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Question about LR 5.x vs. 6.x speed on new laptop

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Location
Puget Sound
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Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version Number
5.x
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
While things have been quiet on the LR and photo front for me this past year while I have been addressing some ongoing health issues, I have been slowly turning my attention back to my photography, as well as some hardware and software updates. I picked up a new Lenovo Yoga 730 laptop (i5-8550U/8GB/256GB) for a great deal as a "fill-in" machine to my main desktop PC, and am now considering it for light-duty mobile editing when needed in a pinch. The laptop is not a workhorse, but it does have 100% sRGB coverage and a PICe NVMe drive, which are becoming more common for mid-market laptops these days, so I am hoping that it should run basic LR functions without causing me too much frustration.

With that said, I am currently considering installing either version 5 or 6, as my (Win 7) home PC is still running 5 but will soon be updated (I told you it was a quiet year for photo processing). My initial inclination is to move ahead with my LR upgrade by installing version 6 on the laptop. But, having not used it previously, I was not sure how it would compare to version 5 on this laptop with respect to performance. My processing needs on the laptop are not going to be great, as I most often find my self doing out of town family events where folks usually appreciate a fast turnaround. Are there any merits to going with 5, or should I just move to 6? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

--Ken
 
Hey Ken, it's good to see you back. I'd go with 6.14 personally. On the laptop, you probably won't see the benefit of the GPU, but the Prefer smart previews for editing checkbox is particularly useful on lower to mid spec machines. That checkbox alone would be worth the price of admission if I was in your shoes, as it avoids the old "rename a folder to take it offline" workaround.
 
Thanks for the information, Victoria! And yes it is good to be digging out and trying to get my life back to normal. I was inclined to move ahead with 6.14 on the laptop and then later on the desktop, and your advice, as always, is useful. I am still mulling some significant changes to my workflow as I just picked up a Samsung T5 SSD and was wondering if I should just consider moving my catalog to it with smart previews, or just use it to move exported laptop catalogs and images back to the desktop. The laptop has a TB3 port, but my desktop has USB3 and an internal SATA SSD for my main drive.

It's funny that since I wrote this post this afternoon, somebody on another photo forum was writing that they were unhappy with LR6 on their PC and were looking to either go back to LR5 or find an alternative. That did make me pause, but not knowing the hardware they were using, I did not want to make any assumptions about LR6 being slower than LR5 based on that one experience.

Not to go OT, but as a quick, but related aside, do you know if I install Bridge on the laptop with LR6, will the presence of LR allow Bridge to use ACR for actual editing, or is restricted to running in preview mode only? There may be times when I want to edit an errant photo or two that I do not want in a catalog, and did not know if this was an option.

Thanks,

--Ken
 
somebody on another photo forum was writing that they were unhappy with LR6 on their PC and were looking to either go back to LR5 or find an alternative. That did make me pause, but not knowing the hardware they were using, I did not want to make any assumptions about LR6 being slower than LR5 based on that one experience.

You might try the trial version. Some early builds were slower, but I found 6.14 pretty solid. Some people are trying to use it with GPU enabled, but without a powerful enough GPU to benefit, so that could account for some reports.

I'm not sure on Bridge... I doubt it somehow.
 
The more I have been researching and thinking about work flow, the more I am inclined to try 6.14 on the new laptop. If it does not work, I can try 5.7.1 or just move to Classic.

Thanks,

--Ken
 
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