Windows 10 & LR - winning!

[bobtowery]

Over the years as LR updates come out there have been many complaints about performance. I personally hadn't experienced it. That is until my last update (2015.5). LR just crawled and it was really frustrating. Every aspect was slow. Switching modules, getting a list of images by keyword or folder. Even just going 1:1 would take like 10 seconds.

I have a pretty powerful Lenovo desktop, nothing else had changed in my system. I upgraded my Microsoft Surface to Win 10 quite some time ago and had no issues. So I decided to go ahead with the Win 10 upgrade on my desktop. Whoa. LR is an absolute rocket now. There's basically no delay for anything I have tried.

I'm a happier LR user now!

[Rory]

Glad to hear things are looking up for you Bob.  I've also had a pretty good experience with LR until recently.  Running a very high end computer on Win10 things are less than optimal.  I see frequent delays drawing the panels, and many operations are slow.  I frequently have to quit LR and it is a bit better at restart.  It is frustrating to pay rent on a product that appears to be going downhill.

[dwswager]

Glad to hear things are looking up for you Bob.  I've also had a pretty good experience with LR until recently.  Running a very high end computer on Win10 things are less than optimal.  I see frequent delays drawing the panels, and many operations are slow.  I frequently have to quit LR and it is a bit better at restart.  It is frustrating to pay rent on a product that appears to be going downhill.

I assume you at least have the photography plan.  In that case, you might try Bridge for some of the basic DAM functionality. It won't supplant LR's more extensive catalog based functionality, but for rudimentary tasks, it might suffice.  Or if it is the "develop" module that lags, try ACR.  There isn't really any functionality difference between the LR and ACR in that regard. 

[Rory]

I assume you at least have the photography plan.  In that case, you might try Bridge for some of the basic DAM functionality. It won't supplant LR's more extensive catalog based functionality, but for rudimentary tasks, it might suffice.  Or if it is the "develop" module that lags, try ACR.  There isn't really any functionality difference between the LR and ACR in that regard.

Thanks for the tips. I've been using photoshop since 2.0, I have extensive programming experience with bridge and I've been using LR since the first beta, so I'm pretty comfortable with each program. I'm not looking for work-arounds.  I'm just reporting that LR continues to have many performance problems and that I am disappointed with Adobe.  So far I do not feel I'm getting my money's worth out of CC.

[Paul2660]

Glad to hear things are looking up for you Bob.  I've also had a pretty good experience with LR until recently.  Running a very high end computer on Win10 things are less than optimal.  I see frequent delays drawing the panels, and many operations are slow.  I frequently have to quit LR and it is a bit better at restart.  It is frustrating to pay rent on a product that appears to be going downhill.

+1. Well said.

LR. Should worry less about new features and more about fixing current ones and finding a way to allow LR to better utilize open CL and modern graphics cards.  The differences between How photoshop uses open CL for better overall performance and LR's on going lack of ability to gain any performance with open CL still baffles me as both products come from the same company.

Paul C

[graeme]

I assume you at least have the photography plan.  In that case, you might try Bridge for some of the basic DAM functionality. It won't supplant LR's more extensive catalog based functionality, but for rudimentary tasks, it might suffice.  Or if it is the "develop" module that lags, try ACR.  There isn't really any functionality difference between the LR and ACR in that regard.

I used Bridge / ACR for years & didn't move to Lightroom until version 4. I'd find it very difficult to move back to the Bridge workflow for photographic work. ( I still use Bridge regularly for none photo projects ).

[graeme]

+1. Well said.

LR. Should worry less about new features and more about fixing current ones and finding a way to allow LR to better utilize open CL and modern graphics cards.  The differences between How photoshop uses open CL for better overall performance and LR's on going lack of ability to gain any performance with open CL still baffles me as both products come from the same company.

Paul C

+1

I'm happy with most of Lightroom's features I just wish it was faster & more stable. The first iteration of CC2015 I used was actually slower & crankier than Lightroom 4. It's improved with subsequent upgrades but has become very flaky over the last few days.

[dwswager]

I used Bridge / ACR for years & didn't move to Lightroom until version 4. I'd find it very difficult to move back to the Bridge workflow for photographic work. ( I still use Bridge regularly for none photo projects ).

Yes, as I mentioned there are DAM functionality aspects of LR that Bridge cannot replace.  However, the fallacy is that one should use Bridge/ACR or LR to the exclusion of the other as opposed to a combination.  While there are specific tasks that one or the other might be better, there are some for which they would work equally well.

I'm not exceptionally LR proficient yet, but the fundamental difference between LR and Bridge is that LR's catalog contains everything and knows where those assets are located while with Bridge, you must either point Bridge to the assets or search for them.  But if you structure your assets on a single drive in a hierarchy (even a virtual drive comprised of multiple physical drives), it is a simple matter to search your entire "catalog" in a similar manner to searching the LR catalog!

My assets reside on either my server (multiple 3TB drives pooled to one drive and mirrored) or most recent files which I'm still processing are on a local machine mirror.  Hence, it is a simple matter using bridge to search my "CATALOG" in to find files meeting certain criteria.  It is not as speedy as searching the local LR catalog, but has the advantage of being able to go directly to the files if I already know where they reside.

[dwswager]

Over the years as LR updates come out there have been many complaints about performance. I personally hadn't experienced it. That is until my last update (2015.5). LR just crawled and it was really frustrating. Every aspect was slow. Switching modules, getting a list of images by keyword or folder. Even just going 1:1 would take like 10 seconds.

I have a pretty powerful Lenovo desktop, nothing else had changed in my system. I upgraded my Microsoft Surface to Win 10 quite some time ago and had no issues. So I decided to go ahead with the Win 10 upgrade on my desktop. Whoa. LR is an absolute rocket now. There's basically no delay for anything I have tried.

I'm a happier LR user now!

Glad Windows 10 is working well.  That is great to hear.  I administer 3 Windows Laptops, 2 Windows Desktops a  Windows Home Theater PC and a Window Home Server.  All the client machines currently run Windows 7 except my wife's laptop that I moved from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10.  I am in the process of moving everything to Windows 10 except the HTPC (Run Windows Media Center) and the Server (Windows Home Server 2011).

It appears that Windows 10 is to Windows 7 (fast and stable) what Windows 8 was to Windows Vista (slow and buggy)! 

[Alan Goldhammer]

It appears that Windows 10 is to Windows 7 (fast and stable) what Windows 8 was to Windows Vista (slow and buggy)!

My experience with Windows 8.1 argues to the contrary.  I find it much faster than Windows 7 and have encountered no bugs at all.  I've been running it now for 9 months and wouldn't consider going back to Win7.  I'm not upgrading to Win10 as I don't really see any positives at this point in time.

[Simon Garrett]

It appears that Windows 10 is to Windows 7 (fast and stable) what Windows 8 was to Windows Vista (slow and buggy)!

I have most of my machines on W10 now, and it's generally the same speed as W7, a few functions are faster.  However, it's no more stable.  All W7 machines were rock-solid, but I get a few blue screens with W10.  These may be teething issues - some non-optimum drivers (as all machines were upgrades from W7, not clean installs). 

W10 is generally fine, but I wouldn't make a sweeping generalisation about it being better than W7; in my experience it isn't.  For speed and stability it's fairly similar. 

[GrahamBy]

Thanks for the tips. I've been using photoshop since 2.0, I have extensive programming experience with bridge and I've been using LR since the first beta, so I'm pretty comfortable with each program. I'm not looking for work-arounds.  I'm just reporting that LR continues to have many performance problems and that I am disappointed with Adobe.  So far I do not feel I'm getting my money's worth out of CC.

Except that many of us have no performance problems with LR and W10 (including the OP), so it's not obvious to me that you can attribute the problems to Adobe and LR.

[Rory]

Except that many of us have no performance problems with LR and W10 (including the OP), so it's not obvious to me that you can attribute the problems to Adobe and LR.

I hear what you are saying, and it is a position I have held in the past.  It is the usual thing.  No significant changes to the computer, all other software works fine, I've done all the usual LR trouble shooting ...  The thing is that many people are having issues with LR performance.  So, why should I give Adobe a free pass? 

[MattBurt]

I think the performance problems are due to Adobe trying to depend more on the GPU for rendering and processing where as in earlier versions it was all on the CPU. If you have a GPU that is reasonably modern and plays well with LR you will likely see a performance boost from the changes. But if not it seems to cause instability and performance degradation. I bought a new video card after updating to LR6 and it seemed to help a ton.

[Rory]

I think the performance problems are due to Adobe trying to depend more on the GPU for rendering and processing where as in earlier versions it was all on the CPU. If you have a GPU that is reasonably modern and plays well with LR you will likely see a performance boost from the changes. But if not it seems to cause instability and performance degradation. I bought a new video card after updating to LR6 and it seemed to help a ton.

I agree with you for some of the develop module performance issues but what about the library, panel rendering etc? I have little confidence adobe are assigning the resources to fix this type of stuff in LR.

[Alan Klein]

My experience with Windows 8.1 argues to the contrary.  I find it much faster than Windows 7 and have encountered no bugs at all.  I've been running it now for 9 months and wouldn't consider going back to Win7.  I'm not upgrading to Win10 as I don't really see any positives at this point in time.

I'm running 8.1 with LR and LR is fast and furious.  I don't see any point going to Win 10 and taking a chance.  I sometimes have a problem with Internet Explorer with 8.1 though.  Sometimes it locks up and re-loads the page.