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LR classic CC performance

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Joined
Jun 23, 2017
Messages
74
Location
Missoula, MT USA
Lightroom Experience
Advanced
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version Number
classic cc 7.4 release camera raw 10.4
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
Lightroom is getting worse and worse with respect to speed and crashing frequency. Now often the screen turns white then crashes or eventually comes back in 5 mins or so. Or it goes black and everything is frozen. Selecting photos (shift click) is deadly slow. Frequently LR blinks and I can see my desktop for a fraction of a second. Often there is a huge amount of disk grinding where it is not clear at all what is happening. I have I7 processor, 24 Gigs RAM, a terabyte of scratch space for LR, all disks are 7200 rpm, the software itself is on a hybrid solid state disk - 4 TB and 160,000 photos. LR has become a total liability lately. I have gone through all the proposed remedies I have found here and elsewhere on speeding it up - no avail. I am using Windows 10. Supposedly the number of photos is not the issue. Also on this machine I use statistical and GIS software that I would think is far, far more complicated than LR but no problems with them. I am looking for an alternative which I do not look forward to - the work to switch will be horrific. I'll try one last time - any ideas about how to fix LR? (talking to tech support is a total waste of time)
 
LR doesn't use scratch space - PS does though.
I would move the OS and LR catalogs (w/previews) onto a real SSD.
Another thing that might be tried is reinstalling LR, but you may have already tried that.

There is free software to image your drive and move it to a real SSD. The one I'm using right now is AOMEI Backupper Standard 4.x. It can either clone your [boot] partition or just image it for transfer onto the real SSD. What you would do is boot into a flash drive that AOMEI creates and restore the image from there.
 
1. Verify your GIS software is not running when using Lr. ArcGIS for example leaves a lot running when you close the client. It makes GIS faster at the cost of other applications.
2. Use Task Manager show details to check where you are resource constrained. This sounds like either the system is thrashing or hanging on something.
3. What steps have you taken? Delete Lr profile? Reinstall Lr? New Windows user?...

Sent from my LG-TP260 using Tapatalk
 
Can't do the SSD, none are big enough for my ordinary work and ... they are pricy and apparently not necessary for SAS, R, and 3 different GIS packages. Resource allocation via Task Manager indicates nothing useful. I have a script that clears out ArcGIS, and I have stopped all the start-up code from virtually everything. I will try a re-install and maybe the same for windows 10 - a complete pain in the rear. I have done the rest of the suggestions. Also I will try busting up my photo collection into much smaller catalogues. If my other applications were having problems I'd be more inclined to blame it on WIn 10, or something else, but I am thinking that LR just needs a complete re-write and brought into the modern age of database code development. When SAS runs though a million records and carries out multivariate modeling without a hitch and Arcview manipulates multilayered images that are far larger and complex than a DSLR photo at the click of a mouse but poor old LR drags and drags - can't help but think that the basic engine is needing a replacement. Thanks for the suggestions. I will keep you posted. Can't believe that I am the only one having this problem. Again, thanks!
 
Can't do the SSD, none are big enough for my ordinary work and ... they are pricy and apparently not necessary for SAS, R, and 3 different GIS packages. Resource allocation via Task Manager indicates nothing useful. I have a script that clears out ArcGIS, and I have stopped all the start-up code from virtually everything. I will try a re-install and maybe the same for windows 10 - a complete pain in the rear. I have done the rest of the suggestions. Also I will try busting up my photo collection into much smaller catalogues. If my other applications were having problems I'd be more inclined to blame it on WIn 10, or something else, but I am thinking that LR just needs a complete re-write and brought into the modern age of database code development. When SAS runs though a million records and carries out multivariate modeling without a hitch and Arcview manipulates multilayered images that are far larger and complex than a DSLR photo at the click of a mouse but poor old LR drags and drags - can't help but think that the basic engine is needing a replacement. Thanks for the suggestions. I will keep you posted. Can't believe that I am the only one having this problem. Again, thanks!

Perhaps with different organization you could use an SSD. Here is how I organize my system, which is a desktop in a case that has space for 4 3.5" drives.

I have a 512 GB SSD that is more than adequate to hold Windows and installed applications in C: partition, and all my various data in a D: partition, because of the way I organize my data and other files. The SSD has about 200 GB of free space. The data includes the Lightroom catalog and catalog previews, plus all my other data files. Photos are on a 4 TB 7200 HDD. Also on that HDD are my iTunes music, videos, and the install files for all my applications. (I use a second 6TB drive for backups, including the second copy of images imported into Lightroom.)
 
Yeah, as Phil points out, you don't put everything under the sun onto the SSD (unless it just so happens to mostly fit). The main thing you want to get onto the SSD is your OS and apps (the program installations, not the data) - and anything that is known to benefit from the speed, such as the LR catalog (which includes the previews, by default). I don't know what the other apps you mention are, but since you say they run just fine off the spinner hybrid - then obviously that data could stay right where it is. Of course, I'm assuming that the data is what's big and not the actual program installs. It's also very beneficial to keep a lean OS & apps partition so it makes it far easier to do OS upgrades and reinstalls in the future.

As far as being more expensive, it depends on if your system can use PCIE x4 NvMe SSD's for super-speed. If not, then the standard sata SSD's are still worlds faster than spinners - and to boot they're far cheaper as well. If you backup regularly, you could even go for one of the 'secondary' type brands like Mushkin. I hear the Mushkins are actually quite respectable though, both for reliability and speeds. A 1TB Triactor can be had for $179 on Amazon (I know because I've been eyeing it so I could leave spinners completely behind except for backup only - it would compliment my two new PCIE x4 NvMe SSD's).

I hear you loud and clear on the OS reinstall bit. I'm pretty much near the end of setting up my new dream computer - so I have VERY recent memory about that. :eek2: It hasn't been nearly as bad as I thought it would be though, but still a PITA nevertheless. On the positive side, you'll certainly clear out all the trash that inevitably accumulates. However, for the purpose of keeping as much trash away from the new install as possible, I would personally avoid going the image-and-copy route - especially in light of the problems you're having with LR.

Having said this, though, I still hear you on the LR/rewrite aspect. It shouldn't take a supercomputer to run it smooth as silk... But --- I can personally attest to the fact that it works out that way here now. :woot: :joyful:
 
If you backup regularly, you could even go for one of the 'secondary' type brands like Mushkin. I hear the Mushkins are actually quite respectable though, both for reliability and speeds. A 1TB Triactor can be had for $179 on Amazon (I know because I've been eyeing it so I could leave spinners completely behind except for backup only - it would compliment my two new PCIE x4 NvMe SSD's).

I'm going to emphatically disagree on this point. I had a Mushkin SSD fail on me, with no warning of course. That cost e over a day's time to install Windows plus apps plus data on my wife's system. And I keep copies of all my programmer installs, so there was no hunting around for CDs. Talking to other experienced system builders I learned that Mushkin has a bad reputation. (Why didn't I know that before? :eek2: )

Suggestion: Rearrange your various files on your current drives. Use the space required for programs and data, add about 30-40% for "growth" and scratch space, and then you will know if you can u se a 256 GB SSD or need a 512 GB model. You probably don't need a 1 TB unit, but if you do, prices are dropping all the time.
 
I'm going to emphatically disagree on this point. I had a Mushkin SSD fail on me, with no warning of course. That cost e over a day's time to install Windows plus apps plus data on my wife's system. And I keep copies of all my programmer installs, so there was no hunting around for CDs. Talking to other experienced system builders I learned that Mushkin has a bad reputation. (Why didn't I know that before? :eek2: )

Oh wow, I did not know that. I was primarily going by the reviews on Amazon and I think a bit of Newegg. But that's precisely the thing I was/am thinking about using the Mushkin for: for downloading or storing program installers and drivers & firmwares and other non-important stuff, which has otherwise always gone to a spinner. At least for that I'm thinking it should be ok for, as long as I also backup the drivers and firmwares to another medium, along with anything else that might be (or become) hard to find. I was also thinking about Silicon Power for a split second (~$159 for 1TB), but that seemed to have too many lower reviews.

So Richard - maybe forget that part about Mushkin as an OS drive. :) Phil's advice on the rearranging and whatnot is also spot on.
I'm almost betting even 256GB could be nearing overkill. On my laptop I was running the OS on top of LR catalog and previews on a 256GB and still had a lot of space left over - well, at least a pretty good amount - enough to make sure the SSD had optimum speed since all standard nand-based SSD's need a certain percentage of free space to work optimally (so make sure you take that into account as well).
 
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Oh wow, I did not know that. I was primarily going by the reviews on Amazon and I think a bit of Newegg. But that's precisely the thing I was/am thinking about using the Mushkin for: for downloading or storing program installers and drivers & firmwares and other non-important stuff, which has otherwise always gone to a spinner. At least for that I'm thinking it should be ok for, as long as I also backup the drivers and firmwares to another medium, along with anything else that might be (or become) hard to find. I was also thinking about Silicon Power for a split second (~$159 for 1TB), but that seemed to have too many lower reviews.

So Richard - maybe forget that part about Mushkin as an OS drive. :) Phil's advice on the rearranging and whatnot is also spot on.
I'm almost betting even 256GB could be nearing overkill. On my laptop I was running the OS on top of LR catalog and previews on a 256GB and still had a lot of space left over - well, at least a pretty good amount - enough to make sure the SSD had optimum speed since all standard nand-based SSD's need a certain percentage of free space to work optimally (so make sure you take that into account as well).
The issue with user reviews is that they are typically written only a short time after purchase. For drives, I'm more interested in historical data. Here is an excellent source of mortality data for spinning drives: How Long Do Hard Drives Last: 2018 Hard Drives Stats

From this web page:
As of March 31, 2018 we had 100,110 spinning hard drives. Of that number, there were 1,922 boot drives and 98,188 data drives. This review looks at the quarterly and lifetime statistics for the data drive models in operation in our data centers.

TL, DR: Hitachi (HSGT) are way more reliable that other brands. Avoid Seagate at all costs.

An article that comments on the Backblaze statistics: How Long do Hard Drives Last For? Here's What the Statistics Tell Us

For SSDs read this news item but don't try to understand the article that is the basis for this story: SSD reliability in the real world: Google's experience | ZDNet

Phil Burton
 
I do not use a SSD because they have a small lifetime and they are expensive. I have been warned by two IT engineers - one a PhD electrical engineer, and another who designs boards for scientific computer applications for satellites that SSD is not quite ready yet. The ones that really work are very expensive. I am using a hybrid for my C: drive. Apps and OS and LR catalog on C: , photos on D with lots of room and 3 external backups. I still contend that LR's database needs a re-write or Adobe needs to determine what the content limit is and say so. Why is it that ARcGIS, Maptitude, SAS, R, On1, Skylum apps, Photoshop run without a hassle but LR is pretty much dead. LR says I have 120k images. I am thinking that for sure there is a catalog limit and I am well past it. I just got a notice from Adobe that there are new updates. I'll see what happens. BTW, thanks for all your (collective) suggestions. I have made notes and will use your information as I pursue a solution to this problem.
 
I do not use a SSD because they have a small lifetime and they are expensive. I have been warned by two IT engineers - one a PhD electrical engineer, and another who designs boards for scientific computer applications for satellites that SSD is not quite ready yet. The ones that really work are very expensive. I am using a hybrid for my C: drive. Apps and OS and LR catalog on C: , photos on D with lots of room and 3 external backups. I still contend that LR's database needs a re-write or Adobe needs to determine what the content limit is and say so. Why is it that ARcGIS, Maptitude, SAS, R, On1, Skylum apps, Photoshop run without a hassle but LR is pretty much dead. LR says I have 120k images. I am thinking that for sure there is a catalog limit and I am well past it. I just got a notice from Adobe that there are new updates. I'll see what happens. BTW, thanks for all your (collective) suggestions. I have made notes and will use your information as I pursue a solution to this problem.

Richard,

When did you get those warnings? They are very much out of date. SSDs have now gone through multiple designs (the chips and the controllers inside the drives) and current generation SSDs are now quite durable. Durable enough that Intel recently introduced a new "ruler" form factor for extremely high capacity SSDs intended to go into server systems. Intel Introduces "Ruler" Server SSD Form-Factor: SFF-TA-1002 Connector, PCIe Gen 5 Ready.

Phil Burton
 
I do not use a SSD because they have a small lifetime

(Looks like Phil beat me to it while I was writing this, already.)
Just as an FYI, though... This part is not at all the case anymore. They're now likely to far outlast a spinner.
My prior 256GB SSD is in a laptop since 2012, and more or less retired a few weeks ago, wasn't even through 3% of its lifetime. Despite heavy use over 6 years, it had only seen about 110 average block-erase count out of ~3,000 - and some say they may even go well past that.

And if you take something like my current 1TB Intel Optane 905P - it's rated for 10 whole drive writes every day for 5 years - or about 17,000 petabytes written IIRC. Albeit this particular one is ridiculously expensive ATM. It doesn't use nand technology and can be rewritten at the bit level.

Wear leveling has already come VERY far from the now outdated info you may have been told at one time. And actually, regular nand ones are rather cheap right now, for 512GB models from the likes of Samsung.
 
But I go back to: SAS, ArcGIS, etc etc very sophisticated packages that depend on a database structure and they run just fine on my system as it is.
SAS chews up a million records and does a regression analysis as well without any drama. Takes a few minutes, but the GUI does not drag, displays complex graphs and charts in seconds. ArcGIS must certainly be more complex than LR. Some of my maps are huge with 10 or more layers but response is more than adequate to do an analysis. But with LR I cna't select 10 photos in grid view without a long drag, flickering of the monitor, and lately the screen turns white and stays that way until I kill it with Win 10 disk management tool. I have re-installed and fiddled and fiddled.
Seems to me I need to figure out why LR is so slow on a system that runs other data intensive packages including photo packages so well before I buy a new disk, reinstall my software and Windows 10 - lots and lots of apps. Thanks for the suggestions. I'll let you know if a solution is found.
 
But I go back to: SAS, ArcGIS, etc etc very sophisticated packages that depend on a database structure and they run just fine on my system as it is.
SAS chews up a million records and does a regression analysis as well without any drama. Takes a few minutes, but the GUI does not drag, displays complex graphs and charts in seconds. ArcGIS must certainly be more complex than LR. Some of my maps are huge with 10 or more layers but response is more than adequate to do an analysis. But with LR I cna't select 10 photos in grid view without a long drag, flickering of the monitor, and lately the screen turns white and stays that way until I kill it with Win 10 disk management tool. I have re-installed and fiddled and fiddled.
Seems to me I need to figure out why LR is so slow on a system that runs other data intensive packages including photo packages so well before I buy a new disk, reinstall my software and Windows 10 - lots and lots of apps. Thanks for the suggestions. I'll let you know if a solution is found.
Richard,

I'm only vaguely aware of what SAS does, and I'm not at all familiar with ArcGIS, so I can't comment on relative performance. However, Lightroom is complex, perhaps overly so to some people. It is entirely possible that some subtle setting is affecting Lightroom performance. May I suggest that you do a search on Lightroom performance. Victoria has a great writeup on her main website. Consider doing a reset on your Lightroom preferences and then carefully changing them, noting performance changes. Look at the "model systems" on this website: Recommended System: Recommended Systems for Adobe Lightroom Classic CC.

Finally I have to say that it seems that your issues are concentrated on display. Lightroom will not utilize multiple graphics cards, unlike many games, but a good midrange card with a proper driver, can make a difference. The kind of storage you have, SSD or spinning HDD, will have only a small impact on display performance.
 
But I go back to: SAS, ArcGIS, etc etc very sophisticated packages that depend on a database structure and they run just fine on my system as it is.
You are just going to make yourself crazy thinking that. There's lots of "complex" software that runs faster than lots of simple software, because our impression of simple and complex has little to do with execution time.

If you are saying "Lightroom has performance issues" I think most long term users will emphatically agree with you. I think the good news is Adobe has been putting effort into it since about 7.1 or so and it is better, the bad news is it still isn't good. The other bad news is that my impression from chatting with others is there are more corner cases than ever, where particular hardware and particular edits seem to have really bad performance. I frequently read cases of people with very similar configurations, one having severe lags, one not, and lots of work and comparison rarely yields a defining reason -- then occasionally one will, and Adobe will take that and run with it to fix a specific issue. But more often the cause remains a mystery.

Seems to me I need to figure out why LR is so slow on a system that runs other data intensive packages including photo packages so well before I buy a new disk, reinstall my software and Windows 10 - lots and lots of apps. Thanks for the suggestions. I'll let you know if a solution is found.

The sad truth is these things are often complex, and a lot like playing a game of battleship -- you really have no good idea where to start, you just have to try things, see what happens, and keep trying until you get lucky. A key that will help (and it is sad) is that there is often no "why" to be seen even if you figure it out. I've often seen problems disappear when someone reset all preferences for example -- yet no where in those is there usually a definitive "oh, it was THAT preference that caused the issue".

I've read about systems where enabling the GPU made large improvements; I've also read about cases where disabling it solved issues.

I personally (on older versions) have tested different GPU types with surprisingly little difference; tested overclocking memory and CPU, tested various arrangements of SSD, HD, and raid. Some of these are a bit counter-intuitive, and some are also VERY different on later versions of Lightroom (used to be HyperThreading on was bad, now (at least at the 4 physical core level), HyperThreading is almost always a big improvement). But the worst part of all of these is they tend to be quite case specific, which often goes to what people are doing. Often those cases are hidden in plain view, e.g. a lot of current discussion is about the number of local adjustments one does and how that impacts lag. What is "a lot" -- probably varies by person, you might have a lot and think you are normal and never consider that.

I will offer some specifics from my own experience (and for what it's worth come from a lifetime of I.T. not photography):

- Your comments on SSD are out of date and just wrong. They are expensive, but they are a vast improvement. Home versions of hybrid drives tend to be crap; the theory is good, in practice they tend to help specific functions that are easy to benchmark, but not the real world. They function by making educated guesses what should be on SSD; guess wrong and it's worse than not having them. I converted about 3 years ago to all SSD, no spinning -- big difference, Lightroom is faster but still is slow, but other things are MUCH faster. And quieter and cooler.

- 160k images is not the issue. Almost all hang/slow issues that I've seen are pretty easily reproducible in small catalogs.

- The above not withstanding, many issues in the past have related to "leaks" of various sort (not necessarily memory) which get worse over time. Doing something like building 1000 previews, or exporting 1000 images, can completely lock LR up in some versions on some platforms. Also, just working in LR at times for hours on end could lock it up. And a recent bug (fixed? not sure) of just sitting, leaving LR running but not in use, for hours, would cause it to mostly or completely lock up. These are not good, but it's worth it as a test to exit lightroom every 30-60 minutes and see if doing so keeps you going better.

- Trying another computer (even a slower one as a test), a fresh install, clearing preferences -- all are painful, none may yield results, but all are worth trying as they work often enough, and may yield some insight. Personally about every 3-4 years I get a new computer and do a whole new, from-scratch install. Frankly I think the clean install aspect does me more good than the new hardware. Windows still tends to collect crap that only goes away (all the scamware "cleaner" advertisements to the contrary) by a fresh install.

- Overall I've found that the absolutely main thing LR likes is CPU horsepower - a modest GPU, decent speed disks, a fair amount of memory are all necessary, but going over and above on those rarely yields proportional results. CPU speed, on the other hand, does - get a 20% faster CPU and most things run 20% faster, more or less. Get faster memory and you get less but still near linear results (note your motherboard has to actually USE the faster memory, just being capable of faster clocking does not help). And since somewhere around 7.2 or so, hyperthreading on is better than off, and more cores are better than fewer (this latter is more about batch processes than interactive use).

- People tend to see more problems when they have high resolution monitors (4k or better) and more of them.

But the most important one is the hardest:

- Lightroom Classic performance is bad (*). It is likely to always be bad, even though it is getting better, because as it gets better Adobe is also adding more and processing intensive features (e.g. new LUT profiles). The really hard part is determining if what you see is "normal bad" for lightroom, or a problem specific to your system. There is no magic solution to that but a ton of grunt work and experimentation. That's a horrible state of affairs, but it is also reality. The simple solution is another computer with a clean install, move your images (not catalogs, not preferences) over, and edit there and see what happens. Maybe you have a laptop, maybe a friend has Lightroom. Try taking your images without edits, try taking some with edits, see what happens. The key to sanity and knowing how to move forward is to figure out if what you see is "normal" lightroom and its just too slow, or if you are hitting some bug/feature that makes your case abnormal. And that's just plain hard.

Linwood

(*) Bad is qualitative, some may think it is amazing it does what it does as fast as it does. The reality though is that many of the programs we have historically used and historically thought were slow, from Word to Excel, email, even to a great degree web browsing have gone from dirt slow in the old days to near instant now. We wait for almost nothing on our computer today -- except, for many of us, Lightroom. Should it be faster? Is it Adobe incompetence, or is it the nature of what it does? I think some of both. But if you feel like the only thing you really wait to run is Lightroom, you are not alone.
 
I really appreciate the response I have gotten to help with my LR performance problems. I really do. I have pretty much tried all suggestions except the SS disk drive. Too small and a lot of work to move everything and not enough room. I have to use ArcGIS and SAS and other statistical packages which have a higher priority than LR. I have out it on a laptop with a faster processor and it is faster but what I can't do a real test as there are space limitations. But it still significantly drags in the library mode. I am grateful that with all the issues I have had it has not screwed up my catalog or damaged any data. Incidentally I have been through performance issue problems with other software. Both SAS and ArcGIS got to a point about10 years ago that the user community started to bail out by the thousands because of poor performance issues. Both companies bit the bullet and did a complete re-design and re-write. Both have far more complicated graphics capabilities than LR and are fully relational databases, with ArcGIS having a spatial capability that requires some serious math topology to work. Likely LR is going to have to go through the same period. In the meantime I am going to look around an alternative and fiddle with LR some more to see if having a smaller catalog, or ... whatever helps. I will keep you posted. Again, thanks for the time spent and the suggestions. This is a great group.
 
You could try to reset the LR préférences, after making a backup of the current preferences.
1. in Windows Explorer, go to %AppData%\Adobe\Lightroom\Preferences
2. Remame the file "Lightroom Classic CC 7 Preferences.agprefs" to something like "Lightroom Classic CC 7 Preferences.agprefs-old"
3. Run Lightroom

If this fix your problem, you will have to manually set the LR preferences to your configuration.
If this doen't change anything, you can revert back to the previous LR preferences setttings by removing the file "Lightroom Classic CC 7 Preferences.agprefs" and renaming the file "Lightroom Classic CC 7 Preferences.agprefs-ols" to "Lightroom Classic CC 7 Preferences.agprefs"

It's not a a hard (nor risky) manipulation to do so it is worth a try.
 
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