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Author Topic: LR2 performance hell  (Read 14834 times)

Pindy

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LR2 performance hell
« on: November 16, 2008, 11:39:00 pm »

I have seen in every review and forum, including this one, that LR2 improves its speed over v1.4, but I'm finding the overall speed is about 50% of what it was in v1.4 on both my MacBook Pro (dual 2.16, 2GB RAM, 10.5.5 and intel iMac 24" dual 2.4, 4GB RAM, 10.5.5). Scrolling can be measured with a calendar and switching between modules (usually Grid or Loupe to Develop) takes around 6 seconds.

This is both in my main catalog, which has a little over 10,000 photos and in a couple of temporary catalogs that have between 5 and 200 photos, which, to be fair, aren't as bad. Since I experience bad performance on two different machines using the same catalogs, I'm at a loss to find a cause. I thought a clean install might help, if there was anything legacy from 1.x in the chain. What would be the best practice vis-à-vis performance?
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Victoria Bampton

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LR2 performance hell
« Reply #1 on: November 17, 2008, 09:13:44 am »

2.0 or 2.1?
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Pindy

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LR2 performance hell
« Reply #2 on: November 17, 2008, 04:42:41 pm »

Quote from: Victoria Bampton
2.0 or 2.1?

2.1. I didn't actually notice any difference between 2.0, 2.1rc1 and 2.1 with respect to performance. Bug fixes? yes indeed.

I cannot find an uninstall command in the installer nor in the notes and I would be open to trying that. I should also add that on the 24" iMac, I have 64-bit enabled. LR 1.x just flew on these machines so I figure something's impeding the performance. Jeff Schewe's main library is something like over 56,000 photos and I'm not close to that.
« Last Edit: November 17, 2008, 05:02:43 pm by Pindy »
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Victoria Bampton

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« Reply #3 on: November 17, 2008, 05:34:04 pm »

Try turning off 64-bit - with only 4gb of RAM, that could be bogging it down.
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rdonson

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LR2 performance hell
« Reply #4 on: November 17, 2008, 08:43:24 pm »

If Victoria's suggestion doesn't work try optimizing the catalog.  I don't know about Mac OS but this often provides a performance boost for me on Windoze.
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Nat Coalson

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LR2 performance hell
« Reply #5 on: November 17, 2008, 10:22:48 pm »

You shouldn't have to live with this; it sounds like Lightroom is fighting with other processes on your system. Clearly, the catalog size is not the issue; some other ideas:

1. Make sure the LR pref for Auto Saving XMP is OFF. Auto Save XMP is a disaster waiting to happen; save out your metadata manually and frequently.

2. Take a look at whether LR performance varies with other apps running. Especially stuff running in the background, like anti-virus etc.

3. Leave plenty of free disk space on all drives LR knows about, including system disk (at least 20% at all times).

4. Clear the ACR cache through Bridge.

5. Check hardware (like RAM) for performance/failure condition and verify all settings for drivers and hardware controllers. For example, Open GL settings on various video cards have been reported to cause problems (but not on Mac).

...With the above in mind, it could be that Lightroom is having trouble generating previews. That can always bring performance to a crawl. Check all the preview status and prefs; delete previews and see if that makes a difference.

Since you're having the same problem with both machines it seems to me like it's a software config that's similar between the two, and not hardware. And not LR. Could be a set of files (a folder or collection) that is wonky and can't resolve the necessary operations.

Although it would appear that LR is misbehaving, I think it's much more likely that there is some other system-level process that is interfering.

Try both 64-bit and 32-bit. I don't expect you will see a difference.

I always pay close attention to the performance problems that others report; I have had none. OS X... XP... Vista, shouldn't matter. Properly configured, LR 2.1 can fly on all kinds of systems.

Find a way to determine the cause of the problem and I believe you should expect to be completely satisfied with LR's performance. If it's not a LR pref; it's a system or software setting elsewhere.

...One final thought - for years, working in prepress, I was plagued by what might seem the most benign of troubles - corrupt system fonts.

If you're having inexplicable trouble be prepared to examine absolutely everything.

A while back I made a post on my blog about LR performance; might be worth a fresh look.
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Pindy

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LR2 performance hell
« Reply #6 on: November 18, 2008, 05:58:35 pm »

This'll take me a wee while to read through again and check but many thanks for you encouragement. Stay tuned.
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Pindy

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« Reply #7 on: November 22, 2008, 12:42:41 am »

Quote from: Nat Coalson
1. Make sure the LR pref for Auto Saving XMP is OFF. Auto Save XMP is a disaster waiting to happen; save out your metadata manually and frequently.

this has been off.

Quote
2. Take a look at whether LR performance varies with other apps running. Especially stuff running in the background, like anti-virus etc.

I typically close everything else and the only things with background processes are things like my Kensington mouse driver and that kind of thing. With the Activity Monitor open, none of these things show more than 0.1% of processor time.

Quote
3. Leave plenty of free disk space on all drives LR knows about, including system disk (at least 20% at all times).

Laptop: 50-90 GB at all times. iMac: over 200GB. I sure with this was the answer!

Quote
4. Clear the ACR cache through Bridge.

Can't I do this through Lightroom? Just did and will report back.

Quote
5. Check hardware (like RAM) for performance/failure condition and verify all settings for drivers and hardware controllers. For example, Open GL settings on various video cards have been reported to cause problems (but not on Mac).

RAM appears fine. Not sure if the video card settings have anything to do with it, as I don't have any installed. I think it's an ATI chip in the iMac.

Will reply on the other items shortly.
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Pindy

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LR2 performance hell
« Reply #8 on: November 26, 2008, 12:41:03 am »

Okay, I threw out the previews file and started LR. I imported about 200 shots from a card and ever since the import finished, activity monitor shows LR pegging during simple tasks like moving through the loupe mode. If I leave it alone, it spends half the time between 130-185% CPU. The fan has gone on the MacBook Pro. I even quit and relaunched. This is so not cool. There is nothing else running and no competition in the activity monitor. Something is making LR very busy, even though the activity bar shows NOTHING.
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Pindy

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« Reply #9 on: November 26, 2008, 12:48:05 am »

Quote from: Nat Coalson
5. Check hardware (like RAM) for performance/failure condition and verify all settings for drivers and hardware controllers. For example, Open GL settings on various video cards have been reported to cause problems (but not on Mac).

Did Memtest OSX today. All passed.

Quote
...With the above in mind, it could be that Lightroom is having trouble generating previews. That can always bring performance to a crawl. Check all the preview status and prefs; delete previews and see if that makes a difference.

I set to minimal and deleted previews file.

Still looking. I just optimized as well. Prefs next?
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ajtaylor

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« Reply #10 on: November 26, 2008, 03:32:57 am »

Quote from: Pindy
Okay, I threw out the previews file and started LR. I imported about 200 shots from a card and ever since the import finished, activity monitor shows LR pegging during simple tasks like moving through the loupe mode. If I leave it alone, it spends half the time between 130-185% CPU. The fan has gone on the MacBook Pro. I even quit and relaunched. This is so not cool. There is nothing else running and no competition in the activity monitor. Something is making LR very busy, even though the activity bar shows NOTHING.

I'm probably teaching you to suck eggs - but your comment "since the import finished" could mean 2 things ; either you mean literally, the images have just imported, or the images have imported and the previews have been built by LR. Which is it? If it's only the former, then LR will still be trying to build the previews, which explains the CPU usage. If it's the latter, then we're looking at a different problem.
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Pindy

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LR2 performance hell
« Reply #11 on: November 26, 2008, 12:26:20 pm »

Quote from: ajtaylor
I'm probably teaching you to suck eggs - but your comment "since the import finished" could mean 2 things ; either you mean literally, the images have just imported, or the images have imported and the previews have been built by LR. Which is it? If it's only the former, then LR will still be trying to build the previews, which explains the CPU usage. If it's the latter, then we're looking at a different problem.

I wasn't careful enough to differentiate. There was ZERO activity in LR's busy-meter, having had written minimal previews immediately after import. I'm talking about the 30-minutes post-import, post-preview generation, including having restarted! I removed all items (save for LaunchBar) from my Login Items, though to be fair, the 6 or so Login Items weren't taking up any appreciable CPU time in the Activity Monitor.

Thanks again
« Last Edit: November 26, 2008, 12:26:56 pm by Pindy »
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ajtaylor

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« Reply #12 on: November 30, 2008, 03:50:15 am »

Quote from: Pindy
I wasn't careful enough to differentiate. There was ZERO activity in LR's busy-meter, having had written minimal previews immediately after import. I'm talking about the 30-minutes post-import, post-preview generation, including having restarted! I removed all items (save for LaunchBar) from my Login Items, though to be fair, the 6 or so Login Items weren't taking up any appreciable CPU time in the Activity Monitor.

Thanks again

That is odd.

If you're comfortable with the command line and have some understanding of coding, then you might want to check out two handy utils (assuming you're on 10.5) - dtruss and fs_usage

If you can find the process id of Lightroom (ps or top should show you), then you can use dtruss to find out what it's doing (from a system calls point of view). fs_usage will tell you what's accessing what on the file system too. Caution - dtruss will probably generate a lot of output.

Might be time to call Adobe and ask for their help.

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Pindy

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LR2 performance hell
« Reply #13 on: December 05, 2008, 01:12:50 pm »

Tried running same catalog/same drive on my Mac Pro. It was hugely better performance, though the adjustment brush is still prone to SWODs and delays. Not sure exactly where I stand on this issue, but it helps to get this perspective.
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marc

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LR2 performance hell
« Reply #14 on: December 05, 2008, 02:58:26 pm »

I can't be of any help here, but I have a somewhat related question..

I read that rendering previews will speed things up. That makes sense (I'm used to Iview MediaPro which is so much faster at scrolling through images because they're all rendered to small jpegs), but what is 'standard sized' previews? Since I can change thumbnail sizes with the slider I'm not sure which is standard.. also, since I like varying thumbnail sizes like that I would need a way to easily get back to whatever was the standard size so that no on-the-fly rendering is necessary when I want to scroll through quickly.
« Last Edit: December 05, 2008, 02:59:20 pm by marc »
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Victoria Bampton

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LR2 performance hell
« Reply #15 on: December 07, 2008, 04:35:02 am »

Quote from: marc
I read that rendering previews will speed things up. That makes sense (I'm used to Iview MediaPro which is so much faster at scrolling through images because they're all rendered to small jpegs), but what is 'standard sized' previews? Since I can change thumbnail sizes with the slider I'm not sure which is standard.. also, since I like varying thumbnail sizes like that I would need a way to easily get back to whatever was the standard size so that no on-the-fly rendering is necessary when I want to scroll through quickly.

'Standard size' is whatever size you set in preferences.  1440 pixels along the longest edge by default.  Having rendered that, the on-the-fly rendering to the different thumbnail sizes is much quicker.
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dchew

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LR2 performance hell
« Reply #16 on: December 07, 2008, 07:07:29 am »

Quote from: Pindy
I cannot find an uninstall command in the installer nor in the notes and I would be open to trying that.

Have you uninstalled 1.4?  That made a significant difference for me. See this thread here.  

While that thread is about v2.0, it's worth uninstalling previous versions to see what that does.  I'm on a PC so I can't help you with finding the uninstall command.

Dave Chew
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Pindy

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« Reply #17 on: December 07, 2008, 11:19:05 am »

Quote from: dchew
Have you uninstalled 1.4?  That made a significant difference for me. See this thread here.  

While that thread is about v2.0, it's worth uninstalling previous versions to see what that does.  I'm on a PC so I can't help you with finding the uninstall command.

Dave Chew

I think "uninstalling" means deleting the LR 1.4 application. The installation process is simply to copy the app from the disk image or CD and it creates a handful of folders and files in ~/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom.

I have App Zapper, so I can try to see if it finds all the support files it created. But otherwise, the installation on the Mac is so simple, I don't know what could have been left behind other than the odd pref file. I think today I will uninstall any and all LR files and start from scratch. My main catalog lives with the media on a portable drive so it's "hotel-able".
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francois

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LR2 performance hell
« Reply #18 on: December 07, 2008, 11:55:44 am »

Quote from: Pindy
I think "uninstalling" means deleting the LR 1.4 application. The installation process is simply to copy the app from the disk image or CD and it creates a handful of folders and files in ~/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom.

I have App Zapper, so I can try to see if it finds all the support files it created. But otherwise, the installation on the Mac is so simple, I don't know what could have been left behind other than the odd pref file. I think today I will uninstall any and all LR files and start from scratch. My main catalog lives with the media on a portable drive so it's "hotel-able".
Correct, on a Mac, just drag the Lightrom 1.4 icon to the trash. Have you tried to move your library to another hard drive to see if it would improve the performance?
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Francois

Pindy

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LR2 performance hell
« Reply #19 on: December 07, 2008, 02:01:31 pm »

Quote from: francois
Correct, on a Mac, just drag the Lightrom 1.4 icon to the trash. Have you tried to move your library to another hard drive to see if it would improve the performance?

That's my next step.
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