Possible Solution for a slow Lightroom Classic CC

nerwin · Jan 16, 2018

For a while I've been dealing with Lightroom Classic CC being extremely slow, it got to a point that it was basically unusable. Something wasn't right, I tried everything I could to fix it.

I reinstalled the application, reinstalled the OS, made sure all my drivers were up to date, etc. I went to google and did some research trying to find optimization tips to speed up Lightroom and still no avail, it was the same.

I then went to YouTube and tried to find videos exclusively on Lightroom Classic CC being slow and I came across one video that mention presets can actually make Lightroom slow, not just in the develop module, but the whole darn app. I haven't heard about presets being an issue before and so I did some further research and found a small number of posts on forums, blogs, etc about this but there isn't a whole lot of details as to why some presets can make Lightroom extremely slow and buggy, Adobe hasn't said anything officially to my knowledge about it.

One possible idea is that Lightroom apparently has to create a preview for every image for every preset.

Mind you, I didn't have many presets. 15 tops but a decent portion of them had a lot of adjustments and local adjustments that I created. I decided to just delete them all and I only kept a couple presets that I call "speed presets" that just allow me to speed up my work flow since they are often settings I apply to every image, in fact I probably could make them as an import preset.

Anyways, after deleting the heavy presets, Lightroom instantly was faster and I mean it was night and day. Everything was smoother and faster going from library to develop, using the local adjustments, going from one image to the next both in lib and dev modules whereas before it would take nearly 20 seconds and even crashed LR a few times. I also noted a slight decrease in memory usage after deleting the presets.

So there is obviously some kind of issue with Lightroom and presets that contain a lot of adjustments. So if Lightroom is being slow to you and you happen to have presets, I would experiment and back the presets up first and then delete them and see if Lightroom is faster.

Hope this helps.

Braineack · Jan 16, 2018

they need to rewrite the application from scratch (hiring competent developers this time)

nerwin · Jan 16, 2018

Braineack said:
they need to rewrite the application from scratch (hiring competent developers this time)

Yeah its needs to be rewritten. I'm not moving everything to the cloud either. I like the current LR classic the way it is.

At least I can actually use it now and it's not terribly slow anymore.

smoke665 · Jan 16, 2018

@nerwin. You might have tried this already but this helped mine tremendously

1. Edit>Preferences>Performance tab
a. Make sure Use Graphic Processor Box is NOT checked.
b. Camera Raw Cache > Maximum Cache size 30 GB at least
c. Camera RAW > Purge Cache
d. Catalog Settings>Optimize

2.If you have a mobile LR on a tablet disable it if It's trying to synch data it will really zap LR. I finally uninstalled it because it was such a pain.

As to presets, I probably have 30-40 loaded in LR with no slow down. Adobe does recognize and warn against having a large number of presets loaded, but they indicate that number is close to 2000 before it should create a problem

nerwin · Jan 16, 2018

smoke665 said:
@nerwin. You might have tried this already but this helped mine tremendously

1. Edit>Preferences>Performance tab
a. Make sure Use Graphic Processor Box is NOT checked.
b. Camera Raw Cache > Maximum Cache size 30 GB at least
c. Camera RAW > Purge Cache
d. Catalog Settings>Optimize

2.If you have a mobile LR on a tablet disable it if It's trying to synch data it will really zap LR. I finally uninstalled it because it was such a pain.

Acutally not using the GPU makes Lightroom slower for me. I guess it really depends on hardware.

I've set my raw cache to 50 gigs a while ago.

But deleting presets make the biggest difference for me.

Braineack · Jan 16, 2018

You need a new processor then.

nerwin · Jan 16, 2018

I wish I could afford a new system, but I'm broke.

But others who have top of the line CPU still experience issues with LR being slow, so I don't know what to tell you then.

I just wanted to share what worked for me in hopes that it could help someone else.

smoke665 · Jan 16, 2018

nerwin said:
Acutally not using the GPU makes Lightroom slower for me.

I tried it with it checked, and though it worked faster for a bit, it did gradually slow to a crawl. My GPU is supposedly compatible, but in reality isn't.

nerwin · Jan 16, 2018

smoke665 said:
nerwin said:

Acutally not using the GPU makes Lightroom slower for me.

Click to expand...

I tried it with it checked, and though it worked faster for a bit, it did gradually slow to a crawl. My GPU is supposedly compatible, but in reality isn't.

I noticed a difference when I installed my GTX 1060. When I had my old video card, it made no difference.

Either way, LR needs to be rewrote. It's so poorly optimized.

Braineack · Jan 17, 2018

nerwin said:
But others who have top of the line CPU still experience issues with LR being slow, so I don't know what to tell you then.

Its not about having the best CPU, it's about having the best CPU for LR. The more cores, the worse LR performs.

it's possible your GTX 1060 does a better job at single core processing than your multi-core CPU.

If youre not on a SSD drive yet, that's a must.

I swapped out a 8-core CPU, 32GB of RAM, and my MB for a 4-core CPU, 16GB of RAM, and the MB only since I went from AMD to Intel and it was the best upgrade for LR ever. It still chokes up performing things like too many spot corrections on one image, but it's at least useable now. But the key with LR is a CPU that performs very well with single-core jobs. Abode has yet to optimize LR to take advantage of mutli-core processing -- they are too busy resting on their laurels.

I was seriously falling out of love with photography because processing my images was so painful before. But I'm still considering a different application, there's no reason they should have a monopoly over workflow/processing when they do such an awful job with it, there are plenty alternatives out there, but I hate learning

nerwin · Jan 17, 2018

Braineack said:
nerwin said:

But others who have top of the line CPU still experience issues with LR being slow, so I don't know what to tell you then.

Click to expand...

Its not about having the best CPU, it's about having the best CPU for LR. The more cores, the worse LR performs.

it's possible your GTX 1060 does a better job at single core processing than your multi-core CPU.

If youre not on a SSD drive yet, that's a must.

I swapped out a 8-core CPU, 32GB of RAM, and my MB for a 4-core CPU, 16GB of RAM, and the MB only since I went from AMD to Intel and it was the best upgrade for LR ever. It still chokes up performing things like too many spot corrections on one image, but it's at least useable now. But the key with LR is a CPU that performs very well with single-core jobs. Abode has yet to optimize LR to take advantage of mutli-core processing -- they are too busy resting on their laurels.

I was seriously falling out of love with photography because processing my images was so painful before. But I'm still considering a different application, there's no reason they should have a monopoly over workflow/processing when they do such an awful job with it, there are plenty alternatives out there, but I hate learning

Of course I'm using an SSD, I got a 500gb 850 Evo. I have 4 cores overclocked to 4.3ghz. I'm also using 16gb of ram. But removing the presets made a mega difference for me. I had a couple presets that had A LOT of local adjustments like spot healing to fix sensors dust...there was like 50 of them lol and I forgot to uncheck them when I created the preset and I think might have been the cause for my issues after looking at it some more. I really gotta clean my sensor now that I think about it. Haha

Braineack · Jan 17, 2018

rofl. yeah the spot correction tool for me is a killer in LR. -- might have been the root of your issue.

nerwin · Jan 17, 2018

Braineack said:
rofl. yeah the spot correction tool for me is a killer in LR. -- might have been the root of your issue.

Lightroom is like GTA IV where even todays hardware can't even run it smoothly . It really needs to be like GTA V where its optimized to run really well even on crappy hardware. Come on Adobe!! Hire Rockstar to optimize it.

Braineack · Jan 17, 2018

their interface would be better too

affinity looks really cool as a PS replacement. Macphun will be nice to try once it's available for PC. I wanna play with ACDsee and on1.

I have a copy of Capture One, people seem to really like it, I just don't find it that intuitive.

ACD Systems - Photo Editing Management Software
Affinity Photo - Professional image editing software
ON1 – Photo Editing Apps Designed by Photographers
https://macphun.com/luminar

adamhiram · Jan 24, 2018

I read this article on Petapixel today and thought of this thread. A high end machine purpose-built to be the fastest performing Lightroom machine money can buy, and “...even with such a supremely capable machine Lightroom is still not terribly fast.”
https://petapixel.com/2018/01/24/guy-built-ultimate-lightroom-battlestation-6000/