Need Help with Lightroom performance issue

greenpea

Currently, when ever I launch Lightroom 1.1 on my MacBook Pro (2.33 GHz, 2GB) CPU utilization gets pegged at 100% and never seems to come down.

Lightroom doesn't give me any visual indication that its busy processing anything, other than the fact that when I open the monitor utility on my mac its says Lightroom's CPU utilization is at 100%.

All my other apps seem to run fine, and Lightroom use to run fine, but lately its become entirely unusable. Click on an image to view it, and I'll get the "Loading..." message for a few minutes, and trying to do anything with the photo takes forever.

Please help.:cry

HiSPL

I've noticed this too. I'm on a dual core imac and sometimes LR will just peg the processor and moves slower than molassas.

It only happens like 1 out of 10 times that I launch LR.

greenpea

HiSPL wrote:

It only happens like 1 out of 10 times that I launch LR.

For me its gotten to the point where it happens everytime I launch it.

DJ-S1

I haven't had this problem, but I've run it on xp and vista only. I haven't searched but I know there was a way to run a clean version of PS, something like holding shift down while launching the program. Maybe there's something similar for LR?

arodney

LR is multi threaded and its not uncommon to see it do what you describe. One thing that can really help is to make sure the preferences are set NOT to automatically write XMP to the files. Do this manually when you so desire.

Have you optimized your catalogs recently?

k2butter

arodney wrote:

LR is multi threaded and its not uncommon to see it do what you describe. One thing that can really help is to make sure the preferences are set NOT to automatically write XMP to the files. Do this manually when you so desire.

Have you optimized your catalogs recently?

What does this mean and how do you change it???

I have the same kind of performance issues, I just figured my PC was old, probably part of the case, when I upgrade (soon, very soon)... I am going to make sure I get a new pc that can handle this program....

mike_k

k2butter wrote:

What does this mean and how do you change it???

I have the same kind of performance issues, I just figured my PC was old, probably part of the case, when I upgrade (soon, very soon)... I am going to make sure I get a new pc that can handle this program....

My PC isn't the latest and greatest - but it does have a 3.8 GHz processor and 4 GB of RAM - and it doesn't handle this program. There are times when it takes 20 seconds to render an image.

I got several out of memory errors in LR 1.0 - I'm guessing that there are still memory issues with 1.1. When it starts to get too sluggish, I exit the app and start it again and it runs better -- for a while.

And the more photos I load, the slower it gets. I guess I need to look into optimizing the catalog (or getting a Mac :cry )

DJ-S1

mike_k wrote:

My PC isn't the latest and greatest - but it does have a 3.8 GHz processor and 4 GB of RAM - and it doesn't handle this program. There are times when it takes 20 seconds to render an image.

I got several out of memory errors in LR 1.0 - I'm guessing that there are still memory issues with 1.1. When it starts to get too sluggish, I exit the app and start it again and it runs better -- for a while.

And the more photos I load, the slower it gets. I guess I need to look into optimizing the catalog (or getting a Mac :cry )

Greenpea is using a Mac and still has the problems. By all means get a Mac, but that won't necessarily solve this particular problem.

greenpea

arodney wrote:

LR is multi threaded and its not uncommon to see it do what you describe. One thing that can really help is to make sure the preferences are set NOT to automatically write XMP to the files. Do this manually when you so desire.

Have you optimized your catalogs recently?

I have tried optimizing my catalogs, and re-installing 1.1, and basically going through most of the suggestions in adobe support
article ID kb400808
and
article ID 333652.

I will check my settings to make sure that it is not set to automatically write XMP files.

Would LR be going through all my files and creating an XMP if one doesn't exist? The reason I ask is because when I launch LR even if I'm not importing images the CPU hits 100% almost immediately after launching LR. There is also no indication that LR is processing anything.

dmmattix

No real problems here
I am running on a Toshiba notebook with a dual core 1.73GHz Pentium processor and 2GB of memory running Vista. It takes about 11secs to launch LR 1.1 and since previews are already built it takes under a second to see the image when you move from picture to picture. Now my catalog is not that big (a couple thousand images) and I am not sure how much the catalog size impacts the application's performance.

When you say it takes 20 seconds to 'render' an image just what are you referring to?

Mike

mike_k

DJ-S1 wrote:

Greenpea is using a Mac and still has the problems. By all means get a Mac, but that won't necessarily solve this particular problem.

Oh... well, that's good to know...

dmmattix wrote:

When you say it takes 20 seconds to 'render' an image just what are you referring to?

Mike

Say I'm in the Library module, in Grid View and I open a photo in Loupe View - or if I'm in Loupe View and am moving between shots - I'll often (almost always) get a "Working..." message on the screen. Not sure if render is the right word - the photo is loaded - I can see it, but it's not clear. If I magnify while this is happening, the image is usually pixilated. It is not uncommon for this to take 20 seconds or more. Lately it is taking up to a minute or more.

arodney

mike_k wrote:

Oh... well, that's good to know...
Say I'm in the Library module, in Grid View and I open a photo in Loupe View - or if I'm in Loupe View and am moving between shots - I'll often (almost always) get a "Working..." message on the screen. Not sure if render is the right word - the photo is loaded - I can see it, but it's not clear. If I magnify while this is happening, the image is usually pixilated. It is not uncommon for this to take 20 seconds or more. Lately it is taking up to a minute or more.

There are at least two sizes of previews to be concerned with, really high quality (1:1) and Standard Previews.

The first time you view an image in Develop at a 1:1 or higher zoom ratio, LR has to build a 1:1 preview. You can do this before ever getting to this stage if you wish by selecting the images and picking 1:1 in the Library-Previews-1:1. Then when you work in develop, you don't have to wait to see the preview updated (that work is done). Its like old saying, you can pay me now or you can pay me later. If you wish, you can generate previews standard sized previews (see below) on import, in a group (using the above process) or just wait on a one-by-one basis for the preivew to be built. The previews are then stored in a separate file along with the catalog. You can tell LR to discard these after a fixed time but I don't see the need (why wait again?). Of course the preview file can get pretty big, but who cares.

There's also the smaller previews (Standard Size) which you can control upon import and are used when you're in loupe mode. Go into the Catalog preferences, File Handling and set the resolution there based on the display resolution you're using. You can build these as you import but again, that's going to take more time on import. If you're not in a hurry, select the check box which will speed things up. NOW when you move from image to image in Loupe, there should be no delays. Again, this set of previews, mainly for Library and Loupe are based on the preferences found in File Handling.

IF you select High Quality Previews, you'll build them in ProPhoto RGB, if not, you get sRGB. That's used in Draft printing which may be something to consider.

dmmattix

mike_k wrote:

Oh... well, that's good to know...



Say I'm in the Library module, in Grid View and I open a photo in Loupe View - or if I'm in Loupe View and am moving between shots - I'll often (almost always) get a "Working..." message on the screen. Not sure if render is the right word - the photo is loaded - I can see it, but it's not clear. If I magnify while this is happening, the image is usually pixilated. It is not uncommon for this to take 20 seconds or more. Lately it is taking up to a minute or more.

All I can say is WOW!!

I just changed my 1:1 preview to High (from Medium) like Andrew mentioned, selected an image I had not worked with before in Lightroom, went to the Develop module, and clicked on the image. It took a couple of seconds(between 2 and 3) to render the image when I went to develop but was under a second to show the 1:1 image.

I feel for you because I could not use the application if it performed that way for me. One of the problems is that Lightroom has so MANY options it is somewhat hard to debug performance issues. I have looked for an option like Photoshop has for allocating memory to the application and could not find one. Andrew?

Sorry,

Mike

mike_k

arodney wrote:

There are at least two sizes of previews to be concerned with, really high quality (1:1) and Standard Previews.

The first time you view an image in Develop at a 1:1 or higher zoom ratio, LR has to build a 1:1 preview. You can do this before ever getting to this stage if you wish by selecting the images and picking 1:1 in the Library-Previews-1:1. Then when you work in develop, you don't have to wait to see the preview updated (that work is done). Its like old saying, you can pay me now or you can pay me later. If you wish, you can generate previews standard sized previews (see below) on import, in a group (using the above process) or just wait on a one-by-one basis for the preivew to be built. The previews are then stored in a separate file along with the catalog. You can tell LR to discard these after a fixed time but I don't see the need (why wait again?). Of course the preview file can get pretty big, but who cares.

There's also the smaller previews (Standard Size) which you can control upon import and are used when you're in loupe mode. Go into the Catalog preferences, File Handling and set the resolution there based on the display resolution you're using. You can build these as you import but again, that's going to take more time on import. If you're not in a hurry, select the check box which will speed things up. NOW when you move from image to image in Loupe, there should be no delays. Again, this set of previews, mainly for Library and Loupe are based on the preferences found in File Handling.

IF you select High Quality Previews, you'll build them in ProPhoto RGB, if not, you get sRGB. That's used in Draft printing which may be something to consider.

Thanks Andrew. I guess I knew some of that, but I will play around with the catalog preferences. It seems to me though that once the 1:1 preview is built, it should stay built. I can pull up a photo in 1:1 preview - wait for it to be rendered, or what ever we're calling what is happening while "Working..." or "Loading..." is on the screen, go to another photo, then back to the first, and I am "Loading..." again. (Seems like earlier it was saying "Waiting..." and now its saying "Loading..."). Both times the first image is loading it is taking over 20 seconds. I come back to the same image a third time - and wait another 20 seconds .

I will play around with some of the settings and see if I can get it to work better. It's been this way for the past two weeks or so - but it has been getting slower and slower since day 1.

mike_k

dmmattix wrote:

All I can say is WOW!!
... I feel for you because I could not use the application if it performed that way for me.

Yeah - I really like LR, but I am finding myself using it less and less lately.

dmmattix

Optimize the Catalog
Mike_k,

As I said I really don't have but around 2K photos in my catalog. But every so often when I launch LR it asks me if I want to optimize my catalog and I do. If you File->Catalog Settings under the General Tab there is a button to relaunch LR and Optimize the catalog. I really could not hurt.

Mike

HiSPL

Mine was set to automatically write xmp changes. I changed it, and optimized. It seems much faster now!

greenpea

Update:

I backed up everything, completely uninstalled LR and deleted all associated files. Then tried to re-install from the CD and got the message "You cannot continue. There is nothing to install."!??! scratch

So I tried downloading LR, and that downloaded version installed fine. Now LR appears to be working fine. So for right now I am figuring that it was a problem with how I had it configured?

I should also mention, I created an entirely new catalog. I have yet to try viewing any of the old catalogs.

arodney

dmmattix wrote:

I have looked for an option like Photoshop has for allocating memory to the application and could not find one. Andrew?

There are no such options. Planing how and when to build the thumbnails can make a difference. Turning off the auto metadata update in preferences is a huge help too. Otherwise, that's about it.