Wolf on October 12, 2012, 12:04:31 pm
If the CPU is not pegged at 100%, as you show - it's NOT the bottleneck.

Are you suggesting that the fact that the CPU(s) is/are processing at increased percentages (although lower than maximum level), doesn't take time???

Quote
In the VAST majority of cases it's the disk system.

Sometimes, sometimes not. One would need to look at the data throughput there as well. And the same applies here, it doesn't need to hit the bandwidth ceiling to take time.

Cheers,
Bart
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: John.Murray on October 12, 2012, 12:15:26 pm
Display resolution affecting peformance is a tempting target, so I decided to see if that was indeed an issue.

2 different machines - a Mac Pro (2006 upgraded 2007 MB, Dual Xeon 5355s, ATI 5770, 10GB), and Windows (Intel X79 - Core i7 3930, nVidia GTX660 Ti, 32GB)

3 different displays ranging from 2560x1440 to 1280x1024

No perceived difference in develop performance!

Thinking that the video cards were possibly swamping the results, I loaded LR 4.2 on an Intel H77 board with a i5 3570K / HD 4000 on die graphics, 8GB RAM (if you are looking for a powerfull budget machine, the i5 3570k is an amazing value at a bit over $200)

Again, no difference....  
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: kaelaria on October 12, 2012, 12:17:44 pm
Finally someone with a clue!

Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: knweiss on October 12, 2012, 02:09:19 pm
One of the things that seems to slow my development in Lightroom is doing lens corrections first: rotate, vertical and horizontal perspective, barrel and pincushioning. These along with vignetting and cropping would seem to be logical first steps in any workflow, but maybe there is a reason why they are so low down in the development panel.

This is a very good point! I've always wondered why lens correction isn't at the top because I agree that it is one of the logical first steps.

Also, ever since I started using LR I wonder why it isn't able to saturate all the 8 CPU cores of my Mac Pro during a big export to a SSD. The IO activity isn't very high either (if you're on OS X you can easily take a look at LR's IO e.g. with "sudo iosnoop" and "sudo iopattern" during an export and see the idle times). When there is enough RAM and IO bandwidth LR should be able to keep all cores busy all the time processing RAWs. However, even in version 4.2 it doesn't.

For me, I came to the conclusion that performance simply isn't a priority for the developers even though so many users are not happy with it. From the outside it even seems to me that there are low hanging fruits which are ignored. I don't like this situation but on the other hand I continue to use the program because apart from that I really like it. Maybe they know this and ignoring the performance improvement requests even makes economic sense.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: AFairley on October 12, 2012, 02:14:19 pm
For me, I came to the conclusion that performance simply isn't a priority for the developers even though so many users are not happy with it.

From the latest video with M&J and Eric Chan, it seems that the developers are aware of performance and are always working on it.  At one point Eric talks about at one point in the development process (I think for PV 2012), moving sliders and walking away for 20 minutes while the computer crunched the adjustment.  So I guess things could be a lot worse!
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: elliot_n on October 12, 2012, 04:05:00 pm

What kind of experiences are people having with the current Camera Raw in PS?  My understanding is that it is also using similar complex algorithms as the new process ver in LR?


ACR is very slow on my Mac mini (current model, 2.7 i7, AMD graphics, 16Gb ram). After adjusting sliders it takes several seconds before the preview updates. Reducing the ACR window size on my Eizo CG275W boosts performance significantly - but it's still slow.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on October 12, 2012, 04:32:09 pm
No perceived difference in develop performance!
I think a lot of this depends on where you start from.
If you're starting with a very high spec machine the differences in screen size won't be so apparent as with a less well specified system.
Also I suspect that reducing desktop size when your LR library is full of high resolution previews won't have the same effect as moving from a smaller desktop to a larger one.

Certainly when I added 27" high res monitor to replace a lower res 19" monitor, with nothing else changing, responsiveness of LR3 dramatically slowed down. I don't think the change to LR4 will have changed that aspect of it's performance at all.

I'm sure someone at Adobe will know exactly what's going on here, it's been such a widely reported problem, and be working hard on improving things. However I doubt they can acknowledge their performance failing publicly.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: headmj on October 12, 2012, 05:20:24 pm
I certainly did not expect my simple post looking for help to set off a posy like this. :o

I have done a number of things since then.  I completely restored my machine, made sure Vista was at SP2 plus current updates.  I downloaded a fresh copy of LR4 and installed on the reformatted machine.  Created a new catalog and imported about 150 primarily landscape photos.  The result was somewhat better but still way too slow.

In the last 2 weeks I purchased a new HP machine.  It contains an FX-8120 running at 3.1 ghz. 12gb of memory and windows 7 64 at SP1.  It also has a single 2TB 7200 rpm hard drive.

The new system has LR 4.2 installed on it and a fresh catalog.  Things seem to be running very well at about 3.6 speeds.  I will keep track as I use all the features.

Mike
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on October 12, 2012, 05:42:33 pm
I certainly did not expect my simple post looking for help to set off a posy like this. :o
The performance of LR4 has been creating a storm since the first public beta.
I suspect the reason is that the underlying quality of what it' doing is just SO good, it's terribly frustrating not to be able to work fast with it.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: John.Murray on October 12, 2012, 06:08:01 pm
I think a lot of this depends on where you start from.
If you're starting with a very high spec machine the differences in screen size won't be so apparent as with a less well specified system.
Also I suspect that reducing desktop size when your LR library is full of high resolution previews won't have the same effect as moving from a smaller desktop to a larger one.


Agreed!  Which is why I did a fresh install on the 3rd less capable machine.  All previews are 1-1 (i've never done anything else....)
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on October 12, 2012, 08:45:41 pm
Agreed!  Which is why I did a fresh install on the 3rd less capable machine.  All previews are 1-1 (i've never done anything else....)
Hi John -

It may be possible different functions from within the Develop Module task the system in different ways.  What functions did you test? 

Maybe those who are contesting develop performance is linked to screen size would provide us their work flow?

It's a big piece of pie to eat in one byte..

Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: kaelaria on October 12, 2012, 08:56:39 pm

In the last 2 weeks I purchased a new HP machine.  It contains an FX-8120 running at 3.1 ghz. 12gb of memory and windows 7 64 at SP1.  It also has a single 2TB 7200 rpm hard drive.  Things seem to be running very well at about 3.6 speeds. 

Mike

Which is exactly what I told you way back at the start ;)
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Sheldon N on October 12, 2012, 10:31:39 pm
Thank you for proving my points!  If the CPU is not pegged at 100%, as you show - it's NOT the bottleneck.  In the VAST majority of cases it's the disk system.

Often the limitation is how efficiently the program can access the CPU, not just whether the CPU is pegged at 100%. LR may be "fully" utilizing the CPU even though the CPU is not fully utilized.

In this case, I'm pretty sure that it's not a disk bottleneck.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on October 13, 2012, 04:36:20 am
Maybe those who are contesting develop performance is linked to screen size would provide us their work flow?
On import:
Render 1:1 previews, apply copyright metadata, apply generic keywords to shoot, apply custom develop settings (apply custom camera profile, CNR 25,CNRD 50,sharpen 49,radius 1.5, edge masking 22, detail 22)
Then work the images once they're all in and rendered fully.

What puzzles me is why anyone would think screen size isn't an issue ? It's fundamental to how much data has to be processed.

As a demonstration; open LR full screen (press F) then open an image in develop. Give the image maximum screen room (kill all the toolbars except the develop panel), now make some big changes to colour temperature and notice the lag in screen updates.
Then drop from full screen and make the LR window as small as possible, then repeat the CT changes. It's dramatically faster here.

It's important to remember that some of the people that have said there isn't an issue with performance probably aren't using it intensively at all or have very different expectations of performance.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: AFairley on October 13, 2012, 12:03:25 pm
What puzzles me is why anyone would think screen size isn't an issue ? It's fundamental to how much data has to be processed.

As a demonstration; open LR full screen (press F) then open an image in develop. Give the image maximum screen room (kill all the toolbars except the develop panel), now make some big changes to colour temperature and notice the lag in screen updates.
Then drop from full screen and make the LR window as small as possible, then repeat the CT changes. It's dramatically faster here.

Schewe has pointed this out in earlier threads.  My experience confirms.  On my 30" monitor with the image at maximum size available, dragging color slider all the way to left, there is a 2 to 3 second lag.  Working with the image sized to about 8x10 area on the screen, the lag is less than a second.  That's with dngs from a 16 MB sensor.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on October 13, 2012, 12:40:01 pm

What puzzles me is why anyone would think screen size isn't an issue ? It's fundamental to how much data has to be processed.

I don't know.  Every time I think I've got LR figured out I find out it behaves differently than you'd expect at a certain point in the work flow or even a different brand/model of hardware can throw a wrench into things.  I wouldn't be surprised to later learn Adobe's LR team has been fighting the code throughout until the breakthrough they haven't yet experienced..:)   I hope to see at least 2-3 different sets of work flow vs. screen size performance degradation, maybe something will pop out at us.  Thanks for providing yours.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on October 13, 2012, 12:47:31 pm
I wouldn't be surprised to later learn Adobe's LR team has been fighting the code throughout until the breakthrough they haven't yet experienced..:) 
There does seem to have some improvement with the recent updates.
I doubt we'll see anything really dramatic until (if?) someone at Adobe manages to utilise the currently unused power of GPUs for processing, as they did so successfully in Premiere Pro CS5.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Bart_van_der_Wolf on October 13, 2012, 09:22:25 pm
What puzzles me is why anyone would think screen size isn't an issue ? It's fundamental to how much data has to be processed.

Puzzling indeed. LR being an application that does parametric updates to the final image display (on screen or at the ultimate output size), it should be obvious that size matters (as do things like lens corrections). The only thing that could reduce (not eliminate) the dependency of the display (monitor) size, is that more than only the zoomed-in area of the image needs to be rendered.

Cheers,
Bart
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Steve Weldon on October 13, 2012, 10:59:00 pm
There does seem to have some improvement with the recent updates.
I doubt we'll see anything really dramatic until (if?) someone at Adobe manages to utilise the currently unused power of GPUs for processing, as they did so successfully in Premiere Pro CS5.

I'm thinking something deeper, probably related to the kernel and memory usage.  And possibly related to other installed/used programs via the registry.

As we go through these threads we run across different areas of hardware, different work flow, and different users who swear these hardware areas make significant differences while others swear they make no difference at all.  You have those saying the fastest SSD's over slow HDD's make no difference.. regardless of the raw data speeds of each and their capabilities.  Then you have those saying more than some set amount of RAM made a huge difference, and those who swear it doesn't.  Then those who say faster GPU's have made a difference on that lag issue despite the extended GPU areas not being utilized.. and now we have those saying screen size makes a difference and those who say it doesn't.

Something is amiss.  I'm included in the above and I can duplicate what I claim but others weren't able to.  So I have no problem believing others can duplicate what I can't.  Meanwhile none of it is making sense IF and assuming the program is working conventionally.  I think the answer is it isn't.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on October 14, 2012, 04:04:27 am
I'm thinking something deeper, probably related to the kernel and memory usage. 
Maybe, but the difference using CUDA on PP5 makes is staggering. Bring that gain to LR and not only should the develop issues be helped, but other tasks that slow users down like rendering previews on import and faster exporting might be greatly improved too.
Quote
... and different users who swear these hardware areas make significant differences while others swear they make no difference at all. 
The difficulty here is the quality of reporting and what users are actually doing with LR.
It's reasonable to assume that the vast majority of users reporting problems really are seeing issues. Those who say they're happy with the program may just not be aware of the problems. Some users may simply have lower expectations and some work so slowly they won't notice control lag.
It must be a nightmare for Adobe to diagnose what's going on with so many different hardware configurations.
For us on the edges just trying to get LR to work as best as possible for us it's difficult too. Most users can't afford to just buy the fastest everything, but have to try to assess which parts of a system are the most serious bottleneck and address those first. Right now it's looking like fast CPUs, fast drives and 'enough' memory are the keys to acceptable performance, high end graphics cards and massive amounts of memory aren't really necessary.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Jim Pascoe on October 14, 2012, 05:08:23 am
This is a very good point! I've always wondered why lens correction isn't at the top because I agree that it is one of the logical first steps.


Perhaps for your photography, but I rarely use that panel and the crop and exposure are my first points of call. I think the layout probably has the tools first used by most people at the top.  I suppose it would be useful if one could re-arrange the tabs to suit a personal workflow.

Jim
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Simon Garrett on October 14, 2012, 05:15:47 am
Those who say they're happy with the program may just not be aware of the problems. Some users may simply have lower expectations and some work so slowly they won't notice control lag.
Believe me, when I'm processing 2000 images I really do notice control lag.  And I'm not getting any perceptable lag in LR4.2.  I'm using a 2-year-old i7-930. 

I get a 5 second delay the first time into Develop Module after running LR, and I get about a 2 second delay switching from one image to another in Develop Module. I get no perceptable delay on using sliders, adjustment brush etc. 

I'm not doubting that some people are getting performance issues, but I'm not.  I use a 12M pixel D300 - perhaps 36M pixel D800 users get more delay.   
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on October 14, 2012, 05:22:42 am
And I'm not getting any perceptable lag in LR4.2.  I'm using a 2-year-old i7-930. 
and ? drives ? memory ? screen size ? what sliders do you use most ?
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: stamper on October 14, 2012, 05:35:15 am
Quote Rhossydd

It's reasonable to assume that the vast majority of users reporting problems really are seeing issues. Those who say they're happy with the program may just not be aware of the problems. Some users may simply have lower expectations and some work so slowly they won't notice control lag.

Unquote

I have viewed the "problems" reported in quite a few forums and I thought the reverse to be true. I think there are more than one or two that are now shamefaced because they have realised after reading the solutions they were wrong. I am not saying there weren't any problems but a beta is a beta and it is simply wrong to expect the program to work 100% out of the box. There were a lot of happy users who didn't have any "problems" because they did their homework before complaining, if at all? You yourself complained in a previous thread that it wasn't "productively fast" . How on earth do you think Adobe can improve the program based on that description?
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rhossydd on October 14, 2012, 05:47:22 am
You yourself complained in a previous thread that it wasn't "productively fast" . How on earth do you think Adobe can improve the program based on that description?
Quoting two words out of context isn't very helpful.

I've given very detailed fault reports directly to Adobe with the issues I've experienced with the various versions LR4, plus posted comments here with far more detail that explain what I'd consider to be 'unproductively fast' (waiting seconds for screen updates was simply unacceptable etc.).
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Tony Jay on October 14, 2012, 06:19:00 am
This is a very good point! I've always wondered why lens correction isn't at the top because I agree that it is one of the logical first steps.

Not really a peformance point but put lens correction in as an import develop preset - then no need to worry about it hence.
This is what I do as part of an extensive import preset.

Regards

Tony Jay
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: stamper on October 14, 2012, 06:22:16 am
Not really a peformance point but put lens correction in as an import develop preset - then no need to worry about it hence.
This is what I do as part of an extensive import preset.

Regards

Tony Jay

A very good point. I feel that it should come before develop because the vignetting control should be used before lightening the shadows and I tend to forget it because it is down the pecking order. Thanks.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Simon Garrett on October 14, 2012, 07:56:42 am
and ? drives ? memory ? screen size ? what sliders do you use most ?
A rather old SSD for ACR cache, catalog and images on a 1T drive (not especially fast).  12G RAM (though Lightroom uses nowhere near that) - can't remember the RAM speed and I can't see without rebooting.  CPU is 2.8G, not overclocked. 
Screen 1 size: 1920x1200, screen 2 size 1280x1024.  I set preview size to 2048 and preview quality to medium
I use all basic sliders lots, sharpening and noise somewhat, adjustment bruch frequently.  Most sliders sometimes.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Chris Kern on October 16, 2012, 02:46:51 pm
I'm thinking something deeper, probably related to the kernel and memory usage.

I don't run Lightroom on MS-Windows, but its performance on OS X seems to be significantly affected by physical memory availability.  I've noticed that even killing idle processes—i.e., other programs that were no longer actively making requests to the process scheduler—usually improves Lightroom's user responsiveness, presumably because killing a process frees up its resident memory set.  (For those of you unfamiliar with OS X, programs typically don't die when you "shut them down" from the graphical windowing system; they continue to run in the background so they will appear to launch almost instantly the next time you invoke them.)

I routinely kill coactive but idle processes when LR seems sluggish and it always helps.  I also coax the operating system to more aggressively reclaim physical memory by running the OS X purge command and this also always helps. (This is a very blunt instrument and I don't recommend it; then, again, I don't follow my own advice.)  For quite some time, a number of very knowledgeable outsiders have believed something is broken in OS X's memory management.  Apple has never acknowledged this and in fact may have fixed it in recent releases (I'm still running 10.6), but there's reason to believe memory management hasn't been working as well on OS X as it does on most other variants of UNIX—or even as well as most Linux distributions, for that matter.

Finally, a couple of comments on the issue of CPU utilization.  I used to do a fair amount of performance tuning of UNIX on fairly large machines.  Modern UNIX kernels often will appear from snapshot performance-monitoring utilities to be using all available CPU even when there is actually plenty of processing power still available because their schedulers will offer time slices to lower-priority (and eminently delayable) processes when higher-priority ones don't need access to a processor—e.g., when they block waiting for an input or output operation involving memory (including the kernel's demand-pager), access to a disk, or data from a peripheral device such as a keyboard.  It's a little more complicated with multithreaded applications because threads have constraints for scheduling that are more complex than those for heavyweight processes.  But I think it's safe to say that unless a snapshot tool shows that all your CPUs/cores are continuously pegged for a very long period (say several seconds since most tools only collect samples once a second), it's highly unlikely you are running out of processor.  I see no reason why this, at least, wouldn't be as true on Windows as on UNIX.

OS X offers an excellent profiling tool called DTrace which could be used to study Lightroom's performance in considerable detail while it is performing specific functions, even without access to source code, in the event someone out there with the right background wants to try to gather some empirical evidence.  I'm not willing to invest the time because (1) I can't fix memory management problems in OS X and (2) I can't improve LR.  I assume Eric Chan or someone else at Adobe is doing this type of performance tuning, which is why so many of us seeing a distinct improvement in the 4.2 release over the first customer ship.  But every operating system fights the application developer to some extent and there's often a limit to how much better performance you can wring out of a program without sacrificing features.  (And I, for one, can't think of a lot of LR features I'd be willing to sacrifice.)  At a certain point you either need to improve the efficiency of the operating system or upgrade the hardware.  The former is slow and difficult, but the latter is fast and easy: just add money.  And to the extent that memory is constrained, you usually don't need to add a lot of money.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: hugowolf on October 16, 2012, 08:18:17 pm
A very good point. I feel that it should come before develop because the vignetting control should be used before lightening the shadows and I tend to forget it because it is down the pecking order. Thanks.
My point here was at no matter what point lens corrections are done, if they cause more than minor pixel position translations, then the resulting images tend to take longer for further edits, I don't find the lens transforms themselves take a long time, it is further work on an image after the lens corrections that takes a longer time. I use ultra wides a lot, and they aren't quite as distortion free (geometrically and chromatically) as macro lenses, for example.

I'm running an i7 with 32 GB RAM and SSD for softwware and RAID 1 HDD for images under Win7.

Brian A
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: AFairley on October 17, 2012, 11:25:08 am
My point here was at no matter what point lens corrections are done, if they cause more than minor pixel position translations, then the resulting images tend to take longer for further edits, I don't find the lens transforms themselves take a long time, it is further work on an image after the lens corrections that takes a longer time. I use ultra wides a lot, and they aren't quite as distortion free (geometrically and chromatically) as macro lenses, for example.

I'm running an i7 with 32 GB RAM and SSD for softwware and RAID 1 HDD for images under Win7.

Brian A

Because I frequently have to correct significant keystoning, lens correction and crop tool usually have to be my first corrections so I can see whether a particular image hangs together compositionally.  If so, I then turn off the corrections to make tone adjustments.  This particularly helps with local adjustments, which with corrections turned on can bring my (older) AMD quad core machine to its knees. 
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: JRSmit on October 19, 2012, 02:27:35 am
Because I frequently have to correct significant keystoning, lens correction and crop tool usually have to be my first corrections so I can see whether a particular image hangs together compositionally.  If so, I then turn off the corrections to make tone adjustments.  This particularly helps with local adjustments, which with corrections turned on can bring my (older) AMD quad core machine to its knees. 
Have tried to improve speed by recreating 1:1 previews, set at high quality,  after the keystone and lens corrections? In my experience this helps the performance.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: AFairley on October 19, 2012, 11:28:07 am
I have a lot of programs installed on my PC, so as an experiment, I did a clean install of Win 7 on a separate drive and with a minimum program install (drivers, Acronis True Image, Lightroom and Photoshop).  I have not had a chance to really torture test, but it does seem that on the bare install the image redraws faster when making adjustments, but still shows some lag (AMD quad core, radon 7xxx card, 30" monitor).
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: hugowolf on October 19, 2012, 12:06:36 pm
Have tried to improve speed by recreating 1:1 previews, set at high quality,  after the keystone and lens corrections? In my experience this helps the performance.
No, how do you recreate 1:1 previews after geometric lens distortion corrections?

Brian A
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rory on October 19, 2012, 12:11:16 pm
No, how do you recreate 1:1 previews after geometric lens distortion corrections?

Brian A

In the menu: Library > Previews > Render 1:1 Previews
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: AFairley on October 19, 2012, 01:52:11 pm
In the menu: Library > Previews > Render 1:1 Previews

Interesting idea, but it didn't make a big difference for me.  I timed the redraw lag when I entered -100 into the saturation value box, taking the average of three trials.  With lens correction off, the lag was 1.7 sec, with lens cortex on, it was 2.4 sec.  I rerendered a 1:1 preview from the file with lens correx on, and the lag dropped to 2.2 sec., so not a big difference.  Of course, the timings ar so short there's a lot of room for measurement error.  This is with DNGs from a 16MP sensor, BTW.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Schewe on October 19, 2012, 05:54:34 pm
1:1 previews only help in Library and Loupe, not in Develop. The Develop module has to rip the raw image data when making adjustments, not the preview data. So 1:1 previews won't help in Develop.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: BigBadWolfie on October 24, 2012, 08:19:06 am
1:1 previews only help in Library and Loupe, not in Develop. The Develop module has to rip the raw image data when making adjustments, not the preview data. So 1:1 previews won't help in Develop.
I guess that's why it makes sense to have your raw or dng files on a SSD?
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: Rand47 on October 24, 2012, 09:01:34 am
My LR responsiveness issues are solved.  It is now instantaneous on sliders, and very fast from module to module. I tried every tweak I could find with my old hardware.  AMD quad core, 8 gigs RAM, single 2TB HDD. Nothing worked.  LR 4.2 was a little better, but with lots of cloning, lens correction, etc. the sliders lagged and I could still bring LR to a dead stop at times.

Solution.   New hardware.   i7 Ivy Bridge, 32 gigs RAM; fast video card w/ 10 bit Displayport out; SSD for OS & programs; 2nd SSD for ACR cache & scratch, catalog & previews; 2TB fast HDD for data & image files.

Handles large files like hot knife through butter.  Being able to instantly see effects of very small slider adjustments is a HUGE improvement and allows me to "finally" tap into the full goodness that PV2012 brings to the table.  

Not an optimal solution from a financial perspective, but as a practical matter my frustrations are gone and I can return to concentrating on the images themselves.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: kaelaria on October 24, 2012, 01:47:56 pm
Funny how no one listens when they are given the right answer because they just don't want to believe it :)  At least some of you find out the hard way and get it solved :)
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: JRSmit on October 25, 2012, 01:37:32 pm
Funny how no one listens when they are given the right answer because they just don't want to believe it :)  At least some of you find out the hard way and get it solved :)
Do not know what is really ment with this statement.
I have an ivy bridge computer like described in a previous post, and still when a lot of local corrections and lens corrections, even such a platform becomes slow. I regularely exit and restart lightroom to regain some performance. This is when editing hundreds of images in a row.
so yes it would be nice if the LR development team comes with some serious performance improvements.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: dmerger on October 29, 2012, 12:36:53 pm
If you need to really speed up LR, and you have the room and budget, you might consider a Titan computer.   ;)

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2013228/titan-supercomputer-hits-20-petaflops-of-processing-power.html
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: acktdi on November 19, 2012, 10:55:13 am
I too have been suffering from painfully slow LR4 speed.  I had been using a 5 year old Intel Q6600 2.4, 8gb, ssd system and it was fine for LR3. 
I just upgraded to a home-built i7-3770k 3.5ghz, 16 gb ram, ssd and LR4 is blazing fast.  There is no wait switching between modules.  Preview render times are under 5 seconds, compared to 30 seconds before.

So I agree, if LR4 seems slow, you need a new processor.

If anyone is interested, here are the specs on my new system

Intel i7-3770k cpu
Asus P8Z77-vpro motherboard
Coolermaster 212+ cpu cooler
G.skill ripjaw 2x8gb ram
Samsung 830 256gb ssd
cost - 957$

ATI Radeon 4870 video card
Coolermaster Cosmos 1000 case
Corsair TX850w psu
cost - about $300, these were reused from my previous system
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: kaelaria on November 20, 2012, 08:25:26 am
Another happy user sees the truth :)
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: NigelC on November 20, 2012, 08:59:30 am
Don't wish to participate in ongoing ping-pong game but I have Vista 64 Q6600 2.4 overclocked to 3ghz and 8GB RAM. Very recently loaded LR4.1 and it's a bit slow. I am close to pensioning it off (Vista Home Premium limitations as much as anything else) and as I can't currently stretch to new computer plan to run my T/Pad W520 with external monitor/keyboard. It's got a more modern Corei7 2.2 and better graphic card but I'm guessing things would run faster upgrading RAM from 8 to 16GB or even maxing out to 32GB?
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: acktdi on November 20, 2012, 10:07:57 am
I was watching Resource Monitor while LR ran, it's mostly the CPU getting pegged at 100%, the memory wasn't as important.  Memory is cheap these days, but I don't think it will improve performance very much.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: JRSmit on November 20, 2012, 10:45:42 am
I was watching Resource Monitor while LR ran, it's mostly the CPU getting pegged at 100%, the memory wasn't as important.  Memory is cheap these days, but I don't think it will improve performance very much.
Same observation here, speed of memory can make some difference. Same for speed of drives, but not a lot.
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: hjulenissen on November 20, 2012, 04:03:37 pm
Puzzling indeed. LR being an application that does parametric updates to the final image display (on screen or at the ultimate output size), it should be obvious that size matters (as do things like lens corrections). The only thing that could reduce (not eliminate) the dependency of the display (monitor) size, is that more than only the zoomed-in area of the image needs to be rendered.

Cheers,
Bart
I dont know how the Lightroom pipeline is setup. But I can easily see that might work at a fixed (camera native) all of the way until the final rendering/scaling.

If that is the case, the difference between a 4MP display and a 1MP display should be a 4 times increase in scaler complexity and output buffer size. Does not sound too expensive to me?

-h
Title: Re: LR4 speed totally unacceptable
Post by: hjulenissen on November 20, 2012, 04:07:47 pm
There does seem to have some improvement with the recent updates.
I doubt we'll see anything really dramatic until (if?) someone at Adobe manages to utilise the currently unused power of GPUs for processing, as they did so successfully in Premiere Pro CS5.
GPU processing tends to give "two orders of magnitude" speedup for carefully selected floating-point, infinitely threadable scientific tasks where the scenario is unfairly rigged by Nvidia/AMD. Think physical modelling, Monte Carlo simulations and such.

For more realistic tasks, the speedup tends to be far more modest, while the increased complexity, potential for nasty bugs, test-matrix, difficulty of hiring developers etc can be significant.

If the pipeline is fixed-point and hard to thread into 100s of highly separate tasks, the speedup may be negligible.


Did anyone try running Lightroom on a 16-core x86 system? It is significantly easier to thread most applications to that hardware. If Adobe did not bother/was not able to exploit moderately large numbers of x86 cores, I dont see them doing anything useful on GPUs?

-h