V14.5 just dropped

[BobT]

Lightroom Version Number

14.5

Operating System

1. Windows 11

Is it coincidence that it dropped on Microsoft's Patch Tuesday or has it always been so? Actually in this part of the world it's Wednesday but who's counting.
I'm glad to see Adobe is making greater use of the GPU. It has a performance option whereby building previews can be sent to the GPU. The options are AUTO where previews are automatically sent to the GPU but only if the GPU has 16GB of VRAM or more, ON to send it regardless, and OFF, not to use the GPU for previews.
I tested on my, seemingly paltry 8GB GPU. With the GPU forcibly building 1:1 previews, it took 2/3 the time. Since I like building 1:1s on import, that's worthwhile.

 

[ruuduitdegraaf]

Yes, nice improvement that GPU accelerated preview build in LR.

Interesting to read that your's speed up too, since I read that 16GB GPU memory is a condition for this feature being used.
(link: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/gpu-preview-generation.html)

I can't judge the difference since I started using a new (and much faster system)
Interested to hear from others though!

 

[Gnits]

I expect the GPU improvements will be appreciated... but ..,

" This is a major update so lots of work was put into the new features, but it did also include bug fixe"

I am suffering from instability and pauses in LrC for basic gui selections since V13. I am waiting for each release to return such stability.

I wish Adobe would dedicate a release to clearing up issues and catch up on missing or incomplete features.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

I am suffering from instability and pauses in LrC for basic gui selections since V13. I am waiting for each release to return such stability.

I'm not seeing much in the way of other people reporting such issues. I'd be wondering about graphics card drivers or suchlike.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Interesting to read that your's speed up too, since I read that 16GB GPU memory is a condition for this feature being used.

16GB is needed for Auto to enable it, because less can impact overall performance. However, if you have less VRAM, you can still enable it by setting it to On. For example, if you only have 8GB VRAM, but you're going to walk away while the previews generate, then you might enable it to get the benefits of the GPU preview generation and not notice the overall performance hit.

 

[spgolder107]

Is it coincidence that it dropped on Microsoft's Patch Tuesday or has it always been so? Actually in this part of the world it's Wednesday but who's counting.
I'm glad to see Adobe is making greater use of the GPU. It has a performance option whereby building previews can be sent to the GPU. The options are AUTO where previews are automatically sent to the GPU but only if the GPU has 16GB of VRAM or more, ON to send it regardless, and OFF, not to use the GPU for previews.
I tested on my, seemingly paltry 8GB GPU. With the GPU forcibly building 1:1 previews, it took 2/3 the time. Since I like building 1:1s on import, that's worthwhile.

Strange that "AUTO" requires 16 GB VRAM and "full acceleration by default", while "ON" enables "Preview generation, irrespective of the criteria".

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Strange that "AUTO" requires 16 GB VRAM and "full acceleration by default", while "ON" enables "Preview generation, irrespective of the criteria".

That's expected. Auto errs on the safe side, whereas On allows you to override it regardless of the consequences.

 

[ruuduitdegraaf]

Strange that "AUTO" requires 16 GB VRAM and "full acceleration by default", while "ON" enables "Preview generation, irrespective of the criteria".

I read on the Adobe website that "Adobe engineers" concluded that for the "best" experience 16GB is required, but less will work too.

 

[Gnits]

I'm not seeing much in the way of other people reporting such issues. I'd be wondering about graphics card drivers or suchlike.

Interesting…

I have rolled back to the graphic card version before I had issues (suggested here)…... made no difference. Now I update the Studio Drivers a week or two after they are released.

If I take a single example…say select an option from a drop down list (say of presets to apply). Why will LrC just hang for 20, 30 or more seconds. My current volumes are very low and no batch processing in the background. Some time later LrC will respond immediately and present the drop down options immediately.

Please do not suggest resetting preferences… I have done that twice already and have lost all my accumulated presets and plugins evolved over time. I am running on bare bones now… with only one export preset and Mogrify plugin configured. I am increasingly thinking of abandoning Lightroom as I am not going to spend 5k to build a new rig and a fresh start. My GPU is Nvidia 4070Ti with 12GB of memory, installed new 64 GB memory a few weeks ago in case I had faulty memory and stress tested my GPU and rig for approx 8 hours (meant to leave it for an hour… but forgot about the test and it was running happily when I got back.. with a lovely set of level temp graphs well into the comfort zone, consuming a lot less power (250-350 watts) than I thought it might.

I have run out of trouble shooting angles to pursue.

 

[hooligansimagery]

Has anyone seen any evidence that the GPU acceleration now also applies to the second monitor previews. That would be huge for people editing with multiple screens.

 

[Zenon]

Is it coincidence that it dropped on Microsoft's Patch Tuesday or has it always been so? Actually in this part of the world it's Wednesday but who's counting.
I'm glad to see Adobe is making greater use of the GPU. It has a performance option whereby building previews can be sent to the GPU. The options are AUTO where previews are automatically sent to the GPU but only if the GPU has 16GB of VRAM or more, ON to send it regardless, and OFF, not to use the GPU for previews.
I tested on my, seemingly paltry 8GB GPU. With the GPU forcibly building 1:1 previews, it took 2/3 the time. Since I like building 1:1s on import, that's worthwhile.

Microsoft's Patch Tuesday Feels like I should be in a bar somewhere in Mexico on a Friday night.

 

[clee01l]

I have run out of trouble shooting angles to pursue.

Can you instal Windows in a "plain vanilla" configuration with the latest GPU drivers and no other peripherals? IOW what you might get if you bought an off the shelf Computer and installed only Windows on it. From that point you can see if (one by one) installing other peripherals and Lightroom plugins create the problems

 

[clee01l]

Has anyone seen any evidence that the GPU acceleration now also applies to the second monitor previews. That would be huge for people editing with multiple screens.

GPU accelleration in Lightroom uses the GPU as a computational engine like having more CPU processors. Video display uses GPU to accelerate the of display images. The two are not related.

 

[hooligansimagery]

GPU accelleration in Lightroom uses the GPU as a computational engine like having more CPU processors. Video display uses GPU to accelerate the of display images. The two are not related.

Ok. Doesn’t a new preview need to be made that reflects the second monitor size etc. in certain cases. I didn’t think the hang up was the video display of the image. If you have a 16” main screen then rendering for a 32” second monitor took time.

 

[clee01l]

Ok. Doesn’t a new preview need to be made that reflects the second monitor size etc. in certain cases. I didn’t think the hang up was the video display of the image. If you have a 16” main screen then rendering for a 32” second monitor took time.

No all monitors use the same preview An 16 Monitor may have a native resolution of FHD+ (1920x1200) while a 32: might have a native resolution of 3840X2160. In either case, the GPU will scale the image to match the resolution of the monitor. If the preview is in between 1920x1200 and 3840X2160, the same image will be scaled up for the 32" and down for the 16", I have three attached monitors. Two are 32" (3840X2160) and one is 27" (3008X1692) I can move Lightroom Classic between monitors instantaneously. I can even drag a LrC window between two monitors and have the window appear partially in both.

 

[John R Ellis]

Is it coincidence that it dropped on Microsoft's Patch Tuesday

Since moving to the subscription model, the Lightroom ecosystem has been releasing pretty close to every 8 weeks. (It was a little ragged at the beginning of the pandemic.) LR 14.4 was released on 6/17/25, and 8 weeks from then was...yesterday.

Many software teams prefer to release mid-week, so if there are any release disasters (mistakes happen), they can be patched up without having to work on a weekend. You don't release on Monday, because that means coming in on Sunday to prepare the release. The Lightroom ecosystem generally releases Tue and Thu.

 

[hooligansimagery]

No all monitors use the same preview An 16 Monitor may have a native resolution of FHD+ (1920x1200) while a 32: might have a native resolution of 3840X2160. In either case, the GPU will scale the image to match the resolution of the monitor. If the preview is in between 1920x1200 and 3840X2160, the same image will be scaled up for the 32" and down for the 16", I have three attached monitors. Two are 32" (3840X2160) and one is 27" (3008X1692) I can move Lightroom Classic between monitors instantaneously. I can even drag a LrC window between two monitors and have the window appear partially in both.

What does it mean when the second monitor says Loading - thats the preview getting generated? Nothing is loading on the MBP screen.
In the past, I could make an adjustment on the MBP screen and it would take a bit to show up on the second monitor. I assumed it was from the following Adobe information, and as of now it's pretty instant. I need to try this on my M1 Mac where it was really noticeable - the lag.


https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/lightroom-gpu-faq.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com

 

[clee01l]

What does it mean when the second monitor says Loading - thats the preview getting generated?

I never have seen "Loading" on my secondary display. This may be the result of a less than adequate GPU that can't handle two or more monitors very well. On My Mac Studio, I run three 4K monitors and everything is instantaneous.

Note that the FAQ you referenced is about GPU acceleration and not about video display and is 2 years old and probably obsolete with v14.5.
Graphics acceleration is the result of off-loading some of the computation processes from the CPU to a GPU. It has nothing to do with video display (except that using the GPU as a computational processor (like the CPU) may reduce the video display function and speed of the GPU).

 

[hooligansimagery]

I never have seen "Loading" on my secondary display. This may be the result of a less than adequate GPU that can't handle two or more monitors very well. On My Mac Studio, I run three 4K monitors and everything is instantaneous.

Note that the FAQ you referenced is about GPU acceleration and not about video display and is 2 years old and probably obsolete with v14.5.
Graphics acceleration is the result of off-loading some of the computation processes from the CPU to a GPU. It has nothing to do with video display (except that using the GPU as a computational processor (like the CPU) may reduce the video display function and speed of the GPU).

I don't think either of these is underpowered. I just tested the 2021 with 14.5 and it did quite well.
Yes I understand that the FAQ is about the GPU and hence my original question - Has anyone seen any evidence that the GPU acceleration now also applies to the second monitor previews. That would be huge for people editing with multiple screens.

My question was based on the fact that the second monitor was not GPU accelerated and you may be right that it is obsolete. I hope that is the case as it seems to be based on what I am seeing.

 

[PhilBurton]

I wish Adobe would dedicate a release to clearing up issues and catch up on missing or incomplete features.

Agree 100%. In software terms, the "technical debt" is not being retired. Instead it is getting bigger, just like the US debt.

 

[clee01l]

…Has anyone seen any evidence that the GPU acceleration now also applies to the second monitor previews.

Back to my original answer GPU acceleration has nothing to do with monitors. It is strictly a Lightroom computational process You have a develop process (like Noise reduction) Using the GPU as a computation processor along with the CPU to compute the resulting pixels is going to be faster than computing with the CPU alone.


What may have you confused is now in V14.5, The GPU is used along with the CPU to compute the pixels for a preview provided you have at least 16 GB of VRAM. This still has nothing to do with sending an image to the display which is a separate process of the video card.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[BobT]

I read on the Adobe website that "Adobe engineers" concluded that for the "best" experience 16GB is required, but less will work too.

That's how I read it too. The message here is that if you're about to rebuild, think about 16GB VRAM for the future.
However, there is also ARM. It seems Adobe and ARM are working hand in hand. There is a good report of LrC on ARM laptops. The best thing is that with the neural engine in ARM, discrete GPU may not be required. A few balls in the air at the moment.

 

[BobT]

Microsoft's Patch Tuesday Feels like I should be in a bar somewhere in Mexico on a Friday night.

Microsoft puts out update previews for the brave (or foolish) to try. If all goes well, it rolls them out on the second Tuesday of the month. It has become known as Patch Tuesday. I also use it as a general update day, when I check for other Windows updates, BIOS and GPU driver updates. The only thing is that being of the other side of the International Date Line, it's Wednesday for me.

 

[camner]

For me Creative Cloud isn't showing an LrC update available (I'm on 14.4). Am I correct to presume that Adobe does a staggered drop to avoid server overload?

 

[John R Ellis]

For me Creative Cloud isn't showing an LrC update available (I'm on 14.4). Am I correct to presume that Adobe does a staggered drop to avoid server overload?

Yes, but you should have seen it by now (a day later). Try logging out and back in to the Creative Cloud app. Then in that app, click the Apps button on the left and Check For Updates in the upper-right.