2.2: Exporting photos taking all my RAM!

[tryg_daddy]

I used to be able to work on other things while exporting before 2.2, but now I have to wait until lightroom 2.2 finishes an export. RAM usage peaks when completion of export reaches 5'%, and if I try to do anything else, the system is very slow.
This is a new problem.

AMD 2.5 Quad
6 GB Ram
Vista 63

 

[Katherine Mann]

RAM mismanagement

I'm curious about this ... if Lr 2.2 does not handle memory correctly for certain functions, then surely it doesn't handle memory correctly for anyone. I don't believe that the developers would release a program that works only for a very limited configuration. It isn't the same as a rogue graphics card, or even a graphics card that is widely distributed and widely popular but deemed "slow" by the cognoscenti. Memory handling is a pretty basic function of an OS and there can't be so many different paradigms. And even if there are, the various OSs and iterations of same are nothing new to developers.

If the problem is memory handling - that Lr is not letting go of RAM and reusing it but gradually eating up all the resources of the machine ... then how could this be so difficult to fix?

This leads me to believe, given that Adobe is not talking about this in public, that there is either something deeply flawed in the code that can't be fixed without extraordinary measures, or that Adobe really doesn't care that much about the many thousands of their customers who have purchased a program that doesn't work 5 months ago and are still waiting on delivery. Not enough to burn the midnight oil, and bring out a fix before they need to come up with new camera profiles for new product (which is necessary to keep increasing the user base).

I am sure that the engineers and everyone on the Adobe team are all working as hard as possible to fix the problem and I am sure that they are all great folks who care about the quality of their program. I wonder if they are getting the resources that they need from the company to actually produce a working program.

It's hard to imagine an exact analogy to this situation ... but what if Dell announced a terrific computer with a slew of features that we all wanted - say a guaranteed colour management system that allowed you to have absolute confidence in your monitor calibration and print matching, all automatically, without any user intervention? The perfect printing system? And you bought it in July, and your prints are all pink and your OS crashed after about 3' minutes of production work ... and thousands of others were in the same boat. Dell updates the program, new problems arise, people who were fine before are now not able to use the program. Dell afficianados appear on their U2U forums and tell people that the problem is probably themselves rather than the machine ... all to deafening silence from Dell. It would be a scandal. I don't think Dell shareholders would be very pleased.

Or indeed - what if it were Photoshop that performed in the same way as Lightroom? I don't think Ps users could afford to take a holiday from serious work for five months while they wait for Adobe to fix the program. They would not. I don't believe that Adobe would allow the situation to continue.

So, is Lr not important enough? Why was 2 released when it was obviously not ready for production? I hate to think that the infusion of revenue from upgraders was more important than the market readiness of the product, that we have come to a point where product is released whether it is ready of not, in order to comply with an upgrade cycle that has nothing to do with productivity and everything to do with money. But I'm beginning to wonder.

Lr might be cutting edge software and still in its early stages but neither of these things is excuse for a program that is essentially useless. It isn't cheap - this isn't some 79 dollar shareware.

I know that it is not a particularly popular move to be critical of Adobe. Even people who are completely reasonable in their expectations of the thing are shot down for suggesting that the situation is ridiculous. I was trashed on U2U for daring to call the program useless. I think there is a tendency to silence the complaints on that forum. Some people think that being aggressive and rude makes them look powerful I guess.

I just think that I would love to use Lr. It didn't work on my desktop and it barely worked on the laptop. Now it doesn't work on the laptop.

 

[Brad Snyder]

Well said, Katherine. Having poured several thousand hours of my time into this product, from three or four different directions, I find myself very much like your Grandmother. "I'm disappointed."

I have no doubt the current problem(s) and fixes were identified shortly after the first bug reports, and are working their way thru Adobe's software release process. When, where, what, how, who? Who knows?

That said, I still find the alternatives sorely lacking, as well. Like a sports fan hanging in during a team slump, I'm keeping the faith. I find it difficult to bet against Adobe in this market space.

But, yes I do understand how you feel. (At least on this topic).

I don't think anyone here at these forums considers reasoned, well stated constructive criticism to be out of bounds. We don't appreciate the mindless, content-free, 'insult-comic' bashing one encounters in other venues, but I'd have to say that comes more from a sense of impatience with the wasted time and bandwidth, as opposed to some sort of outraged knee-jerk chauvinism.

My own personal opinions, not speaking on behalf of the forum.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Yeah, I understand how you feel Katherine. I think many of us are frustrated with the current problems - and I'm guessing the engineers are probably just as frustrated at this point.

Adobe haven't been entirely silent on the memory issues - there are some Adobe posts on the U2U in reply - but it's certainly bad timing for the holidays!!!

It's that constant battle of engineers vs marketing dept, but I certainly hope that they make sure 2.3 goes out a little more smoothly. Timescales are always tight because of fitting in with the ACR camera update schedules.

Looking at the list of bug fixes that they now publish openly with each release (which is pretty rare for a software company), they are obviously working their way through the bugs, but unfortunately it's not an exact science, and you can break some things while fixing others. Problem is, the big ones keep getting broken!!!

 

[billg71]

Just an update:

I sat down for a while tonight for my first real session with 2.2, going through about 25' photos from the D3'' for selection, edits and adding to a new collection. About halfway through I was working on an image that I did some brush corrections on with Auto Mask enabled, by the time I got to sharpening I noticed my mouse cursor disappeared when I clicked on a slider and the sliders were very sticky. I opened task manager and found LR was using over 3G of memory, total usage a little over 4G.

Funny thing, the desktop has 8G installed, LR System Info shows over 7G available but the program was futzing up while using only 3G.....

Tried minimizing LR, no change. Closed it and restarted and finished the session with no problems but memory usage was creeping back up.

I just found it a bit strange that LR was acting up while there was still plenty of system RAM available, I could bring up CS4, Firefox, and Thunderbird with no problems while LR was choking....

Like I said, just some more info. I really don't want to lose support for my LX3 so I'll stick with 2.2 for a while, fortunately I don't have any big shoots coming up. But I can see how this could be a major PITA to someone who's trying to process a major shoot, especially if they depended on it for their livelihood. This really needs to get fixed, and FAST! :shock:

Personally, I'd have been a lot happier with soft-proofing in LR2 and leave all this brush stuff in Photoshop where it belongs, but that's just me....

Bill

 

[quantum]

"leave all the brush stuff to photoshop" ...Hear, Hear

I've long held the opinion that LR should make sure it did the simple things well first.
What I wanted from LR was primarily a DAM system with RAW conversion capablities.
I'm a wedding photographer and need to process hundreds of images quickly. For me I have been extremely dissapointed with the browsing of thumbnails and previews. It makes your eyes go wobbly scrolling through a set of photos when it takes a couple of seconds for them to sharpen. I mean come on guys. Basic stuff that doesn't happen with Aperture. I applaud Adobe for the ideas of all these tools but... the userbility of the program (including memory leaks) should have been fixed before adding more features.
Oh yeah and what about the option for more keywords.....
I've had crashes, slow ups and upside down memory messages from the first version. Sometimes these go away, but then they are back. So frustrating.
So how about it Adobe? Can we please get back to the core functions as I understand them?
John

 

[jpc]

I spent quite a bit of time exporting and using the local adjustments brush over the weekend. It does indeed crash, use all 4GB of my RAM and display "unknown error" messages when rendering previews. However, it does seem to retain all of my adjustments after the crash, so at least the catalog file isn't being corrupted! Could be worse...

 

[Katherine Mann]

Count me on the side of making sure the DAM is rock solid and the RAW processing top notch. Ps does the rest.

I expect that Lr will be wonderful when it gets sorted out, but still I think Ps will be my photo editor of choice as it is so powerful. Perhaps I can't selectively paint in things that the adjustment brush purports to paint.

I suppose that the way things will go is that Lr will become more and more powerful and sophisticated as time goes on. I wonder how this will parallel Ps and how these two will begin to bump into one another. I can see an argument for merging the two in the future and I can see the meltdowns now.

And all I wanted was a DAM RAW processor.