LR 3 beta 2 remains painfully slow/unstable on my machine. Perhaps I'm a fool for tolerating it but still, it's making this project happen and fortunately I'm almost through (whew!).
My machine is several years old but it's fairly fast (3.4 GHz P4, NVidia GeForce 66'', 4GB fast SDRAM). It's not only unstable in Develop for luminance NR but also for practically everything else. Luminance is much less stable, though. No instability problems with any other apps so I think the system is reliable.
As a work-around for the NR issue, I proceed through my workflow and do NR last. If I need to make later changes, I disable NR, make the changes, and remember to re-enable NR. That helps a lot and causes fewer crashes. But it's still terribly slow and locks up sometimes. Haven't lost data but I back up my catalog regularly. I always shut down other apps while using it. In zoomed views (when it's not acting up) the NR slider works more-or-less instantly. In fit view, however, it typically locks up the machine for 1'-3' seconds. And every time I make additional changes to anything (crop, etc) it take 1'-3' seconds to respond. This is typical behavior so you see why I disable NR. But even with out NR, this kind of thing does happen, but only every few minutes rather than every time.
Here are some typical symptoms I get working with Develop for Beta 2 (not Beta 1):
* Extremely sluggish working with many controls. Undo can take 1'-3' seconds per step, including history. Much worse with NR in the history
* Can take 1'-3' seconds to go from Develop to Library
* As it really starts to act up in Develop, the main app window banner flashes for 5-1' seconds at a time as it's rendering images. Sometimes the text info overlay in upper left corner of image flashes as a white box
* Graphic artifacts on the screen from text info overlay. The text becomes superimposed on the leftmost panel. This stays permanently stuck on the screen on top of anything that would appear there (ie Library panels, etc). It remain superimposed on the screen permanently (right on the windows desktop), thus covering all apps like graffiti.
* Exporting is impractical because 2'% of the image files are written with no data (' KB length). This includes files where absolutely nothing was done in Developer. I see no reason why LR should barf on these. Perhaps it locks up trying to render previous files. Anyone else have problems exporting?
* Slideshow typically crashes the machine after 2-3 minutes. I haven't related it yet to images that use NR. The machine continues working in the background (I see the drive light blinking) but the windows cursor freezes and it never recovers (I must physically power down the computer). Seems funny that LR's slideshow even displays the cursor during a slideshow (shouldn't it disappear?)
* Other, possibly unrelated to NR: the Crop Aspect ratios sometimes wrong. For ex, 5x7 can be something random. I must exit and restart LR to fix it. Also, sometimes crashes hard in Library when I change sort options (like sort by Label Color).
I've been using LR 3 beta for 8+ hours a day for the past few weeks. I hope the final release remains backwards compatible as I've made a large investment. When I started this project with LR 3 beta 1, it was reasonably fast for me and no significant performance/reliability problems. LR 3 beta 2 is horrific. I can't regress to Beta 1 at this point, especially since I've integrated luminance NR into my workflow.
LR 3 is slow for me in the Library, too. This may be related to so many images using NR, I dunno. The more images in a collection, the slower it is. For collections with over 1'' images, it's dog slow. To merely select an image takes 2-3 seconds. So routinely working with the Library wastes a huge amount of my day. Do other people have such a painfully slow experience with LR 3 Beta 2? I don't think Beta 1 was this slow.
BTW, when LR crashes in XP and you click "report" in the error dialog box, does this report actually go to the beta team at Adobe? Or in Microsoft's circular file?
One more thing, LR won't give any indication it's "processing" normally. How the heck are user's supposed to know when the app is busy? Most apps have a progress bar or hourglass cursor. With LR, you just have to wait and wait and take it on faith that subtle changes have been rendered. I've had some success with the XP Task Manager (CPU %) but it's not very practical. What do other people do?
Anyone know if Adobe's LR beta program allows certain testers access to daily builds? Also, is it possible that my build is being remotely updated? I say this because sometimes in Develop, on the lower right corner, I get an Exclamation Point button. When I press this it says that new process changes have just occurred and this may result in changes to the appearance of the image. I think it's saying that certain image processing algorithm code has just been updated (but how?). It then asks me to preview the changes (X/Y) yet it never gives me the chance to either approve or disapprove of the changes. I actually don't know whether it stays with the legacy algorithms or uses the latest version, at that point. I've never seen much of a difference. I'm certain that the changes it's referring to aren't between Beta 1 and Beta 2 because some of these images had never been Developed in Beta 1 (ie, no prior history). And it's only happened a few times out of 1''' photos I've developed. Anyone?
- Chris
ps. this thread could be moved from General to Beta discussion
The other slight concern is the loss of the develop history when importing using the sidecar files, probably no big problem in reality though....
