Lightroom Lagging and Buttons Not Working

[Atticus FInch]

Hello All,

This is my first post to this forum so forgive me if I am doing anything wrong.

I'm a heavy lightroom user and recently my Lightroom has been acting weird, there were no updates or changes in my computer, just one day all these issues started.

Really it just seems like the program is operating incorrectly, I will click the brush button and it will not open the panel to edit the brush, or it will not allow me to select the actual brush on the photo I am editing. Whenever I press undo the notifications that pop up saying what was changed will begin to stack on top of each other. When I sort the photos in my feed it will take several minutes for it to actually sort according to the specifications I chose. Overall there are a number of issues that have been slowing down my whole editing process.

I have already tried upping the raw cache as well as turning off my graphics card, both solutions I read online. I do not edit an excessive amount of photos at once, usually 100-200 in a catalog at once.

If there's any suggestions you guys have I greatly appreciate it!

-Atticus

 

[clee01l]

Welcome to the forum. You do not give any specs on your machine. So, I have to guess. Generally, you can look to inadequate free space on the primary disk drive or inadequate RAM or a virus scanner as the culprit. LR uses lots of working storage. If you have a smallish SSD, you primary disk may be full and the OS is needing to access free space to create temporary files. You need at least 100GB of Freespace on the primary disk drive. Less than that and your OS will start to choke.

Next, you need a minimum of 8 GB of RAM and even with 8GB the performance will be somewhat sluggish, 16GB is better and I found a vast improvement when I went from a 16GB system to a 32 GB system.

If your CPU is dual core, LR will be slower than if you have a quad core or a cpu with a minimum of 6 cores.

Lastly, virus scanners intercede between the app and the files that the app needs. You do not need to repeatedly scan the LR catalog, the previews folder and probably not the original image files them selves. If you run an virus scanning app, exclude these from the virus scan as well as ACR cache.

Let me know if any of this seems to be your situation.

 

[Atticus FInch]

Hello Cletus,

Thank you for the prompt reply by the way.

First I have over 350 GB free on my primary disk. My computer has 16gb of RAM. I have a 2.9 GHz Intel Core i5 for a processor. And I don't have any virus scanning programs installed on my computer. The thing that confuses me is that I used to edit in Lightroom on a mac book air and I never ran into these problems. And I had been editing in this program for the longest time on this computer before this started happening.

My work flow is I keep all the files on a Lacie Rugged drive, but my catalog exists on my computer's hard drive. The drive is thunderbolt. Could that be the issue?

But also, the program seems like theres something wrong with it rather than it just running slow, like why would my buttons not work or things like that?

-Alex

 

[Gnits]

Have you tried optimising your catalog.

 

[Atticus FInch]

Hi Gnits!

I have and it still gave me the issue.

 

[Gnits]

Ok....

There is a published article by Adobe on Lr performance.... maybe you have seen it already. I will dig it up when I get back to my office.

Other efforts I have tried in the past. Not in any particular sequence.

1. Deleted all my previews and rebuild them overnight.

2. Used Export As Catalog of all my images, which has the the effect of Lr rebuilding a catalog from scratch. I did this maybe a year ago, at which time it reduced the size of my catalog and seemed to improve my situation. There are several options, writing this note on an iPad,so cannot supply details. Decide on options carefully. I was experiencing very funny behaviour in Lr, shortly after an upgrade, but others were not reporting similar issues at the time.

3. In my early days of using Lr I used the brush and filter tools a lot and would have some images with extensive amount of brush / gradient edits. These definitely slowed down Lr. I now use Lr for Global edits only and use Ps if I need to adjust pixels in any way.

4. Have you changed your sharpening or noise settings or usage pattern or defaults. I leave sharpening and noise reduction off and only apply when creating a version to print.

Items 3 and 4 suit my workflow and may not suit yours.

If I can think of anything else I will post later.

 

[clee01l]

I just noticed that your profile says LR 6.5. Some earlier versions of LR 6.x were seriously flawed. LRCC2015.6/LR6.6 was especially buggy. Make sure that you are running the latest revision LRCC2015.6.1/LR6.6.1. The latest rev seems to have corrected a lot of what has plagued LR this major version.

 

[clee01l]

My work flow is I keep all the files on a Lacie Rugged drive, but my catalog exists on my computer's hard drive. The drive is thunderbolt. Could that be the issue?...

I don't think so. I have my image files on a LaCie TB2 drive too. I do keep my most recent image (the ones that are currently being post processed) on my primary drive (a Fusion drive)

 

[Atticus FInch]

I just noticed that your profile says LR 6.5. Some earlier versions of LR 6.x were seriously flawed. LRCC2015.6/LR6.6 was especially buggy. Make sure that you are running the latest revision LRCC2015.6.1/LR6.6.1. The latest rev seems to have corrected a lot of what has plagued LR this major version.

Cletus, that was my mistake, I am running CC 2015.2.1, must have selected the wrong one this morning when I signed up, but I'm not sure if that version still had a lot of bugs and issues?

 

[Atticus FInch]

Ok....

There is a published article by Adobe on Lr performance.... maybe you have seen it already. I will dig it up when I get back to my office.

Other efforts I have tried in the past. Not in any particular sequence.

1. Deleted all my previews and rebuild them overnight.

2. Used Export As Catalog of all my images, which has the the effect of Lr rebuilding a catalog from scratch. I did this maybe a year ago, at which time it reduced the size of my catalog and seemed to improve my situation. There are several options, writing this note on an iPad,so cannot supply details. Decide on options carefully. I was experiencing very funny behaviour in Lr, shortly after an upgrade, but others were not reporting similar issues at the time.

3. In my early days of using Lr I used the brush and filter tools a lot and would have some images with extensive amount of brush / gradient edits. These definitely slowed down Lr. I now use Lr for Global edits only and use Ps if I need to adjust pixels in any way.

4. Have you changed your sharpening or noise settings or usage pattern or defaults. I leave sharpening and noise reduction off and only apply when creating a version to print.

Items 3 and 4 suit my workflow and may not suit yours.

If I can think of anything else I will post later.

I will have to try rebuilding previews, or the second option. Most of my work is for digital and internet so maybe the sharpening and noise reduction deactivation will work.

Also, it doesn't seem as if i can upgrade my lightroom, I go to the help tab in the program and the "Updates" option is greyed out.

Sadly this is a work computer and the only reason I have lightroom is because it is apart of the Creative Suite, its not a program that I use at work, there I generally use Premiere and After Effects. So when I bring it up to my tech support at work, she doesnt seem to bothered that it isnt working because I'm using it more for personal use. That also restricts me from uninstalling and reinstalling which is what I would of done first.

-Alex

 

[tspear]

Try installing a virus checker. If you never had one, and the computer performance suddenly degrades; that may be the culprit.

 

[Atticus FInch]

Try installing a virus checker. If you never had one, and the computer performance suddenly degrades; that may be the culprit.

Any suggestions for reliable ones?

 

[Johan Elzenga]

You are not approaching this methodically, and neither are the people giving you advice. You have to troubleshoot this step by step. The first question is: does this slowdown happen for everything on this computer or just Lightroom? If it is for everything, then the problem is the Mac in general, not Lightroom. It might be malware indeed (although that's still rare on the Mac). If it's just Lightroom, then forget about things like virus scanners, because that isn't the problem. If it's just Lightroom, then the next question is if it's this particular catalog, or all catalogs. Create a new catalog and see if Lightroom is still so sluggish. If it is, then the problem is Lightroom itself. Perhaps uninstalling and reinstalling will help. Resetting the preferences is certainly something to try too. If it's not, there's a problem with your existing catalog. Perhaps importing the old catalog into the new one is a solution in that case.

 

[Atticus FInch]

Well I think that I had already established that it was a program with the program Lightroom... And I have previously stated that uninstalling currently isn't an option. So apart from that, knowing that it is a problem with the program because this happens every time I use the program, as well as with every catalog. I believe they suggested the virus search because maybe the particular malware is having a certain effect on Lightroom itself. But what would you suggest apart from reinstalling because currently that is not an option for me.

 

[clee01l]

As Johan suggests, approach this methodically. Work with one one person's suggestions at a time. With many people offering scattered suggestions you are not able to test their theory when you are trying to please everyone at once. We solve problems by eliminating the possibilities one at a time.

What we have already established is that you have sufficient RAM and freespace to eliminate that as a problem. With OS X, you can get by with out a virus checker as Apple is quick to patch any holes in their OS. If you are uncomfortable with running the risk then you can install one later. I am pretty sure that your don't have an OS X specific virus. We have already established that since you do not interject a virus scanner into your work flow that a virus scanner is NOT the problem. Lets not add one and cause a new problem.

You have also eliminated the GPU as a culprit. For now make sure that you have set it to off in LR preferences.
The next step is to make sure that you are running the very latest LR version This is LRCC2015.6.1/LR6.5.1 You say that you are running CC 2015.2.1. If that is the case, then this is also a very flawed release and the cause of a lot of performance problems for a lot of people. I would also make sure that your OS X is up to date. It should be 10.11.6.

Make sure that you have done all of these things and let me know if you still have the problem. If you do, then we can talk about "next steps'.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Well I think that I had already established that it was a program with the program Lightroom... And I have previously stated that uninstalling currently isn't an option. So apart from that, knowing that it is a problem with the program because this happens every time I use the program, as well as with every catalog. I believe they suggested the virus search because maybe the particular malware is having a certain effect on Lightroom itself. But what would you suggest apart from reinstalling because currently that is not an option for me.

Apart from using a backup to reinstall? Nothing. You sound like somebody who says 'my car doesn't run anymore. Apart from filling up, what would you suggest?'. If the application is the problem, then you'll have to find a way to replace the faulty application, one way or another. If that is 'currently not an option', then perhaps there is currently not an option to solve your problem...

BTW, malware on the Mac is rare. Malware on the Mac that only affects Lightroom is even more unlikely.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

BTW, I'm a bit puzzled about your 'currently not an option'. I understand that this is a work computer, but either you are allowed to run your own applications (Lightroom) on it, or not. If you are allowed to do so, you should be able to uninstall Lightroom, download the latest test version of Lightroom 6 and install that. If you have a license, you can use your license number to change this test version to a full perpetual LR6.6.1 version. If you're not allowed to run your own applications on it, or you are not allowed to install something (and your tech guy refuses to help), then I'm afraid we won't be able to help you much. Then it does indeed become a kind of 'my car ran out of gas, but filling it up is not an option. Any other ideas?'

 

[Atticus FInch]

It seems like thats the understanding that we've come too then. I am allowed to run the programs for personal use, it more along the lines of our tech woman not wanting to put in the effort to help fix it because its not necessary to my job. Our creative cloud applications manager is also different, when I log into the program on my computer, there is no "apps" tab which is where I would be allowed to download the application again no? It just simply isn't an option to choose from because our tech team will push out all of the upgrades onto the companies computers when they want us to upgrade.

Also that question wasn't so much of "my car is out of gas, filling it up isn't an option, any other ideas" rather a "hey guys, my car is dead, any of you want to help me push it just to help me get where I am going" I understand that I can't do the main thing that needs to be done, so I was simply asking if there were any work arounds.

 

[Gnits]

If you cannot update your software then revisit my suggestions above. You have nothing to lose.

Also, consider resetting your preferences.

I also promised to follow up on some Adobe articles on performance.


How to improve and speed up Photoshop Lightroom performance

And I think this is more recent.

Suggestions to improve Lightroom performance

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Gnits, with all due respect, this is exactly what I meant. While these links give useful tips on how to speed up Lightroom in general, they do not address the issue that the OP describes. The OP describes a situation where Lightroom suddenly became extremely unresponsive. That cleary suggests a very specific problem and applying some general speed up tips, even by saying "you've got nothing to lose" does not methodically troubleshoot that problem.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

It seems like thats the understanding that we've come too then. I am allowed to run the programs for personal use, it more along the lines of our tech woman not wanting to put in the effort to help fix it because its not necessary to my job. Our creative cloud applications manager is also different, when I log into the program on my computer, there is no "apps" tab which is where I would be allowed to download the application again no? It just simply isn't an option to choose from because our tech team will push out all of the upgrades onto the companies computers when they want us to upgrade.

Also that question wasn't so much of "my car is out of gas, filling it up isn't an option, any other ideas" rather a "hey guys, my car is dead, any of you want to help me push it just to help me get where I am going" I understand that I can't do the main thing that needs to be done, so I was simply asking if there were any work arounds.

Initially, yes. But if it looks like the solution is to update, and then you still say you can't do that so please suggest something else, then it starts to resemble that car running out of gas.

Anyway, maybe you can use the stand-alone installer to update or uninstall/reinstall:

Keeping Lightroom Up-to-Date

 

[Gnits]

The OP describes a situation where Lightroom suddenly became extremely unresponsive.

The three areas which can have an immediate effect on performance are issues associated with the preferences file, previews and catalog. Why not eliminate these as potential sources of the problem ?

 

[Johan Elzenga]

The three areas which can have an immediate effect on performance are issues associated with the preferences file, previews and catalog. Why not eliminate these as potential sources of the problem ?

Because they already have been excluded. The OP said the problems occur with different catalogs, so that rules out the previews and the catalog. Resetting the preferences file has also been discussed. But most importantly because these suggestions do not address an issue as described by the OP. They address a more general slow down, not a sudden totaly unresponsive program.