Hey guys I'm wondering if you can help me ensure that my system is running as smooth as it possibly can for various Lightroom processes. I do post-production for a living full-time now, and process 10-20K images per week. RAW, 10-12 megapixels. (thank God not more!) I use an Asus RoG machine, it's an i7 (2GHZ I believe?) with 8 GB of RAM, 1.5 GB of graphics, and a newly installed 256 GB SSD in one bay and a hybrid 750GB in the second bay. (gotta love dual-bay laptops!)

I just upgraded from a 128GB SSD that just barely had room for my OS, Lightroom, and like one engagement session. When I got the 256 GB SSD, I did a fresh install of Windows 7 64bit.

My system is running smoother than ever, of course, however I have noticed a weird difference in my benchmark speed tests. All of a sudden my 1:1 preview render time has gone from ~2-3 seconds to 4-8 seconds. What gives? Anybody know which factors affect 1:1 render time? Graphics? RAM? CPU? HD speed? What about Lightroom develop parameters that affect render time?

(I can get the 1:1 preview time down to 3.85 seconds if I turn off all sharpening, noise reduction, and lens corrections. But this is still weird, since I'm almost positive that my previous times were faster even with regular sharpening and noise reduction applied.)

Heck, even back when I had my 128 and did most of my work with the LRCAT and RAW files on the secondary hybrid drive, my 1:1 render time was still never more than 3-4 seconds.

Whenever I fire up Windows Task Manager and look at the CPU / RAM performance, Lightroom jumps from 15-50-75% on the CPU, and hovers around 3.9 GB consumed in Memory. So I feel like my system could handle more, if Lightroom would just GO FASTER.

I've tried fiddling with all of those page file / virtual memory settings, to try and optimize the new SSD's performance, but I can't seem to put a noticeable dent in the render time. I may have screwed up something, but the problem showed up right out of the box so my tinkering isn't what caused the problem.

Also, I've been using Paddy for Lightroom and I'd love to hear if anyone has any tips on how to get that whole system running as fast as possibe. I'd love to be able to edit just as fast as I can type, (Paddy has nearly infinite keyboard customization options, anybody who processes volume should check it out!) Since I need to be able to cull + color-correct at a rate of 500-1000 images per hour, as you can imagine EVERY SECOND HELPS!

Another friend with a nearly identical machine (16 GB of RAM instead of 8, a 0.1 GHZ faster CPU and 2 GB of graphics) renders 1:1 previews in ~2 seconds.

Any ideas? I searched for previous discussions a little bit, but I don't think very many people out there need Lightroom to go as fast as I need it to. For me, there is still a clear difference in speed between LR3 and LR4. I think it has to do with the added develop tools, namely the improved sharpening and NR previews and the greatly increased brush options.

=Matt=

No clue really, but I'll throw this out there. You're processing RAW files, right? What are your LR RAW cache settings? You can play with size and location. Maybe move it off your system SSD if that's where it is and try it on the hybrid? I actually have a 3rd SSD on my system just for PS temp files and my LR cache. My system seems pretty snappy.

Also, can you explain step-by-step how you execute your benchmark? I'd be curious to try it on my system for comparison. Thanks.

Originally Posted by kdog No clue really, but I'll throw this out there. You're processing RAW files, right? What are your LR RAW cache settings? You can play with size and location. Maybe move it off your system SSD if that's where it is and try it on the hybrid? I actually have a 3rd SSD on my system just for PS temp files and my LR cache. My system seems pretty snappy. Also, can you explain step-by-step how you execute your benchmark? I'd be curious to try it on my system for comparison. Thanks.

Indeed, I have my cache on my SSD, and it is set to 20 GB. Do you think I could gain speed by separating the 1:1 cache from the OS drive? I could try going dual-SSD, but my whole point was that my system used to be configured exactly the same way before, as far as I can tell. So I shouldn't have to do anything different to get my speed back, I should be looking for something *wrong* I feel. I will try it on the Hybrid drive though, just for kicks...

To test my 1:1 rendering speeds, I just make sure Lightroom is the only program open, and I clock how long it takes to render 100 1:1 previews for various cameras. (I have access to an infinite number of D700, 5D mk2 and 5D mk3 files. Our studio shoots the 5D's in sRAW1 / mRAW...) I do the test within a larger 1:1 render batch, so say for example I'm not just clicking render for ten photos, I'm just counting ten images out of 500+. So the speed should is pretty averaged out...

Or, for a quick estimate, I do a handful of 10-preview tests. (So if I can render 10 previews in 39.5 seconds, that's 3.95 seconds per 1:1 preview)

I've done this test for 1:1 previews and 100% JPG exporting, on my old 128 GB SSD, and on my Hybrid drive... I've done this for both LR3 and LR4...

The recent jump to 7-8 seconds for 1:1 preview rendering is just wayyyy out of left field. Every previous test, for LR3 and LR4, on either of my older hard drives, was 2.6-3.4 seconds. So either I did something dramatically different in Lightroom, or my computer hardware is not configured for maximum speed.

1:1 cache files are around 300-500 KB it seems, so they're not SO small that they're just bogging down the system with a high volume of tiny files. Maybe Lightroom creates multiple .dat files for a single RAW file?

=Matt=

Originally Posted by kdog No clue really, but I'll throw this out there. You're processing RAW files, right? What are your LR RAW cache settings? You can play with size and location. Maybe move it off your system SSD if that's where it is and try it on the hybrid? I actually have a 3rd SSD on my system just for PS temp files and my LR cache. My system seems pretty snappy. Also, can you explain step-by-step how you execute your benchmark? I'd be curious to try it on my system for comparison. Thanks.

Nope, moving the cache file off the OS SSD did not improve rendering speeds. I've tried moving my LRCAT and standard preview folder around, too. The only way I can get a different time test is if I drastically change the develop settings that are rendered for the 1:1 preview. Hmm, more testing is in order...

=Matt=

I am guessing that you are 5 to 6 hours from Adobe Headquarters in San Jose. Right? Since you are stress testing their software, I suspect Adobe would love to have a full time professional user of LR provide hands on feedback. Contact them and ask them to help tweak your system. Worth a try?

They may even pay you! I certainly would if I were them.

Considering the number of people on this forum who use LR, I also think they would find it useful to have Smugmug join in with you and provide an online tutorial how to optimize LR.

Phil

Adobe Corporate headquarters
Adobe Systems Incorporated
345 Park Avenue
San Jose, CA 95110-2704

Matthew, I find it interesting that you chose a clean install of Win 7 64-bit on the new SSD. My choice would have been to clone your old SSD onto the new SSD. From the assorted descriptive information you've provided, I can only think of a couple things that could be causing your issue.

The first is that your new 256 GB SSD might not be as fast as it could be. You've not mentioned the brand/model of it or the 128GB unit you were using. The Brand/model can be important.

Second is the size of your 1:1 previews.

This is what I see in LR 3.X


You didn't mention what your 1:1 preview settings are (or I overlooked it in the previous posts).

You've probably seen this, but thought I'd include it in your discussions.

http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/...lightroom.html

It also contains the Ian Lyons link to his testing with SSDs.

A re-install shouldn't make this happen, but by any chance in the process of re-installing Windows did hyper-threading get disabled? A quad-core I7 should appear as 8 processors in the task manager. It appears as 4 then hyperthreading was turned off.

BTW, sysinternals tools http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/sysinternals give will give you a lot more details about config ad perf than the Windows task manager will. ProcessExplorer is like task manager, but with more info. There are quite few other tools for poking at Windows there.

It sounds like you load all your images on the SSD when you process them. What is the other disk for?

In control panel/system/advanced system/performance there are performance settings. Your re-install may have left them with different settings that the previous install had. It hard to say if appearance or performance would be a better setting, but try them out and see if they make a difference.

Originally Posted by Matthew Saville Nope, moving the cache file off the OS SSD did not improve rendering speeds. I've tried moving my LRCAT and standard preview folder around, too. The only way I can get a different time test is if I drastically change the develop settings that are rendered for the 1:1 preview. Hmm, more testing is in order... =Matt=

Originally Posted by lifeinfocus I am guessing that you are 5 to 6 hours from Adobe Headquarters in San Jose. Right? Since you are stress testing their software, I suspect Adobe would love to have a full time professional user of LR provide hands on feedback. Contact them and ask them to help tweak your system. Worth a try? They may even pay you! I certainly would if I were them. Considering the number of people on this forum who use LR, I also think they would find it useful to have Smugmug join in with you and provide an online tutorial how to optimize LR. Phil Adobe Corporate headquarters Adobe Systems Incorporated 345 Park Avenue San Jose, CA 95110-2704

I'm bad with sarcasm, so I can't tell whether or not you're serious. Actually, I'd love to be a part of Adobe Lightroom speed testing. I'm already a senior editor at a moderately popular site called SLR Lounge, which publishes LR tutorials and stuff. However, we just can't seem to get to the bottom of this problem.

And for the time being, my #1 priority is working 12-14 hours a day to try and help our studio get through the season, so it would be next off-season before I could find any time for other endeavors...

It is a long-term aspiration of mine, however...

=Matt=

Originally Posted by kdlanejr Matthew, I find it interesting that you chose a clean install of Win 7 64-bit on the new SSD. My choice would have been to clone your old SSD onto the new SSD. From the assorted descriptive information you've provided, I can only think of a couple things that could be causing your issue. The first is that your new 256 GB SSD might not be as fast as it could be. You've not mentioned the brand/model of it or the 128GB unit you were using. The Brand/model can be important. Second is the size of your 1:1 previews. This is what I see in LR 3.X You didn't mention what your 1:1 preview settings are (or I overlooked it in the previous posts).

The reason I did a fresh install was because, well, Windows sucks? My old install of Windows 7 is just a little too crashy...

Sorry, I thought I mentioned the SSD brand- Both SSD's were the same make, a Crucial M4 SSD, they are SATA 3 and my computer can support it, I checked. HD tune gives me nearly 500 MB/sec transfer speed. I know there are faster ones out there, but this 256GB SSD is supposed to have an even faster *write* speed than the old 128 GB. (260 MB/sec vs 175 MB/sec)


Next: As far as I know, the 1:1 preview size does not have anything to do with the standard preview size.

If I am wrong, and rendering 1:1 previews ALSO forces Lightroom to render standard previews, it would still not be the problem since I have set standard previews to the lowest size and lowest quality... Wait, hmm, maybe I did that at a separate time from this particular test. I'll re-test just to be sure... But the bottom line is that there are no options that I know of that affect the quality of 1:1 previews, only standard size previews. So the only question is does generating a 1:1 preview also generate a standard preview...

=Matt=

Originally Posted by Dan7312 A re-install shouldn't make this happen, but by any chance in the process of re-installing Windows did hyper-threading get disabled? A quad-core I7 should appear as 8 processors in the task manager. It appears as 4 then hyperthreading was turned off. BTW, sysinternals tools http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/sysinternals give will give you a lot more details about config ad perf than the Windows task manager will. ProcessExplorer is like task manager, but with more info. There are quite few other tools for poking at Windows there. It sounds like you load all your images on the SSD when you process them. What is the other disk for? In control panel/system/advanced system/performance there are performance settings. Your re-install may have left them with different settings that the previous install had. It hard to say if appearance or performance would be a better setting, but try them out and see if they make a difference.

I just thought of that, and checked two things:

1.) Yep, Windows task manager shows 8 cores. And Lightroom appears to be able to use all eight cores, though it doesn't seem to push them to the usual 99% that some apps do when they're truly maxing the CPU. As I mentioned earlier, I seem to get a variety of 15-50-75% CPU usage, and 99% on occasion. I just wonder if LR4 is simply not capable of going faster? Cause the resources are there, if it wants to.

2.) One thing I was missing from my initial fresh install was the hyperthreading monitor widget / program, which I just re-installed. And indeed, Lightroom does seem to be able to push the CPU past it's rated 2.0 GHZ, I usually get as much as 2.6 GHZ.

Besides this, I did also reset my visual settings for optimal performance. I'm not using the "Aero" theme, I swithced to the simpler one that is recommended for optimal performance. I also turned off all those options in the Visual effects tab, except for showing thumbnails in explorer and the last option for showing visual styles on windows and buttons. (This is how my computer was set up before, when it could render previews in 2-3 seconds...)


=Matt=

Generally if the cores are not being pushed to 99% then most likey the program is waiting on the disk to get some data to process.

I just did a quick test on my desktop i7 system running Vista 64. When LR4 "loads" an image usage(Loading shows up over the image when you click on the thumbnail in the filmstrip and the view is zoomed in) of CPU usage goes up to 99%, that's across all cpu's, so all 8 are maxed out. It doesn't happen instantly, it take maybe 2 seconds, that it pops up to 99% for 2 or 3 seconds.

Some images barely used the CPU at all, but were loaded quickly, so probably LR had them in it's cached files.

These are 7D and 5DIII raw images so they are around 18-24 MB.

I have an old fashioned stone age spinning disk drives, but they spin at 10,000 rpm.

So if you are not seeing your CPU's max out every time you load a brand new image, my guess is that for some reason your processor can not get the data off the disk fast enough... that's just a guess though.

Almost all SSD's read fast, but can be a lot of difference in their write speed. If LR is writing to the SSD it may be causing it to slow down... but that's another wild guess. Try moving all of LR's temps files and such to your regular hard drive and see if that makes a difference.

Originally Posted by Matthew Saville I just thought of that, and checked two things: 1.) doesn't seem to push them to the usual 99% that some apps do when they're truly maxing the CPU. As I mentioned earlier, I seem to get a variety of 15-50-75% CPU usage, and 99% on occasion. I just wonder if LR4 is simply not capable of going faster? Cause the resources are there, if it wants to. =Matt=

Originally Posted by Matthew Saville I'm bad with sarcasm, so I can't tell whether or not you're serious. Actually, I'd love to be a part of Adobe Lightroom speed testing. I'm already a senior editor at a moderately popular site called SLR Lounge, which publishes LR tutorials and stuff. However, we just can't seem to get to the bottom of this problem. And for the time being, my #1 priority is working 12-14 hours a day to try and help our studio get through the season, so it would be next off-season before I could find any time for other endeavors... It is a long-term aspiration of mine, however... =Matt=

Yep, I am serious. I built and ran a large network, headed IT research and more, so working with vendors comes natrually to me. I hope your workload reduces soon.

Phil

Originally Posted by Matthew Saville Sorry, I thought I mentioned that- Both SSD's were the same make, a Crucial M4 SSD, they are SATA 3 and my computer can support it, I checked. HD tune gives me nearly 500 MB/sec transfer speed. I know there are faster ones out there, but this 256GB SSD is supposed to have an even faster *write* speed than the old 128 GB. (260 MB/sec vs 175 MB/sec) Next: As far as I know, the 1:1 preview size does not have anything to do with the standard preview size. If I am wrong, and rendering 1:1 previews ALSO forces Lightroom to render standard previews, it would still not be the problem since I have set standard previews to the lowest size and lowest quality... Wait, hmm, maybe I did that at a separate time from this particular test. I'll re-test just to be sure... But the bottom line is that there are no options that I know of that affect the quality of 1:1 previews, only standard size previews. So the only question is does generating a 1:1 preview also generate a standard preview... =Matt=

I checked settings on my desktop today, I7-920 slightly overclocked at 2.8GHz, then I purged lightrooms cache and started reviewing 1DmkIV raw files. The 1:1 previews take ~4 seconds to load. My files are on a 2TB 7200 WD green caviar hard drive, so I don't expect to get faster than that. I have 24GB of triple channel ram installed. and have changed my power plan settings to prevent speedstep from idling my processor.

I have 3 GB SATA on my ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 MB and not the more desirable 6GB SATA. My OS drive is a 600 GB Raptor. I also have a third drive installed which has my system pagefile and program cache files.

Ideally, I'd like to have two 512 GB or larger SSD's installed. One to read files from and one to write files to (for video editing). If I add a 512GB Crucial M4 to my system I expect it to be much faster than the WD green caviar I'm storing files on, but also realize that the SSD will be limited by my SATA interface. For me it's kind of a "partial win" situation.

Since I don't have a clue what your workflow is with LR4, my best suggestion is to install a program named Fast Picture Viewer. This program is insanely fast at opening both jpegs and raw files for culling/sorting and will allow you to open files in other photo editors.

I'm interested to know if you find something that is slowing your system down.

Originally Posted by Dan7312 Generally if the cores are not being pushed to 99% then most likey the program is waiting on the disk to get some data to process. I just did a quick test on my desktop i7 system running Vista 64. When LR4 "loads" an image usage(Loading shows up over the image when you click on the thumbnail in the filmstrip and the view is zoomed in) of CPU usage goes up to 99%, that's across all cpu's, so all 8 are maxed out. It doesn't happen instantly, it take maybe 2 seconds, that it pops up to 99% for 2 or 3 seconds. Some images barely used the CPU at all, but were loaded quickly, so probably LR had them in it's cached files. These are 7D and 5DIII raw images so they are around 18-24 MB. I have an old fashioned stone age spinning disk drives, but they spin at 10,000 rpm. So if you are not seeing your CPU's max out every time you load a brand new image, my guess is that for some reason your processor can not get the data off the disk fast enough... that's just a guess though. Almost all SSD's read fast, but can be a lot of difference in their write speed. If LR is writing to the SSD it may be causing it to slow down... but that's another wild guess. Try moving all of LR's temps files and such to your regular hard drive and see if that makes a difference.

Judging by the zig-zag pattern that goes on while I'm rendering 1:1 previews, it looks like LR is indeed using the entire CPU at some point in each cycle of 1:1 rendering...

=Matt=

Originally Posted by kdlanejr I checked settings on my desktop today, I7-920 slightly overclocked at 2.8GHz, then I purged lightrooms cache and started reviewing 1DmkIV raw files. The 1:1 previews take ~4 seconds to load. My files are on a 2TB 7200 WD green caviar hard drive, so I don't expect to get faster than that. I have 24GB of triple channel ram installed. and have changed my power plan settings to prevent speedstep from idling my processor. I have 3 GB SATA on my ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 MB and not the more desirable 6GB SATA. My OS drive is a 600 GB Raptor. I also have a third drive installed which has my system pagefile and program cache files. Ideally, I'd like to have two 512 GB or larger SSD's installed. One to read files from and one to write files to (for video editing). If I add a 512GB Crucial M4 to my system I expect it to be much faster than the WD green caviar I'm storing files on, but also realize that the SSD will be limited by my SATA interface. For me it's kind of a "partial win" situation. Since I don't have a clue what your workflow is with LR4, my best suggestion is to install a program named Fast Picture Viewer. This program is insanely fast at opening both jpegs and raw files for culling/sorting and will allow you to open files in other photo editors. I'm interested to know if you find something that is slowing your system down.

It sounds like the speeds I'm getting are roughly close to what others are getting, so I'm just perplexed as to how I got such fast speeds last time.

I guess the next step, unfortunately, is to just go back to the old 128 GB SSD and re-test that.

BTW, I tried that Fast picture viewer program, and it's great! Kinda like Photomechanic and Nikon View NX2, which I love to use for culling. I'd love to have a program that can view both NEF and CR2 files instantly from their JPG previews. I dunno if Fast Picture Viewer can show a filmstrip style bar though, that'd be awesome.


=Matt=

My Fast Picture Viewer shows a filmstrip across the top of the screen after moving the mouse up there.

Originally Posted by stormyboy My Fast Picture Viewer shows a filmstrip across the top of the screen after moving the mouse up there.

Mine also. Check out their Getting Started page for information on usability and shortcuts.

Fast Picture Viewer... WOW, It is fast! I don't have even a tiny fraction of the images Matt has to deal with but I'm going to become a Fast Picture View user. What a great way to cull out images.

Even running directly off the compact flash. I can be culling before it finishes reading the whole card. It certainly much faster than I am...

Originally Posted by kdlanejr Since I don't have a clue what your workflow is with LR4, my best suggestion is to install a program named Fast Picture Viewer. This program is insanely fast at opening both jpegs and raw files for culling/sorting and will allow you to open files in other photo editors. I'm interested to know if you find something that is slowing your system down.

The FastPictureViewer Codec Pack is a good purchase, even if one doesn't use their viewer.

Tom