Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Adobe Lightroom Q&A => Topic started by: jljonathan on December 17, 2013, 06:05:58 pm

Title: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: jljonathan on December 17, 2013, 06:05:58 pm
LR 5.3 not only hasn't sped things up here, but it actually seems much slower. I opened a dng, added a few basic tone adjustments and then a single brush adjustment to the eyes. Each time I made a brushstroke, or changed a setting, it took the LR several seconds to recover. Once or twice I thought it had frozen, but eventually it came back. What is happening here? I thought by now LR5 would have licked this performance problem, but it seems to be permanent. Does anyone have any kind of suggestions? It really makes working past the limited basic controls very frustrating.
I'm on a Mac Pro 2.93 Quad-Core Xeon with 8 GB of ram. running Mountain Lion 10.8.5, Nvidia Geforce GT 120 with 512 MB.
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: Rhossydd on December 18, 2013, 04:03:55 am
Not seeing any new problems here on W7 i7, all works pretty smoothly still.
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: Bart_van_der_Wolf on December 18, 2013, 04:24:25 am
Not seeing any new problems here on W7 i7, all works pretty smoothly still.

Same situation here, W7 i7, runs smoothly with all 8 CPU cores kept busy, although with a different NVIDIA graphics card. I've read elsewhere that switching off Graphics card GPU acceleration solves some issues on some affected systems.

Cheers,
Bart
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: Dr Tone on December 18, 2013, 08:47:46 am
Same situation here, W7 i7, runs smoothly with all 8 CPU cores kept busy, although with a different NVIDIA graphics card. I've read elsewhere that switching off Graphics card GPU acceleration solves some issues on some affected systems.

Cheers,
Bart

LR doesn't use any GPU acceleration, so there is no way to switch it off.
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: Dr Tone on December 18, 2013, 09:07:58 am
LR 5.3 not only hasn't sped things up here, but it actually seems much slower. I opened a dng, added a few basic tone adjustments and then a single brush adjustment to the eyes. Each time I made a brushstroke, or changed a setting, it took the LR several seconds to recover. Once or twice I thought it had frozen, but eventually it came back. What is happening here? I thought by now LR5 would have licked this performance problem, but it seems to be permanent. Does anyone have any kind of suggestions? It really makes working past the limited basic controls very frustrating.
I'm on a Mac Pro 2.93 Quad-Core Xeon with 8 GB of ram. running Mountain Lion 10.8.5, Nvidia Geforce GT 120 with 512 MB.

Lightroom never uses more than 30-40% of my 6 core i7 CPU when doing anything in the development module and will stall out often especially when doing localized adjustments.  It get's worst as you fill the cue up with more and and more changes.  I do all my work on a workstation grade Revo 3 x2 Drive PCI-x based SSD that never hits 5% utilization.

It's just the way it is.  I recently picked up a CC subscription, so I'm going to start learning how to use photo shop for images that need more work than Lightroom can handle.
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: PhotoEcosse on December 18, 2013, 09:28:20 am
Like others above, I have had no speed (or other) problems with LR5.3 on an i7 machine with 16Gb RAM.

I can simultaneously run LR5, CS6 and a plethora of Nik and Topaz plug-ins without any discernible performance compromise.
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: Hans Kruse on December 18, 2013, 10:04:48 am
I haven't seen any slowdown that I can determine with certainty. I'm using a MacBook Pro 2012 with i7 quad core 2.6Ghz, 16GB RAM, 1,5TB SSD and using a 30" external monitor. Almost anything happens instant except sometimes comparing to images one of the them will wait for quit a while until shown in 1:1 when I zoom in to check some details. But the latter is not new in LR5.
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: Bart_van_der_Wolf on December 18, 2013, 10:07:42 am
LR doesn't use any GPU acceleration, so there is no way to switch it off.

Apparently. Not even OpenCL or dual processors are supported.

I can't find where I read that it did matter just now, so no links to share (except for this (http://www.slrlounge.com/lightroom-lr5-lr4-hardware-performance-test-review)). There are some older references to graphic driver settings e.g. the handling of anti-aliasing and texture acceleration, but I'm not sure how relevant that is for LR5.

Cheers,
Bart
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: Alan Klein on December 18, 2013, 10:14:28 am
Like others above, I have had no speed (or other) problems with LR5.3 on am i& machine with 16Gb RAM.

I can simultaneously run LR5, CS6 and a plethora of Nik and Topaz plug-ins without any discernible performance compromise.

What computer?
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: john beardsworth on December 18, 2013, 10:51:49 am
See http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/400/kb400808.html and http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/performance-hints.html

Make sure you optimise your catalogue, that any display and tablet drives are up to date, that you have plenty of disc space on drive containing the Adobe Camera Raw cache folder (find it via Preferences), and perhaps delete the previews folders.

John
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: Dr Tone on December 18, 2013, 11:30:55 am
See http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/400/kb400808.html and http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/performance-hints.html

Make sure you optimise your catalogue, that any display and tablet drives are up to date, that you have plenty of disc space on drive containing the Adobe Camera Raw cache folder (find it via Preferences), and perhaps delete the previews folders.

John

The second article is very informative.  Basically it says 1) don't use a large resolution monitor and  2) don't do 100s of adjustments in lightroom use photoshop for these particular photos instead.

1) Shame on you Adobe.
2) I had figured out already.

Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: john beardsworth on December 18, 2013, 12:00:59 pm
Maybe it only says anything of that kind if you don't read with an open mind? To some degree you can read them as Adobe (unlike a lot of companies) giving users a frank idea where they think potential weaknesses may lie. Of course, the vast majority of users have no need of those notes.
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: Hans Kruse on December 18, 2013, 12:24:55 pm
The second article is very informative.  Basically it says 1) don't use a large resolution monitor and  2) don't do 100s of adjustments, use photoshop instead.

1) Shame on you Adobe.
2) I had figured out already.



Well, these performance hints are not that useful in my opinion as they do not relate performance to any specific hardware. The suggestion about a high resolution monitor is of course correct, but mainly if you use an old and slow machine. The hint to hundreds or thousands of adjustments like dust removals and in THIS case Photoshop is suggested as a better tool does not mean use Photoshop in general instead of Lightroom. So I do not agree at all on your comment number 1).

What would be better would be if Adobe suggested a more powerful machine as the minimum and e.g. not 2GB of RAM. Especially 2GB would be found on older machines with a slow proccessor. And Lightroom does not run well on such minimum hardware. And of course, if your machine does not have much RAM like e.g. 4GB close all other applications when doing Lightroom work.

I have used Lightroom with my 30" 2560x1600 display on a MacBook Pro 2009 model (core2 duo) wth 8GB RAM and it worked fine, but of course not like the new 2012 model. But not only RAM matters, cpus matter a lot and I would say that a i7 processor quad core is where you will find that Lightroom just flows and you are not waiting, except for batch or background operations.
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: Dr Tone on December 18, 2013, 12:28:02 pm
Well, these performance hints are not that useful in my opinion as they do not relate performance to any specific hardware. The suggestion about a high resolution monitor is of course correct, but mainly if you use an old and slow machine. The hint to hundreds or thousands of adjustments like dust removals and in THIS case Photoshop is suggested as a better tool does not mean use Photoshop in general instead of Lightroom. So I do not agree at all on your comment number 1).

What would be better would be if Adobe suggested a more powerful machine as the minimum and e.g. not 2GB of RAM. Especially 2GB would be found on older machines with a slow proccessor. And Lightroom does not run well on such minimum hardware. And of course, if your machine does not have much RAM like e.g. 4GB close all other applications when doing Lightroom work.

I have used Lightroom with my 30" 2560x1600 display on a MacBook Pro 2009 model (core2 duo) wth 8GB RAM and it worked fine, but of course not like the new 2012 model. But not only RAM matters, cpus matter a lot and I would say that a i7 processor quad core is where you will find that Lightroom just flows and you are not waiting, except for batch or background operations.

Sorry, I meant use photoshop instead particular to point 2, when doing allot of adjustments.  Not in general.  I updated my original post to be more clear.
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: john beardsworth on December 18, 2013, 12:46:03 pm
Well, these performance hints are not that useful in my opinion as they do not relate performance to any specific hardware.
I'm not sure they could be expected to maintain the kind of continually-changing matrix that would achieve that. I think these notes are mistitled - they are more helpful if you see them as troubleshooting tips for those who haven't been helped by the optimisation page.
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: Rand47 on December 18, 2013, 12:52:52 pm
Not seeing any new problems here on W7 i7, all works pretty smoothly still.
 

+1   W7, i7, 32 gigs RAM
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: Rhossydd on December 18, 2013, 01:04:35 pm
What would be better would be if Adobe suggested a more powerful machine as the minimum and e.g. not 2GB of RAM. Especially 2GB would be found on older machines with a slow proccessor. And Lightroom does not run well on such minimum hardware. And of course, if your machine does not have much RAM like e.g. 4GB close all other applications when doing Lightroom work.
Sometimes it's more important that it works at all, rather than 'well'.
The ability to run LR on, say a netbook, even if very slowly, can be important to some of us.
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: Hans Kruse on December 18, 2013, 01:20:46 pm
Sometimes it's more important that it works at all, rather than 'well'.
The ability to run LR on, say a netbook, even if very slowly, can be important to some of us.

The problem is that ability run will means something very different to different people. For this to really make sense there should be some characterization of that kind of performance you would get on different hardware. I don't think Adobe would try to say this. Personally I don't understand why anybody would run LR on a netbook. But again in the performance discussion would also need to be a mention of what RAW files to be processed! Needless to say that there is a huge difference between a m43 RAW file from say an Oly OMD and a Phase One 80MP file.

I think what I was trying to say in the previous post that performance is pretty meaningless unless there is some more characterization of hardware and requirements and what you can expect.
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: Rhossydd on December 18, 2013, 01:36:11 pm
Personally I don't understand why anybody would run LR on a netbook.
Because they're small enough to travel with easily, dirt cheap and do enough to be useful.
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: Wayne Fox on December 18, 2013, 03:27:55 pm
I have seen no speed issues at all, running on Retina MacBook Pro, 16g, with attached USB 3 drive, as well as 2010 MacPro 12 core with internal raid.  Bother are running OS X 10.9.

I would suspect your problem lies elsewhere, a corrupt LR database, failing hard drive, faulty ram are a few things that come to mind.  Or something else in you system is hogging resources ... a peak at activity monitor could check that.
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: kaelaria on December 18, 2013, 04:52:03 pm
No speed issues for a very long time, my machine doesn't even breathe hard no matter what I do in LR.  Look to your disc system.  Scan for damage, make sure you have plenty of space, clear caches, temp files, look for your error log, etc.  You have other issues, it's not LR.
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: Bob Rockefeller on December 21, 2013, 11:11:46 am
LR doesn't use any GPU acceleration, so there is no way to switch it off.

Dang! I was hoping Lightroom would take advantage of the big honking' GPUs in the new Mac Pro. :(
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: francois on December 21, 2013, 11:51:20 am
I would use Activity Monitor (/Applications/Utilities/) or the terminal and see the CPU load.
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: Glenn NK on December 21, 2013, 12:17:12 pm
No noticeable difference compared to LR4 or LR5.0

Having said that, extensive Adjustment Brush work really bungs things up - have to stop and take quite a few deep breaths.
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: thierrylegros396 on December 21, 2013, 01:46:08 pm
No noticeable difference compared to LR4 or LR5.0

Having said that, extensive Adjustment Brush work really bungs things up - have to stop and take quite a few deep breaths.

+1

Thierry
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: jljonathan on December 21, 2013, 04:12:04 pm
Yes, that is just what I was talking about. Brush work seems to be LR5's Achilles heel, you can sit a wait for it to recover quite a long time. Any suggestions for this particular problem that several folks have now chimed in about.
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: jrsforums on December 21, 2013, 05:35:25 pm
Yes, that is just what I was talking about. Brush work seems to be LR5's Achilles heel, you can sit a wait for it to recover quite a long time. Any suggestions for this particular problem that several folks have now chimed in about.

If I am doing more than a little brush work, I will leave it for last and go to PS for dodging and burning, for example.  Much faster and better control.

Before, this meant a significant expence.  With the $10. Offer, it should not be an issue for most.
Title: Re: Just installed 5.3, and it has very very slow performance
Post by: Glenn NK on December 21, 2013, 05:53:43 pm
Yes, that is just what I was talking about. Brush work seems to be LR5's Achilles heel, you can sit a wait for it to recover quite a long time. Any suggestions for this particular problem that several folks have now chimed in about.

I had the problem with LR4 too.   I only wish there was some way - maybe an 8 core 3.5GHz machine?   Priced one out yesterday - I'll be sticking with my quad core for a while yet.   I don't think it will be solved soon - the brush is very processor hungry.

MAJOR EDIT:

When re-opening a previously worked on RAW with a considerable amount of brush, gradient, or spot removal edits, the file will still be sluggish for LR to work with.

A workaround is to export then import the file as a TIFF.  The previous edits on the RAW file remain but when working on additional edits, the (TIFF) file is not sluggish (unless the second set of edits become ponderous).  The obvious drawback is that the previous edits embedded into the TIFF cannot be undone.   At least it's not frustrating to work with.