LR Classic bogs down on Mac Studio

[Bob Israel]

Lightroom Version

Lightroom Classic 12.1

Operating System

1. macOS 12 Monterey

LR Classic bogs down on Mac Studio​

Greetings folks. I have a nagging issue that's developed I can't figure out.
Background: I run Lightroom Classic on my Mac Studio (M1; 64GB memory; Mac OS 12.6.1). When I open LR Classic it runs great with no issues, very speedy. If I leave LR open and do other work or just leave it open for a while, it begins to bog down to the point I get a spinning beach ball. So I wait and sometimes I have to force quit. Activity monitor shows its using a lot of CPU even though I'm not doing anything!
I've checked a lot of settings. Sync to the cloud is turned off. Use of GPU is set to auto (I've tried turning it off). Cache is set to 20GB.
Thoughts or ideas are most welcome.

 

[johnrellis]

Some initial steps:

1. Click on the identity plate in the upper-left corner and pause Face Detection:

2. When it bogs down, click on the Memory tab of Activity Monitor and make a screenshot, showing the memory used by LR and total memory usage:

Post the screenshot here.

If LR is leaking memory (not freeing it up properly when it's done with it), that can cause severe sluggishness.

3. Consider updating to Mac OS 13. The only way to get updated graphics drivers on Mac is by updating Mac OS. (I haven't updated my main machine yet, just my test virtual machines. I'm very conservative about OS upgrades and let others be the beta testers!)

 

[Bob Israel]

Some initial steps:

1. Click on the identity plate in the upper-left corner and pause Face Detection:

View attachment 20128

2. When it bogs down, click on the Memory tab of Activity Monitor and make a screenshot, showing the memory used by LR and total memory usage:

View attachment 20129

Post the screenshot here.

If LR is leaking memory (not freeing it up properly when it's done with it), that can cause severe sluggishness.

3. Consider updating to Mac OS 13. The only way to get updated graphics drivers on Mac is by updating Mac OS. (I haven't updated my main machine yet, just my test virtual machines. I'm very conservative about OS upgrades and let others be the beta testers!)

Thank you! I've tried face detection both on and off and see no difference. I'll look to do a screen capture of activity monitor but in the past I have seen heavy use when it bogs down but not sure how to interpret. I've been thinking there is a memory leak as I do get prompts of heavy memory use from CleanMyMac when this happens.

I've been considering updating to Mac OS 13 but if I do, my preference would be a fresh install so as not to carry over anything from the current system.

 

[Bob Israel]

Of course, now that I am waiting for LRC to bog down so I can screen shot activity monitor, it is functioning as it should. This has been happening on and off for some time and I cannot pin down the cause. Syncing is off, face lookup is off, preferences are optimized based on suggestions here, etc.

 

[Gnits]

On a 64 GB Mac with a catalog of approx 800k images, which is often reduced to a crawl, I got immediate performance improvements by removing Spotlight from the Catalog, Previews and drives with images. However, this seems to only provide temporary relief. It might be worth trying in your case.

On the other hand, I had not thought of checking the Facial Recognition and Address Lookup settings, which I will do at the next opportunity.

 

[Conrad Chavez]

If I leave LR open and do other work or just leave it open for a while, it begins to bog down to the point I get a spinning beach ball. So I wait and sometimes I have to force quit. Activity monitor shows its using a lot of CPU even though I'm not doing anything! I've checked a lot of settings…

In case this is something that hasn’t already been checked…what is the setting on your Mac for the option called out in the picture? That setting is specifically designed to get busy only after a certain amount of idle time has elapsed, kind of like what you are describing. The current way Lightroom Classic generates previews uses a lot of CPU, so if it’s allowed to start generating previews during idle time, high CPU use would be expected.

However, background activity shouldn’t hang the OS or bog down. That part is unusual, at least on my M1 Pro.

 

[Bob Israel]

I think I have tracked this down to spotlight. I have stopped spotlight from indexing LRC catalog and preview files and my image drives. Since then, LRC appears to be running as it should. It's been two days and things are running very nicely. I'll continue to monitor but thank you to everyone and your ideas.

 

[myotis]

I think I have tracked this down to spotlight. I have stopped spotlight from indexing LRC catalog and preview files and my image drives. Since then, LRC appears to be running as it should. It's been two days and things are running very nicely. I'll continue to monitor but thank you to everyone and your ideas.

I have been having a similar problem, and wondered if you could explain how you prevented Lightroom from being included in the Spotlight search?

I have found the spotlight preferences, which allow you to exclude searching applications and images, but it sounds as if you did something more specific to Lightroom.

Thanks.

 

[Gnits]

I found it was not intuitive to configure. I will post a screen grab later today when I have my MacAir.

Ps. I found eliminating the Catalog/Previews and Drives with the Lr Images from Spotlight made an immediate impact.... but slowly performance would slide backwards again.

Based on a comment in this discussion above, I was able to check yesterday and can confirm, on the system I was referring to, Face Recognition and Address Look Up were turned off, so was not a factor in the declining performance.

I need to check if it is good enough to Pause these services. Maybe there is a parameter or means to turn these settings off completely (ie rather than paused).

 

[myotis]

I found it was not intuitive to configure. I will post a screen grab later today when I have my MacAir.
I need to check if it is good enough to Pause these services. Maybe there is a parameter or means to turn these settings off completely (ie rather than paused).

Thanks.

On further investigation, I have opened the privacy tab in the spotlight preferences and dragged my light room folder (with catalogues and previews) into it. Whether this has stopped spotlight indexing them I'm not sure, but LR seems to be behaving differently. But would still be interested to see your screengrab to confirm what I've done.

Before this I would launch LR and almost immediately start using 7gb+ of memory (watching the Activity monitor, but doing nothing in LR) which would steadily climb doing nothing more than browsing until it reached 17gb to 20gb + and Clean My Mac started to give me "out of virtual and real memory" warnings (I only have 32Gb RAM in a Mac Studio). This could happen minutes after launching Lightroom, depending on what else I had running e.g I might have C1 and LR running, or DXO and LR running at the same time.

This time (while browsing) it climbed to 10gb+, but then fell back to just under 4gb,

Even adding and deleting masks is seeing the memory use going up and then down, rather than steadily climbing.

So it seems to have made a difference. It's actually sitting at 3.63Gb, right now, and I have never seen it this low before.

I have face and address paused.

So it looks as if this problem might be fixed. Thanks for your help.

 

[Gnits]

Great that you have made progress. I think that was it. The example I was quoting is not my own, just a case I am familiar with.

You may wish to consider adding your image folders / drives for exclusion from Spotlight at some stage.

My experience is that within a week or two, performance started to decline again (and impact everything on the Mac, not just Lr). So... I am still searching for factors which have such a devastating impact on performance.

I personally use a custom built Windows rig and relatively happy with performance. I use a MacAir for travel., so I am not a Mac expert.

 

[myotis]

You may wish to consider adding your image folders / drives for exclusion from Spotlight at some stage.

Thanks, I will see how it goes. At least this gives me something concrete to try, and keep an eye on.

 

[Bob Israel]

Thanks.

On further investigation, I have opened the privacy tab in the spotlight preferences and dragged my light room folder (with catalogues and previews) into it. Whether this has stopped spotlight indexing them I'm not sure, but LR seems to be behaving differently. But would still be interested to see your screengrab to confirm what I've done.

Before this I would launch LR and almost immediately start using 7gb+ of memory (watching the Activity monitor, but doing nothing in LR) which would steadily climb doing nothing more than browsing until it reached 17gb to 20gb + and Clean My Mac started to give me "out of virtual and real memory" warnings (I only have 32Gb RAM in a Mac Studio). This could happen minutes after launching Lightroom, depending on what else I had running e.g I might have C1 and LR running, or DXO and LR running at the same time.

This time (while browsing) it climbed to 10gb+, but then fell back to just under 4gb,

Even adding and deleting masks is seeing the memory use going up and then down, rather than steadily climbing.

So it seems to have made a difference. It's actually sitting at 3.63Gb, right now, and I have never seen it this low before.

I have face and address paused.

So it looks as if this problem might be fixed. Thanks for your help.

Yes, it was the privacy tab where you can set which drives, folders to exclude from indexing. I chose to exclude my LRC catalog, previews, smart previews and my photos folder on an external RAID volume (and then it's backup volume). Since doing this, all seems to be running very well for three days now.

 

[myotis]

Yes, it was the privacy tab where you can set which drives, folders to exclude from indexing. I chose to exclude my LRC catalog, previews, smart previews and my photos folder on an external RAID volume (and then it's backup volume). Since doing this, all seems to be running very well for three days now.

Thanks, it looks as if I should also be excluding my external SSD and backups as well.

I am always a little amazed how "sometimes" some fairly serious problems can have relatively simple solutions; if you know what they are.

 

[Bob Israel]

Thanks, it looks as if I should also be excluding my external SSD and backups as well.

I am always a little amazed how "sometimes" some fairly serious problems can have relatively simple solutions; if you know what they are.

I know! I’ve had this problem for months! I was ready to do a fresh install and start over. Now I’m debating whether to upgrade to Ventura from Monterey. I don’t tether and I don’t upload images direct from camera via USB. So, I ‘think’ I should be OK.

 

[myotis]

I know! I’ve had this problem for months! I was ready to do a fresh install and start over. Now I’m debating whether to upgrade to Ventura from Monterey. I don’t tether and I don’t upload images direct from camera via USB. So, I ‘think’ I should be OK.

It was close to making LR unusable for me, given the number of times a day I was needing to restart it. Fortunately, I mainly use C1+PS, but I still use LR on occasions and this was putting me off using at all.

I tend to wait about 6 months before updating to a new version of the OS, but I'm very cautious about these things.