Develop module Lightroom becomes slow while developing

[baiazitov]

Lightroom Version Number

14.1.1

Operating System

1. Windows 11

Hello everyone.
I am using Lightroom Classic subscription with Windows 11 currently. For many years, I noticed that as I start editing in Lightroom, the task manager shows that the memory usage by Adobe Lightroom classic keeps increasing, and when it reached 15 GB or so, the Lightroom becomes very sluggish. The only solution I found is to close the software, to watch how the memory usage drops to 0 GB over 10 sec or so, and only then the Lightroom disappears from the task manager. After I reopen LR, it is fast again until the same thing repeats 10-20 min later.
Does anyone know why this is happening and if this can be fixed? I can imagine there should be another mechanism for such memory cleanup. Ideally, it would do so automatically. I do not see a correlation with the CPU use, only with the Memory.
I am attaching a screenshot to illustrate what I mean.

 

[KarstenG]

Increased RAM consumption while working is a known reason for LrC to slow down.

Even swapping virtual memory to fast SSD does not really remove this problem. However, I cannot confirm 10-20 mins. For me, it's rather a matter of hours, typically. I haven't really observed this closely, but it I have the feeling that it's particularly bad if I return from a trip with hundreds of images imported and start to work on them.

 

[Gnits]

There are a whole bunch of factors which can influence poor performance. This is just some pointers and is not exhaustive.

Recent reports that saving data to xmp and synching to Lr/Web have caused issues.
Not enough free space on your system drive (10% min or 100GB min) is a regular offender.
Personally the following helped me.
1. Removing LrCatalog and related folders and files from anti virus tools. (windows)
2. Abandoning using Windows Indexing, except for Mail and OneNote.
3. Reducing the size of standard previews to 1680 pixels ( I have a 4 k screen and use left right, right, top, bottom panels most of the time). I rarely use full screen so no point in building previews bigger than I will use most of the time.

More and more basic processes in LrC are using more advanced GPU…

My customer build Windows Rig was totally ok when using a Sony A7r3, but slowed to a crawl and spinning disks when I started using a Sony A7rv with 62 megapixel files . Things improved via items 1,2,3 above but eventually got ok performance when I installed a 4070 Ti GPU , which was extremely expensive at the time. My purchase of the 4070Ti coincided with the release of the Ai based filters… and got an immediate benefit from my GPU purchase.

Any years ago… the advise was to apply sharpening and noise reduction to the last steps in an edit, as this reduces the amount of detail to be rendered with every edit applied.

There are lots of articles written about all of these and I am sure that there are other factors which I may not be familiar with.

Pay attention to your workflow when importing images, It is at this stage that your system is copying a lot of data while at the same time building previews. It is sometimes wiser to let the preview build phase finish before starting to select / develop images. This will be the time when your anti virus and indexing software will also be working hardest, coping with all heed big files just added to the system.

 

[John R Ellis]

Please do the LR menu command Help > System Info and copy/paste the entire contents here so we can see exactly which versions of hardware and software LR thinks you're running and important LR options that are set.