Lightroom is crap for stability

jfriend

I can't believe this. I'm switching over to Lightroom after many years with Bridge/CS3 and I'm trying to process 400 shots from a soccer shoot yesterday. LR hangs frequently (four times so far). The only way out is to go to tass manager and kill the program and then restart, checking database integrity (which takes many minutes) on the restart.

I finally nailed down what is causing it. As I'm trying to work through all my images, I click on the next thumb (in Develop mode). Then, I click on a preset to apply it and the program hangs. After cranking up my powers of observation after the first few program hangs, I figured out that if I click on a preset or hit the Paste button while the image still says "Loading...", then Lightroom will hang. This is a horribly stupid bug on their part and it really interferes with fast workflow. I shouldn't have to wait for the loading to stop before applying a preset. I should be able to hit the preset button or the paste button as soon as I know that's what I want to do. If LR needs to wait internally until the loading process is done, then it should handle that. There's a similar issue for the Delete button. If I hit Delete while it's still loading, I get an error that says the file is busy. Fortunately the delete button doesn't hang, it just gives me an error message.

Is this program just unstable and full of bugs? Is Adobe this bad now? They're on release 1.4 already. One would think they would have fixed these kinds of obvious bugs that I hit when processing my first serious shoot. Heck, other than trying to move quickly through the shoot, I'm certianly not an advanced LR user yet.

cmason

I don't have any problems like this, and I run on ancient hardware. If you are running v 1.4 STOP. It has been withdrawn, so uninstall and install 1.3.x. Then try it again

it is helpful to let LR build the previews first, depending on hardware and memory. Once done, other things tend to work better

thebigsky

I haven't experienced any problems with Lightroom, in fact it's never crashed, run slowly or done anything to interrupt my workflow. I'm sorry to hear of your problems, what's your set up?

Charlie

DonRicklin

Actually is sounds like you're running 1.1 or 1.2. Download 1.3.1. See
Important Lightroom 1.4 and Camera Raw 4.4 Update

For the download link and Explanation!

Don

jfriend

cmason wrote:

I don't have any problems like this, and I run on ancient hardware. If you are running v 1.4 STOP. It has been withdrawn, so uninstall and install 1.3.x. Then try it again

it is helpful to let LR build the previews first, depending on hardware and memory. Once done, other things tend to work better

I will downgrade to 1.3, but NONE of the problems they discuss in 1.4 have anything to do with the problems I'm having.

jfriend

thebigsky wrote:

I haven't experienced any problems with Lightroom, in fact it's never crashed, run slowly or done anything to interrupt my workflow. I'm sorry to hear of your problems, what's your set up?

Charlie

Intel Quadcore CPU 3.3MHz, 4GB RAM, 1333MHz FSB on Windows Vista. No other stability issues in any of the other programs I run (Firefox, Thunderbird, Photoshop, ACR, Bridge, Open Office, Star Explorer, etc...).

LiquidAir

Usually Lightroom is quite stable for me, but I just had a hang last night processing a shoot of about 350 images. I had started processing the shoot while LR was still importing from my CF card and, after white balancing the first few shots, Lightroom hung. I terminated LR using the task manager, restarted the app and the import. This time I waited for the import to finish before I continued processing my shots and I had no further trouble.

Were you working on your images while an import was in process? Usually I wait for the import to complete before I start processing. The one time I didn't resulted in a hang. I don't know for certain that processing images in the develop module before my import completed was the cause of the hang, but it seems like a possible source of instability and worth trying.

jfriend

LiquidAir wrote:

Usually Lightroom is quite stable for me, but I just had a hang last night processing a shoot of about 350 images. I had started processing the shoot while LR was still importing from my CF card and, after white balancing the first few shots, Lightroom hung. I terminated LR using the task manager, restarted the app and the import. This time I waited for the import to finish before I continued processing my shots and I had no further trouble.

Were you working on your images while an import was in process? Usually I wait for the import to complete before I start processing. The one time I didn't resulted in a hang. I don't know for certain that processing images in the develop module before my import completed was the cause of the hang, but it seems like a possible source of instability and worth trying.

No, that wasn't my issue. The import was yesterday and I was working on the processing today. Standard previews had already been built.

CatOne

I can't remember a single crash, myself.

But I'm using the Mac version. It's odd; like 95% of the crashes and complaints I see on their forums are with their Windows version; the Mac version seems to be more stable. Maybe the fact that they develop on OS X and port to Windows affects things a bit... or maybe the Windows APIs just suck

pathfinder

No religious discussions on this forum, CatOne:D

LifeandLens

Are you using local harddrive or NAS?
I had similar problems with Lightroom when I was using a network addressable storage drive (a networked harddrive)? Once I started using a local catalog and local images (on my C: drive) all my problems went away. I hope this helps someone!

jfriend

LifeandLens wrote:

I had similar problems with Lightroom when I was using a network addressable storage drive (a networked harddrive)? Once I started using a local catalog and local images (on my C: drive) all my problems went away. I hope this helps someone!

Local hard drive only.

claudermilk

pathfinder wrote:

No religious discussions on this forum, CatOne:D

In that spirit I'll just bite my tongue. :tiptoe

arodney

thebigsky wrote:

I haven't experienced any problems with Lightroom, in fact it's never crashed, run slowly or done anything to interrupt my workflow. I'm sorry to hear of your problems, what's your set up?

Charlie

Ditto on this end (and I'm often running beta builds). The OP has another issue related to his OS or hardware.

CatOne

pathfinder wrote:

No religious discussions on this forum, CatOne:D

:hide

dogwood

Well, I've been trying out the 30-day trial period of LR and while I didn't have the exact same problem, I did have an issue yesterday where I went to process 200 raw files into tiffs. For some reason, LR didn't rotate about 15 files correctly.

After seeing your post, it may have been the pasting presets in LR before the image was fully loaded that caused my issues (I was trying to work fast). Didn't cause my system to hang, just didn't rotate the final files properly. And yeah-- I'm working on a PC too.

SloYerRoll

Have you considered backing up your catalog(s) and re-installing?

I regularly shoot 10+GB of photos (lucky if 1GB are winners )and I do all kinds of crazy stuff to them while importing and in other various stages of post and have never expercienced a crash.

If you can consistantly repeat this freeze. I'd go to the Adobe user group forums and contact Adobe. Just be sure to give them more than less details:D That way they can figure it out for you w/o a bunch of dialog..

Good lck. Lr is a fantastic tool and once it's up and running. You won't know how you worked w/o it:)

KED

arodney wrote:

Ditto on this end (and I'm often running beta builds). The OP has another issue related to his OS or hardware.

Same. The 1.4 mini-debacle was annoying and cost me lots of time, but I've never (knock on wood) had a problem with LR hanging "internally" running on OS X 10.5.2.

SloYerRoll

The 1.4 update had issues?

I skipped that one since it had nothing to do w/ my OS.

jfriend

arodney wrote:

Ditto on this end (and I'm often running beta builds). The OP has another issue related to his OS or hardware.

Why do you say my issue has to do with my OS or my hardware? Do you have any info on why that's where the problem is?

FYI, this is brand new LR installation running on a fairly new computer. I can reproduce a hang every time with a very simple set of steps. The rest of my software is quite solid.

arodney

jfriend wrote:

Why do you say my issue has to do with my OS or my hardware? Do you have any info on why that's where the problem is?

FYI, this is brand new LR installation running on a fairly new computer. I can reproduce a hang every time with a very simple set of steps. The rest of my software is quite solid.

I suspect its either your OS or another issue since few (if any) are experiencing this problem you report so either we've all got some odd OS or hardware issue or you do.

arodney

arodney wrote:

I suspect its either your OS or another issue since few (if any) are experiencing this problem you report so either we've all got some odd OS or hardware issue or you do.

Note too, that to start a post with the name you did, UNTIL you know for a fact that the issue isn't LR (for most let alone all users), is unfair to the software and the developers. Despite justifiable frustration on your part, it seems pretty darn obvious of the tens of thousands of LR users, the huge majority are NOT experiencing the issues you are having, making your post title and your inability to look at your own system appear to be of questionable objectivity on your part.

DonRicklin

jfriend wrote:

Why do you say my issue has to do with my OS or my hardware? Do you have any info on why that's where the problem is?

FYI, this is brand new LR installation running on a fairly new computer. I can reproduce a hang every time with a very simple set of steps. The rest of my software is quite solid.

For example, LR users have at times complained of a color caste to all their images that only shows up in LR. Must be LR, then. Nope, 99% of the time it is a Video driver or corrupt Monitor Profile issue.

Andrew knows what he is talking about. LR interacts differently with your machine than the other Apps do, but that does not always make the problem LR's fault.

Check your memory, maybe add memory, though on PC you can only take that so far.

Do you have a Virus checker running? have it ignore LR and the images, especially if you auto write to XMP.

Lots of stuff to still check out here.

Don

jfriend

arodney wrote:

I suspect its either your OS or another issue since few (if any) are experiencing this problem you report so either we've all got some odd OS or hardware issue or you do.

I've worked in PC software for some 25 years. Anytime we had a product, we figured it was OUR responsibility to make it work on our customer's hardware, not the customer's responsibility to figure out how to make our product work on their hardware - particularly if they hadn't done anything odd to their configuration.

So, in this case, I consider it Adobe's responsibility to produce a product that runs on my hardware without significant problems, not my responsibility to figure out why it doesn't work properly on my hardware. It's a cop-out by anyone to immediately point to my hardware as the problem.

As it turns out, the problem was 100% reproducible with LR 1.4 and I cannot reproduce it with LR 1.3 so I'll assume this was another one of the 1.4 screw-ups even though this issue isn't documented as one of the 1.4 mess-ups. On LR 1.3, if I try to click on a preset while the image is still "Loading...", nothing happens. On LR 1.4, if I try to click on a preset while the image is still "Loading...", it hangs. Simple as that. I'm willing to bet this is an Adobe software bug.

jfriend

LRmvcDonR wrote:

For example, LR users have at times complained of a color caste to all their images that only shows up in LR. Must be LR, then. Nope, 99% of the time it is a Video driver or corrupt Monitor Profile issue.

Andrew knows what he is talking about. LR interacts differently with your machine than the other Apps do, but that does not always make the problem LR's fault.

Check your memory, maybe add memory, though on PC you can only take that so far.

Do you have a Virus checker running? have it ignore LR and the images, especially if you auto write to XMP.

Lots of stuff to still check out here.

Don

4GB memory (the max Vista will take). No virus checker. I don't auto-write to XMP. LR 1.3 works fine. LR 1.4 has the problem.

Even if I had a smaller amount of memory, even if I was auto-writing to XMP, it's Adobe's responsibility to produce a stable product.

Low memory should either be slow (due to swapping/paging) or gracefully generate "Insufficient memory" error warnings. Low memory should never cause a hang - that would be a bug. Auto-writing to XMP should just work if you turn it on. It's a feature they offer. They either make the feature solid or they don't.

Virus checkers are a different issue. They are so invasive in the system that they can screw up lots of things. I'm not running one.

cmason

Great to hear you have it working now John, you will enjoy it.

I am using it on an old AMD Athlon system with only 1GB of RAM. I have to be patient when using the sliders, but otherwise, it is functional. Will be rebuilding my PC this summer, but my view is that LR is very RAM dependant. I have also read that LR can benefit from multi-core processors, but not sure of how much it helps. Considering a quad-core intel upgrade.

Richard

jfriend wrote:

As it turns out, the problem was 100% reproducible with LR 1.4 and I cannot reproduce it with LR 1.3 so I'll assume this was another one of the 1.4 screw-ups even though this issue isn't documented as one of the 1.4 mess-ups. On LR 1.3, if I try to click on a preset while the image is still "Loading...", nothing happens. On LR 1.4, if I try to click on a preset while the image is still "Loading...", it hangs. Simple as that. I'm willing to bet this is an Adobe software bug.

Why are you still running 1.4 if Adobe has told people it is broken? Since you are in the software business, you know perfectly well that vendors never tell you everything they know to be wrong. Business as usual, sadly. It sounds like you need to fall back to 1.3.x and hope that Adobe does a better job of QA on the next release.

jfriend

cmason wrote:

Great to hear you have it working now John, you will enjoy it.

I am using it on an old AMD Athlon system with only 1GB of RAM. I have to be patient when using the sliders, but otherwise, it is functional. Will be rebuilding my PC this summer, but my view is that LR is very RAM dependant. I have also read that LR can benefit from multi-core processors, but not sure of how much it helps. Considering a quad-core intel upgrade.

I have 3.2GHz Intel quad-core and 4GB RAM and a 1333MHz front side bus. I work with 12MP RAW images (which is more challenging than smaller images) and I'd say LR is OK for speed. Not super zippy, but not what I'd call slow either. It's acceptable for a reasonable workflow. Moving sliders is fast and responsive for me which is a really important part of a fast workflow. I have an oversized CPU cooler and I was thinking of over-clocking up to 3.6GHz which is supposed to be very safe for the processor I have (if you have adequate cooling and the rest of your system is built for it). But, I really haven't needed an extra 10% in CPU speed so I haven't bothered. Faster disks are probably the most important since there's so much data to sling on and off disks with large RAW files.

There are some operations that seem to have some glitches like the first time I delete an image in a session, it takes something like 15 seconds to process the delete. Then, after subsequent deletes are all quick.

jfriend

rsinmadrid wrote:

Why are you still running 1.4 if Adobe has told people it is broken? Since you are in the software business, you know perfectly well that vendors never tell you everything they know to be wrong. Business as usual, sadly. It sounds like you need to fall back to 1.3.x and hope that Adobe does a better job of QA on the next release.

I'm not running 1.4 now. I was running 1.4 (before I found out about the recall) when I encountered this problem. I went back to 1.3 and no longer have the problem. I just realized today that the problem can no longer be reproduced in 1.3, so I posted that info.

cmason

jfriend wrote:

I have 3.2GHz Intel quad-core and 4GB RAM and a 1333MHz front side bus.

wow, i dream of such a system!

jfriend wrote:

There are some operations that seem to have some glitches like the first time I delete an image in a session, it takes something like 15 seconds to process the delete. Then, after subsequent deletes are all quick.

For deletions, I have been trained by LR to now tag for deletion (reject), rather than delete each immediately. Later, when I am done, I hit CTRL+Backspace, and it deletes all the rejected photos.

arodney

jfriend wrote:

So, in this case, I consider it Adobe's responsibility to produce a product that runs on my hardware without significant problems, not my responsibility to figure out why it doesn't work properly on my hardware. It's a cop-out by anyone to immediately point to my hardware as the problem.

Look this is very simple. Unless you can point out OTHER users having identical issues with the same OS and hardware, you're hard pressed to call it a bug in the LR software, then vent about your frustrations by blaming Adobe for the cause.

As I said, you've pointed out an issue that so far, no one else here (and its up to you to find others elsewhere) have reported, making it far, far more likely its an issue on YOUR END.

And why you insist on using a version that even Adobe has pulled instead of winding back only gives us the impression you're a masochist among other things.