Hardware upgrade suggestions to cope with D810 slowing down Lightroom?

[DickKenny]

I have been happily running Lr5.7 on a 27" iMac with 16GB internal memory and a 2.7 GHz i5 core which has coped well with RAW imports and post processing of files from (among others) a D4 and OM-D E-M1. (Roughly 80% of the HD capacity is free.) After processing, the images are transferred onto a 6 TB external (spinning) disc via a Thunderbolt cable. Currently only about 170 GB's worth being used. All well and good....until I switched cameras to a D810 importing RAW 36.2M files at 14-bit (compressed). I have not changed my preview prefs. from medium; yet the time for each to resolve on screen has lengthened to similar to that earlier taken for a 1:1 to sort itself out. Zooming one of the new large files takes even longer.

So, no complaints. What I would welcome however is any suggestions based on practical experience of where I could best apply an upgrade element to the hardware. And by best, I mean in terms of convenience as much as cost. I'm very happy with the iMac, Lr and the D810. I would just like to improve their harmonious relationship. Thanks in advance.

[Hans Kruse]

I always generate 1:1 previews when I import from the D810 and also my Canon cameras. Having a 1:1 preview I can zoom in and out instant. Editing also goes without a problem with the D810 for me on a MacBook Pro 15" 2,3Ghz i7 quad core and 16GB ram. Without 1:1 previews generating them on the fly is lengthy. So although LR does not fly with the big files I can live with it. The same when I was working with the even bigger files from the Phase One IQ160.

[PeterAit]

Windows has a utility for this, I assume Macs do also. While working, monitor your memory usage and CPU usage. If memory fills up, install more. If not, but your cores all all chugging along, you may just need a faster CPU or one with more cores. If there's a lot of disk activity, swapping a regular hard disk for a SSD will help.

[Hans Kruse]

Yes, Mac OSX has the Activity Monitor where you can see CPU utilization, memory, disk, energy and network activity by process and system. You can also see cpu utilization per core. 16GB is plenty for LR and since 10.9 OSX has builtin memory compression that works really well.

[Conner999]

- As much RAM as your system will allow
- Keep any other applications open at same time to a minimum
- Once a shoot's ingested, I'll cull any junkers obviously not even in contention at preview sizes, THEN have it generate 1:1 previews on the remainder - as I get a coffee.
- As fast working storage as you can justify