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Author Topic: Lightroom B4 on MacPro - Performance tip+question  (Read 3351 times)

Peter_Gulbinat

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Lightroom B4 on MacPro - Performance tip+question
« on: October 01, 2006, 11:09:01 am »

Hi there

I'm running Adobe Lightroom Beta 4 on OSX 10.4.8 on a MacPro 3GHz with 4 Gb RAM and 2 Raptor 150 Boot Raid (+1 500GB factory Drive +300Gb Maxtor).

Now I noticed a significant perofmance improvement running Adobe Lightroom if you move the Lightroom managed images folder away from the partition you have Lightroom installed on. I my case I have all applications installed on my boot drive (raptor striped RAID), and even though the striped RAID should be somewhat faster than my other two single drives, moving that folder off to the 500GB drive resulted in far better perceived performance in Lightroom.

Especially browsing the Picture Library (in my case 40'000 RAW and PSD files between 10Mb and 400Mb is now considerably faster. Develoing speed is pretty much the same.

As an additional information I have to say that all Images imported in Lightroom are referenced in their original location and NOT imported in the Lightroom database. This bear the advantage to be able to use large FW800 Drives for storage as your image collection grows.

One has to add that (unlike beta 3) Lightroom now creates subfolders in that "managed images folder" in much the same way as your images in their original location are organised. So unlike beta 3, this folder shoud be dedicated to Lightroom, and not contain any "original" image files that you copied there.

As to my question: I am curious to have other MacPro users impressions and experience on using Lightroom on the Intel architecture, since I must admit that I'm not blown away by the performance of the MacPro over the PowerPC Quad I had before. (I know Lightroom is still beta, but it is UB) and felt quite similar in perceived performance on my PowerPC Quad. Any comments?

Cheers
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paulbk

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Lightroom B4 on MacPro - Performance tip+question
« Reply #1 on: October 01, 2006, 12:07:21 pm »

re: Performance (my PC = XP Pro, 4G Ram, 2.4GHz AMD processor, 2 Western Digital Hard Drives)

As part of my normal configuration, I always run applications from the boot drive ©, and keep all data files (photos, etc.) on the alternate drive (D). Thus:
Lightroom runs off the C-drive, while all photo files, the Lightroom Library, and “Managed Photos” folder is on the D-drive.

Beta4 performance is borderline snappy compared to B3. Not an objective characterization, I know. An example, performance is only slightly slower than this forum via DSL w/ a measured rate of 3mb/s down.

Q - What is the Managed Photos folder?
What is it used for?
What determines whether subfolders are created?

I’ve imported many different shoots. But only 3 subfolders were created in the Managed Photos folder and I can’t see the method to the madness.

p
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paul b.k.
New England, USA

Peter_Gulbinat

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Lightroom B4 on MacPro - Performance tip+question
« Reply #2 on: October 01, 2006, 12:23:41 pm »

I don't know what triggers folder creation in the "managed photos" folder. I imported around 40 directories with varying numbers of images (psd and tif - EOS1ds files) and most folders being created in that folder are empty.

To qualify the performance. I can browse the folders in the library without any delay. scrolling down page by page is instantaneous, except for the three step process to render the thumbnail properly which takes up to 2 seconds per image, but sometimes it just does not render the thumbnail at all unless i click on the respective image. It never did that in beta3 on my PowerMac Quad. I'm at loss whether this is a beta4 issue or a performance issue or both.

what drives me mad is that lightroom never checks whether new files have been added to a given directory, so you have to add them manually

Also, I noted that never does Lightroom use all four processors to the max (Aperture does).

any comments welcome
Cheers
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john beardsworth

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Lightroom B4 on MacPro - Performance tip+question
« Reply #3 on: October 01, 2006, 12:44:08 pm »

If you import files by copying to the Lightroom library, the managed space is where they are copied to. From then on the images are shown in shoots, which correspond exactly to subfolders of the managed space. So move a file in Lightroom from one shoot to another, and the file itself moves between subfolders of the managed space. Drag one shoot under another and the same happens to the subfolders. It makes me wonder why they don't just call these shoots "managed folders"....

While this sounds neat, it only really works if you want to keep your files in that area of your system, and never want to move any of the files that are logged "by reference" in Lightroom's library. If you want to move any of these files to other locations eg a new drive, you can't do so within LR because the program has no folder tree.

Even where the managed space concept does work well, importing a "binder" of Lightroom work from another computer, it's a mystery why the program doesn't ask you where you want to store the files and then import them to the Lightroom library "by reference". Instead, they are marooned in the managed space and you then can't use LR to move them where you want on your system.

It's a new bit of code and I urge you to test it asap and post in Adobe's forums what you think of it, positive or negative - they want feedback on this feature.

John
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john beardsworth

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Lightroom B4 on MacPro - Performance tip+question
« Reply #4 on: October 01, 2006, 12:46:04 pm »

Quote
what drives me mad is that lightroom never checks whether new files have been added to a given directory, so you have to add them manually
Report this is Adobe's forums - it's important.

John
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