The speed of Lightroom – or the lack thereof – is one of the most popular topics among photographers. You may have asked questions such as “why is Lightroom so painfully slow?”. “How do I speed up Lightroom?”. “How do I make Lightroom run faster?”. That’s why we’re running this series of blogs looking at how to optimize Lightroom performance.
Browsing the web, you’ll find thousands of suggestions on ways to speed Lightroom up. Some of the suggestions work. Others are complete myths. Some suggestions can even make Lightroom slower. Many are just out of date.
Simply saying, “Lightroom is slow” doesn’t help, because different areas of the program benefit from different optimizations. For example, if you’re finding it slow in the Develop module, rendering 1:1 previews won’t help. To fine-tune performance, you need to understand what Lightroom’s doing under the hood.
Lightroom Performance Series
We originally published this series of posts back in 2016, so with all the changes to Lightroom and hardware it was time to update. We’ve left the links to the next blogs in place, but they’ll be updated each week and a full list will appear in the final blog in the series.
In this Lightroom Performance series of posts, we’re going to take a close look at the different factors that affect Lightroom’s performance.
First, we’re going to discuss and debunk a few of the myths from other blogs, which we discovered while researching this series.
Next, we’re going to discuss Lightroom’s hardware requirements. In case you’re buying a new computer, we’ll also look at which hardware has the greatest effect on different areas of the program.
Over the following weeks, there’s a run of four posts, covering the tweaks you can make to your existing computer to improve Lightroom’s performance. These include general operating system maintenance, then settings within Lightroom itself. We then consider which of Lightroom’s previews and caches you need to utilize. Then, ways you can tweak your workflow to shave off extra time.
Finally we’ll have a checklist to identify what areas to look at for continued slowness.
At the very end, we’ll have a summary of how to improve the speed in specific areas of Lightroom.
If you’re itching to speed up Lightroom right now, and don’t want to wait a couple of months to complete the series of posts, you’ll find all of the information in the Improving Performance section of our Adobe Lightroom Classic – The Missing FAQ book on pages 499-524. The book also includes detailed flow charts and tables that will not be featuring in these blog posts.
Non-Destructive Editing
Before we start optimizing Lightroom, however, it’s important to understand what we can expect from Lightroom. We frequently hear people say, “But my computer runs fine with everything else”. Then we discover that they’re only running web browsers and office software, which use minimal resources. Others complain that Photoshop runs fine, but when they try to do the same tasks in Lightroom, it crawls.
It’s important to understand the nature of Lightroom’s non-destructive editing, compared to most other program’s pixel-based editing. We’ll use Photoshop as an example of a pixel editor. (In this context, we’re referring to Photoshop itself, as an example of a pixel based editor. Photoshop can also use the Camera Raw plug-in, which works as a non-destructive editor like Lightroom.) Imagine a conversation between you and your computer:
You: “Computer, increase Exposure to +1.0”
Photoshop: “Ok, Exposure +1.0”
Lightroom: “Ok, Exposure +1.0”
You: “Computer, add Clarity +20”
Photoshop: “Ok, Clarity +20”
Lightroom: “Ok, Exposure +1.0, Clarity +20”
Now carry on working for a while, and we’ll catch up towards the end of the edit…
You: “Computer, remove that dust spot”
Photoshop: “Ok, dust spot removed”
Lightroom: “Ok, Exposure +1.0, Clarity +20, Contrast +24, Temperature 5600, Tint 23, Highlights -40, Shadows +34, Vibrance +13, Tone Curve Strong Contrast, Lens Corrections on, Chromatic Aberration Removal on, Noise Reduction +20, Sharpening Amount +20, Vignette -10, HSL Blue Luminance -23, Upright Auto, Local Adjustment Gradient top to bottom with X settings, Brush mask with long list of coordinates, another brush mask with long list of coordinates, another brush mask with long list of coordinates, first brush spot, second brush spot, third brush spot, fourth brush spot…. ok, that new dust spot removed now too.”
Spot the difference?
Pixel editors such as Photoshop run a task once, applying the changes to the pixels of the image itself. Each time you make another adjustment, it carries on from the current set of pixels. (That’s a generalization as you can use smart objects or adjustment layers, but let’s keep things simple for now, as these would also have performance implications.)
Lightroom, on the other hand, is a parametric editor. This means that every time you make an adjustment, it runs a series of text instructions. The more adjustments you make to the image, the more text instructions it has to run each time you make a change. The more complex the instructions, the longer they take to run. (Lightroom silently caches some editing stages to ease this issue, but again, let’s keep things simple.)
There are pros and cons to both options:
File Size – Lightroom’s text instructions are tiny, and it doesn’t touch the original image pixels. This means you only have the text instructions and the original image file to store (plus backups, of course). In Photoshop, the edits are applied to the pixels, so you need to work on a copy of the photo, and if you start saving additional layers, the file size can balloon even further. Winner – Lightroom.
Changing Edits – If you make an edit one day in Lightroom, and change your mind the next day, you can simply move the slider back. No pixels were harmed in the process. In Photoshop, you either have to start all over again from the original, or if the change isn’t too huge, you may be able to tweak the edited file, albeit with a lower quality result. (Or if you were really sensible, you may have used layers in Photoshop, at the cost of a larger file.) Winner – Lightroom.
Quality – Photoshop applies adjustments in the order you make them. If you lighten a photo and then darken some areas of it, you can’t pull back the detail you’ve lost in that earlier step (without layers, etc.). Lightroom has the advantage of working on the raw data and silently applies the edits in the optimum order when exporting, with a higher quality result. Winner – Lightroom.
Speed – As we’ve seen, Lightroom has to constantly re-run text instructions, whereas Photoshop applies them immediately and directly to the pixels. For global edits, that’s not too noticeable, but Lightroom can start to drag when using multiple local adjustments and retouching multiple spots. For this reason, pixel editors such as Photoshop and Elements are still better suited to more detailed retouching. On the other hand, when you’re doing global edits to a large number of photos, Lightroom is far quicker than opening each of the photos in Photoshop. For editing lots of photos, Lightroom wins, but for detailed local edits, Photoshop wins. Winner – Draw!
It’s simply a case of understanding their strengths and weaknesses. For editing most of your photos, Lightroom wins hands-down. For building complex local adjustment masks, doing detailed retouching or even removing numerous dust spots from scans, Photoshop is still the better tool for the job.
Next week, let’s debunk some Lightroom performance myths.
For extensive information on Lightroom Classic, see Adobe Lightroom Classic – The Missing FAQ.
If you have the Photography Plan, then as well as Classic you have access to the Lightroom cloud ecosystem including the mobile apps and web interface. For more information on these apps, see Adobe Lightroom – Edit on the Go.
Note: purchase of these books includes the first year’s Classic or cloud-based Premium Membership (depending on the book purchased), giving access to download the latest eBook (each time Adobe updates the software), email assistance for the applicable Lightroom version if you hit a problem, and other bonuses.
We also have a special bundle offer for the two books. This includes Premium Membership for the first year as described above for the whole Lightroom family!
Originally posted 22 August 2016, updated April 2021.
So, I have found a work around to the slowness issue of Lightroom with high end PCs. Also, this confirms our suspicion that Lightroom fails to leverage the extra cores in high end PCs.
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TL;DR; – I created a virtualized Windows 7 x64 machine and installed Lightroom on it. It ran blazingly fast on my monstrously overpowered PC, instead of insanely slow like it had when it was installed directly to the host OS.
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** I set the cores to 4 and memory to 4GB. Works great.
** Then I set the cores to 6 and left the memory at 4GB. Things got noticeably slower.
** Then, 8 cores and 4GB, horrendously slow.
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For those looking to do the same, here are the steps.
— 1. Install Virtualbox (or something similar). It’s free and a very powerful tool.
— 2. Create a new Windows 7 64 bit installation (haven’t tested 32 bit)
—- a) Set memory to 4GB+
—- b) Set CPU cores to 2 or 4 (whatever you can spare)
—- c) Set the virtual HDD size to a reasonable amount for photo editing
— 3. Install the Virtualbox guest disk (drivers for the virtual machine)
— 4. Install Lightroom
— 5. Set up folder sharing or direct USB access (to access your images)
— 6. Test Lightroom
— 7. Switch to Fullscreen or Unity mode and edit away!
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This all worked for me and I’m back and able to work quickly. However, it’s ridiculous that I had to do all of this just to get Lightroom to function normally. (Adobe, fix your $#@&!!!)
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P.S. Another benefit for me was uninstall all Adobe Creative Cloud services and applications. So now, if I don’t want all that extra crap (unkillable services, Node, licensing, etc…) to be running, I just turn off the virtual machine. Done and I’m back to a clean running host OS. 😀
I agree, that’s insane. Post it on the bug report forum so the engineers can verify it and hopefully fix it! the Official Feature Request/Bug Report Forum at https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/new/add_details?topic%5B
the update worked! I’m so happy, I only bought LR6 yesterday, didnt occur to me it needed an update. thank you sooo much
Excellent, thanks for the update.
wow, thanks for answering, switching and restarts don’t make any difference, currently doing an update so hopefully that’ll sort it.
Maybe some kind of metadata read problem. Are you on 6.10? And if you were to restart LR (or even switch to another image and back again), does the problem go away?
hi, great stuff, but i have an issue im really stumped with. I use the nik plugins, which run fine, BUT in lightroom 6 after Ive processed an image with the nik plugin, that imge is really slow to use in the develop mode. keeps having to re load. It was fine in LR5.
Oh my goodness thank you so much! I have spent the past THREE HOURS desperately trying to fix whatever was making it go so slow. I have read a million blog and forum posts and tried everything and NOBODY has explained this: “Speed – As we’ve seen, Lightroom has to constantly re-run text instructions, whereas Photoshop applies them immediately and directly to the pixels. For global edits, that’s not too noticeable, but Lightroom can start to drag when using multiple local adjustments and retouching multiple spots.” OMG! Yes, I knew that it was nondestructive blah blah, but I did NOT understand what that meant as far as rerunning everything with every new step! I am new to lightroom and I have watched hours of tutorials on lynda and youtube, and I have a handle on the basics, but nobody explained THAT. Thank you thank you thank you!
I’m glad it helped SQ!
Victoria, yours is the best photography tutorial and information website I have run into so far. Your explanations are precise and clear, resulting in my learning a lot very time I visit. Thanks so much.
Fraunt Hall
Thanks Fraunt, glad to help!
After applying an adjustment, I often turn the adjustment tool off and on several times so that I can compare the image pre and post adjustment. Of course each of these on/off clicks gets its own entry in History. I have often wondered if such non-essential entries slow down the processing. If I understand your blog correctly, Lightroom will ignore the offsetting commands rather than execute each.
Yes, that should be fine George. It’s a tiny bit more information to read from disk, and can inflate the catalog size, but nothing huge.
I’m quite surprised. Or could it be that I’m just bewildered. It looks as though LR is reapplying all the operations you’ve effected, in its preferred order, to the original image every time you do something. I’d have thought that there’d be times when it could just apply your last operation to the image in its current modified state without having to always start from the original image.
Interesting… (as always)
PS If I forget to untick the “sign me up” box will I be signed up multiple times?
Lightroom does cache the image at different stages to help with the speed, but it still has to rerun some things.
And no, you’ll only get signed up once, regardless of how many times the box is checked or you fill in any of the forms on the website.
Great articles.
Would be even better if there were a printer-friendly option!
Great idea Alan. I’ll likely turn it into an eBook at the end of the series.
That would be great.
Using Copy – Paste and deselecting the “wrong” parameter will allow removal of a unwanted edit.
Yes, that’ll work, although it’s a bit of a faff. It’s probably easier just to move a slider back.
I notice that the longer I have LR 6/cc open it begins to slow. If I leave it open all night the next morn it is so slow it sometimes goes to “no response”. If I close LR and reopen I am up to speed again. I think something else is going on other than what you discuss above?
I have Win 10, Intel i7-4770k, 16GB memory
Ben
In Help menu > System Info, double check that you’re definitely updated to 6.6.1. There was an issue in an earlier release which could cause this. If that doesn’t do the trick, report it at the Official Feature Request/Bug Report Forum at http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family
I’ve occasionally wished that I could remove Develop history instructions other than what’s on the top of the stack. Maybe I like everything except I want to remove an instruction that’s not at the top but leave everything else. Do you know why this isn’t possible?
You mean you want to retain the most recent history state, but clear the others? For what purpose do you want to keep the latest?
I like everything I’ve done except one step that’s not at the top. It could be a crop or anything else. Given your explanation of how LR works, fewer instructions are better so removing any unwanted step would be better than undoing it by adding an additional instruction.
The History keeps a record of each step in the order that you applied the adjustment, but Lightroom also keeps a separate record of the current set of settings.
So even if you clear the History, your current Develop settings would remain. If, having cleared the History, you wanted to remove the crop that you don’t like, you could simply open the Crop tool and change or reset the crop. The same goes for any slider in Lightroom, or any local adjustment.
But I don’t want to clear the History. I still want to keep and see everything else.
If I crop and then reset the crop, how many instructions will LR have to process, 0 or 2?
I’m with you! Just the one – it always processes the current settings in its own order, not the order you applied them
Here’s an example of an instance where I think being able to edit develop history would give me something that reset doesn’t.
I did these adjustments: white balance, Highlights, Shadows.
Next I did a Crop Angle adjustment. I was wondering how Transform->Level would compare so I tried that without undoing the Crop Angle and clicked on Constrain Crop. That was closer to what I wanted so I tried resetting Crop to undo Crop Angle but that just removed the Level Constrain Crop, not my original crop, even though I did the reset from the Crop dialog, not the Transform dialog.
This could be a special instance since two different Develop tools are both cropping but being able to remove my original crop from the History would give me what I want without having to redo the changes.
So you’re looking for a new non-linear History feature, by the sounds of it. You could put in a feature request at the Official Feature Request/Bug Report Forum at http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family
Thanks Victoria, but there is something I don’t quite understand after reading your article. I thought all the parametric text instructions in Lightroom were applied only in the output modules like Print, Slideshow, Book, Web? Clearly we still need to see a preview of the final image whilst we’re editing in the Develop module, but those instructions could be (and indeed appear to be) applied sequentially as we’re editing.
You’re correct in saying the text instructions are only applied to pixels when you’re output (as files through export, or when printing, etc.)
They’re also applied on-the-fly to the preview in the Develop module, otherwise you couldn’t see what you were doing.
However even in the Develop module on-the-fly preview, they’re not applied in the order you applied them, but rather, Lightroom does them in the “right” order.
Does that make sense, or are we talking at cross-purposes?
That does make sense thank you. It’s actually quite amazing that a whole series of brushes (for example) can be applied as instructions. That feels like quite a bit of processing power.
I’m looking forward to your next article on this.
I really like how you described the non destructive editing of LR vs PS.
If you don’t mind, I may incorporate it into a LR class I teach for novices.
You’re welcome Jim, I’m glad you like it!
Much of what you say is also true if working in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) that can also batch process.
However, I agree that certain things can’t be done in either Lightroom or ACR; long live Photoshop (with its Clone Tool and Adjustment Layers)!
Yes, of course, Photoshop can host the ACR plug-in, which works non-destructively like Lightroom. But as far as Photoshop itself goes, it’s a pixel-based editor.