is 4.0 slow or is it just me?

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liquidmonkey

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was using LR 3.something and then switched to 4.0.
things were a bit slow but i thought it might be my PC as things in general were getting bogged down (had not done reinstall in 2 years).
so did a reinstall but this time on a SSD :) and thought, now its gonna blaze along...

nope. LR4.0 is still slow, especially when in the develop mode.
i'm quite bummed out as my system is quite good and with the new SSD i was expecting super fast results.


so is it just me?
 
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Welcome Dan. What a great first post!
 
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Hi Victoria, thanks for the welcome!

I forgot to mention that some of the info about nvidia drivers (disabling 3d vision for instance) I've found searching google. I think it was a post on flicker that mentioned it. So, basically I've just put a few things together, no more than that. Also, there are some tips on the web to set nvidia's drivers in performance mode in nvidia control panel or to add a profile for lightroom in which to disable most of the options. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to have an effect, best thing to do is to disable 3d vision and maybe re-enable it later -- seems to work. I cannot confirm that re-enabling works properly since I don't have goggles, but it would be nice if someone can confirm this.
 
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Hi, I am sharing my experiences for the good of the collective.

Machine
i7 2600K running at 4.5Ghz, ~50 C at full load
GA Z68X-UD3R-B3 MB. All non essential services are off.
8GB of Ripjaws Z 2133 ram with improved timmings. I had 16 but removed it to increase net speed and reduce potential errors.
256 GB Samsung 830 SSD.
2 x Gigabyte Radeon 6850 HD in x-fire (yes I tried only one of them too)
Windows 7 64 bit.
Dell U2711. image view constrained by increasing size of application menus etc.

ALSO:
MBP i5 2.5GHz late 2009 model. 8GB Ram

Basically I have tweaked everything that can be tweaked and squeezed every ounce of performance that I am able to out of my machine and it benchmarks pretty high.

However, every time I try to use the noise slider, I get a slowdown and the application becomes sluggish about 2 seconds between noise slider movement and reaction. I spent a while trying to see where the issue was and several hundred dollars on cooling and better RAM and SSD to try and get things faster, no luck. After some stuffing around I noticed that the noise sliders were better (~.5 second, I can live with) as long as nothing else in the dev module was touched, specifically the shadow, highlight and clarity adjustments. Having any one of these or combination of them set to as little as +/-1 point caused the noise sliders to behave very badly. Subsequent edits became painful as the expected effect of noise suppression took its toll (I do noise last anyway so subsequent edits are less of an issue).

I also notice that thread/cpu utilisation was quite surprising, I only have 6 cores operating during a noise adjustment and my net cpu usage does not go above 40%, even with thread priority set to high. Interestingly my core usage improves slightly if I clamp the core multiplier at 45 (i.e get rid of speedstepping etc).

I have spoken to others who do have similar problems (another i2600K user) and others who don't - they seem to be i3770 users on Asus Z77 boards but again this is anecdotal. Im not comfortable enough in that statement to spend my own money so neither should a reader of this post. HOWEVER, it may be a useful starting point and at least may help people ascertain the existence of a specific bug more scientifically...

Hope this helps and looking for some help back,
Desperately,
Ben
 
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With so many people claiming such variable results, it has to be some interaction at hardware level thats being exacerbated by a code issue.

What would be extremely helpful for all concerned, especially adobe team is if we could all start detailing what our hardware platform is, not just i7 on Z68 but tell us what your board model and revision is what your cpu specifically is, even stepping number may help. Its really hard to nail a bug if you cant see it.

Also not sure what happened to my original post which detailed my specs and experiences....lol??

[Mod Note: Welcome to the forums! Original Post was stuck in moderation. Don't know why, usually we moderate new members with <10 posts, with a link included, as an antispam measure]
 
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I just installed Lightroom 4.3 RC this afternoon and have found an appreciative difference in the speed of the program. Perhaps I had just messed it up in 4.2, but I'm much happier now.
 
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Welcome to the forum Ben. I've noted some issues with noise reduction too, although not to that degree.
 
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I've been playing around with this for the last couple of days.

To be honest, I am generally quite happy with the performance of my system running LR4, albeit there are a couple of areas where it is noticeably slower than LR3 (though we have sort of been conditioned to expect that, because of the differnces brought about with PV2012). Like Bob Frost reported in response to one of your posts in the "slow performance" thread on the U2U site, I've also been doing some comparison tests using the more cpu-intensive tasks (render 1:1 previews, exports), and can confirm his findings there, i.e. the more processing applied to images, the longer those tasks take, sometimes significantly so. Interestingly, and this is specific to the 4.3RC only, turning OFF hyper-threading returned quicker times than with it enabled.....on all previous releases, having HT enabled always resulted in slightly better timings.

But returning to the specific issue of applying luminance NR, I can confirm your findings almost exactly, i.e. after applying certain edits (clarity, highlights, shadows for sure) there's then a noticeable 'lag' when applying luminance NR (almost 2 seconds sometimes). I hadn't really noticed it before (not been needing NR recently), although there does seem to have been one improvement in that AFTER applying NR there is no lag when going back to apply further develop adjustments (in previous versions some of the sliders got a little 'sticky' after applying NR, but not so much now).

This issue with NR seems entirely related to PV2012.....if I take an image back to PV2010 within LR4.3 the NR lag disappears.

Bottom line, I really don't think there's an issue with your system if this is the only performance problem you are experiencing......I think it's a programming issue which hopefully is being addressed.
 
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bmphoto said:
Hi, thanks. Can you quantify the degree to which you have seen it?
Click to expand...

My tests around noise reduction have primarily been around image to image switching time, from the time you select the photo to the time the sliders are available. I noted that it was fastest at luminance 0 and color 25. Luminance 0 and color 0 were actually worse. And higher values were significantly slower. Even PV2010 in LR4 is slower than PV2010 in LR3 on that too.
 
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Jim,
Ace, thanks. This is probably the most encouraging post IO have received so far. It is putting the brakes on the purchase of a new MB/CPU combination. I had assumed that there are fewer dissatisfied customers than satisfied ones and on that basis it would be worth rolling the dice on new hardware.

Your test along with information from others is making me reconsider. Essentially all the others that I have spoken to either dont shoot in the same dark and stinky conditions that I do or dony have high mp cameras and so don't have the noise issue.

I have now poted this as a bug for the adobe team. I would be interested to hear if any other users here have experienced (exactly) the same thing or not.

Thanks heaps.
Ben


TNG said:
I've been playing around with this for the last couple of days.

To be honest, I am generally quite happy with the performance of my system running LR4, albeit there are a couple of areas where it is noticeably slower than LR3 (though we have sort of been conditioned to expect that, because of the differnces brought about with PV2012). Like Bob Frost reported in response to one of your posts in the "slow performance" thread on the U2U site, I've also been doing some comparison tests using the more cpu-intensive tasks (render 1:1 previews, exports), and can confirm his findings there, i.e. the more processing applied to images, the longer those tasks take, sometimes significantly so. Interestingly, and this is specific to the 4.3RC only, turning OFF hyper-threading returned quicker times than with it enabled.....on all previous releases, having HT enabled always resulted in slightly better timings.

But returning to the specific issue of applying luminance NR, I can confirm your findings almost exactly, i.e. after applying certain edits (clarity, highlights, shadows for sure) there's then a noticeable 'lag' when applying luminance NR (almost 2 seconds sometimes). I hadn't really noticed it before (not been needing NR recently), although there does seem to have been one improvement in that AFTER applying NR there is no lag when going back to apply further develop adjustments (in previous versions some of the sliders got a little 'sticky' after applying NR, but not so much now).

This issue with NR seems entirely related to PV2012.....if I take an image back to PV2010 within LR4.3 the NR lag disappears.

Bottom line, I really don't think there's an issue with your system if this is the only performance problem you are experiencing......I think it's a programming issue which hopefully is being addressed.
Click to expand...
 
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I have recently upgraded to LR4.2 and installed Windows 8 at the same time and although have not noticed Lightroom being slow the Nik Software plugins have been very jerky and slow and I also noticed the fonts looked different too..which all puzzled me as I was using the same version of the Nik plugins in LR 3.6.

After reading Dans post about the nVidia card I looked at the control panel and although my older card does not have the 3D vision he describes it does have 3D settings which I have disabled and lo and behold the Nik Software is back to the same as it was before.

I have noticed some of the Windows Icons looking a bit flat since taking away the 3D but I think I can live with that as long as nothing else will be detrimentally affected..
So a big thanks to Dan and to this great forum that always seems to have the answers!!
 
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Follow up on previous posts. I've loaded the Lightroom release candidate 4.3 and can say that it is a noticable improvement over v 4.2 in the develop module with the sluggish performance.

As for previous issues I discovered with conversions to DNG files, I've found that converting to DNG 4.6 or better compatibility seems to have the best overall results with lightroom not grinding to a halt after more then 400 conversions (version 4.2) Version 4.3 RC seem to not grind to a halt at all now.

Another issue I've investigated and this didn't occur to me until recently, anti-virus software. I've found that using Bit-defender anti-virus will definately give you a performance hit using Lightroom. I tried the free stuff, AVG,Avast, Avira (why do these all start with A?) etc..., and they all work better in combination with Lightroom than Bit-Defender. The best results I've obtained with anti-virus software and Lightroom performance is by using Microsoft Security Essentials and the MS AV tools, so I'm sticking with that for now.

I would say that by switching to MS Anti-virus protection, running LR 4.3 RC and upgrading the Video Card, I've managed to double the performance of LR on my i5 Core / 16Gig memory PC. Plus the issues I've had regarding conversion to DNG files from RAW seem to be resolved with 4.3 RC.

Gary
 
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@lovestruck: glad that this helped you :). it seems that nvidia drivers are buggy to some degree. I (still) hope that lightroom 5 will have CUDA/OpenCL support...

@Gary Gray: I think you can add exceptions to antivirus software so it won't bother the system too much. I've added .cr2 and other raw extensions to exception list in bitdefender and it performs a little bit faster. But since my license is gonna expire soon, I might give MS Anti-virus a run. Thanks for trying and sharing different solutions, it really means a lot!
 
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That's really helpful to hear Gary, thanks.
 
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I did not experience performance issues until the latest update to 4.2. Now everything seems to crawl, and I have a new "honkin'" box with 16 GB of RAM and Intel i7 with 8 processors. I also recently installed BitDefender and things got worse.

@Gary: Thanks for the heads-up. I should have thought to add everything involving Lightroom as an exclusion. That helped quite a bit.

Now if I can just get around my export to a catalog crash problem... :p

Regards,
Rob
 
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These comments make me wonder how to set the virus protection software I have ( Norton Internet Security) to optimize LR 4.
Is this a topic for the adobe forum? or a new thread?
Jim
 
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I'd exclude at least the catalog, the previews and ideally the photos too. I assume things like cache and program files are excluded by default?
 
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Well, this thread was a bit of a revelation. It was taking me around 10 seconds to move from one image to the next in develop, so I cleared the ACR and Video cache and there was a startling performance improvement, down to about about 1 second, most of the time (but far from always). However, it is obvious that something is wrong in the code (even in 4.3) as it is going wrong. Even before I cleared the caches (and afterwards) the 1:1 view on monitor 2 gets stuck in an intermediate resolution (or perhaps I means it stops the progressive refinement), what I mean is that the image is at the correct size but is not at the correct resolution, the pixelation is partially smoothed but not fully. No amount of waiting fixes this. Changing to 1:2 and back to 1:1 fixes it immediately, but switching images or exiting and re-starting LR does not. I would say that the image caching algorithm Adobe is using isn't working properly, but I am only guessing. Why LR doesn't use more RAM I don't know, there is plenty spare. Anyway I joined to asked a question which I will try to post in the right forum.
 
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Hi there!

I'm looking to upgrade my PC for better work with Lightroom 4 v4.3 and Lightroom 5, who knows when. I'm shooting only uncompressed 16-bit Nikon D700 RAW's. I'm not making a living out of photography, but it's my biggest passion and I'm looking to make an investment that would close this tech circle I'm into right now. I have an old system that can't keep up with Lightroom 4, to the point that it has become frustrating to edit.
I kinda blazed through this thread, looking for feedback from users with a similar setup to what I have in my wishlist:
CPU: Intel i7 3770
Memory: 16GB RAM
HDD: something with 64MB Cache & 7200RPM
SSD: Samsung 840 250GB

After talking with some IT guys, it came to question whether I really need and i7, as I can go for the much cheaper i5 3570k, overclock it and save some money.

Does anyone know how much bang for the buck can the i7 deliver vs. the i5 3570k in Lightroom 4?

Very much appreciated, and sorry if I'm going offtopic, but I didn't want to create a new one.
 
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Anecdotal, my i7 8 gig memory laptop benchmarks roughly the same as my i5 16 gig memory desktop. I think a better video card will provide a more noticeable performance boost than the different processor. The i7 has a better cache and more cores for hyperthreading. What that adds up to in the real world is very little from what I've seen using photoshop, lightroom and other video applications.
 
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