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there has to be a faster way...HELP

lilmommalilmomma Registered Users Posts: 1,060 Major grins
edited October 9, 2011 in Finishing School
Thanks to the fine folks here at DGRIN i learned about the "edit in photoshop" option from lightroom.

Finding out about that was like Christmas.

HOWEVER. Its like photoshop and lightroom can't run together. When i'm done with a photo, I save it and it takes about 5-10 minutes before I can really do anything on my computer. I think Lightroom is the source of the problem, it likes to run pretty slow when its not the only thing open. expecially after touching anything with the adjustment brush.

Wait, actually its probably my computer. Its a Mac (sorry don't know specifics) but its barely 2 years old.

How can I speed up these two programs running together? its useless trying to do anything.

To clarify, i'm using Photoshop CS5 and Lightroom 3. thanks

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    mstensmstens Registered Users Posts: 78 Big grins
    edited September 23, 2011
    What Mac do you have? How much RAM is in it? Are you saving these files locally, or on an external or network drive? What else is running?
    mike
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    lilmommalilmomma Registered Users Posts: 1,060 Major grins
    edited September 23, 2011
    nothing else is running. not sure about the RAM, probably like 4? It was top of the line 2 years ago.

    I had an external hard drive plugged in where I now upload my photos to since I started running out of room on the main hard drive.

    I do still have room on the main hard drive though.
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    mstensmstens Registered Users Posts: 78 Big grins
    edited September 23, 2011
    For starters, click on the apple on the top left screen, then on "About this Mac", then More Info.

    That'll give us the following information that'll be helpful (this is a cut paste from mine)

    Model Name: MacBook Pro
    Model Identifier: MacBookPro8,2
    Processor Name: Intel Core i7
    Processor Speed: 2.2 GHz
    Number of Processors: 1
    Total Number of Cores: 4
    L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
    L3 Cache: 6 MB
    Memory: 8 GB <----

    If you're writing to an external drive, this will slow down writes, but it should NOT do so by 5 minutes on a USB2.0 attached device. I can run both applications in this manner on my '08 macbook pro as well without it taking that long to save and be found in Lr (some of it also file size dependent, if you've got a HUGE PS file it'll naturally take longer to save as PSD or TIF with layer information). How much room do you have on the local drive?
    mike
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    arodneyarodney Registered Users Posts: 2,005 Major grins
    edited September 23, 2011
    Sounds like a hard drive write issue or something. The image is in RAM while in Photoshop, if there were not enough, I suspect an error would pop. It sounds like the writing to the drive is taking too long.

    What you might do is open Activity Monitor next time you run this routine. Do the save, have the monitor visible and sort by various columns to attempt to locate the bottleneck.
    Andrew Rodney
    Author "Color Management for Photographers"
    http://www.digitaldog.net/
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    mstensmstens Registered Users Posts: 78 Big grins
    edited September 23, 2011
    Well, the reason I asked about RAM was the mentioning of a slowdown when the Adjustment Brush is used in Lr. Otherwise, I agree with you, the slow write sounds more like a HDD issue.
    mike
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    lilmommalilmomma Registered Users Posts: 1,060 Major grins
    edited September 24, 2011
    Thanks for the help. I figured out the problem. Apparently I have only 1gb ram.... So, that doesn't do me a lot of good. I swear I thought it was 4.

    Ugh. Need to buy some more I guess!
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    mstensmstens Registered Users Posts: 78 Big grins
    edited September 24, 2011
    Well, at least the prices have dropped significantly in the past couple years! Check out owc's site, what intel will take and what apple says are often different!
    mike
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    SamSam Registered Users Posts: 7,419 Major grins
    edited September 24, 2011
    lilmomma wrote: »
    Thanks for the help. I figured out the problem. Apparently I have only 1gb ram.... So, that doesn't do me a lot of good. I swear I thought it was 4.

    Ugh. Need to buy some more I guess!

    If your original mac came with only 1 gig of Ram I wonder what the processor is, and other specs are.

    Maybe this is a good time to take a look at your computer and determine if it's worth upgrading the RAM or time for a new one.

    Post the specs for your computer and lets see what the computer geeks think.

    Sam
    www.samlinvillephotography.com
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    lilmommalilmomma Registered Users Posts: 1,060 Major grins
    edited September 29, 2011
    Sam wrote: »
    If your original mac came with only 1 gig of Ram I wonder what the processor is, and other specs are.

    Maybe this is a good time to take a look at your computer and determine if it's worth upgrading the RAM or time for a new one.

    Post the specs for your computer and lets see what the computer geeks think.

    Sam

    intel Core 2 Duo
    2.4 GHz
    L2 cache 6MB
    Memory 1GB
    Bus Speed 1.07 GHz
    hopefully just adding a bit of RAM helps. I don't quite have $1000+ bucks laying around for a new computer!
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    Ed911Ed911 Registered Users Posts: 1,306 Major grins
    edited October 9, 2011
    lilmomma wrote: »
    Intel Core 2 Duo
    2.4 GHz
    L2 cache 6MB
    Memory 1GB
    Bus Speed 1.07 GHz
    hopefully just adding a bit of RAM helps. I don't quite have $1000+ bucks laying around for a new computer!

    Everything above looks good, except your RAM...get more...at least 4 gigs total. Two four gig matched sticks...just buy two of the same brand.

    I run an Intel Pentium dual core on my laptop...inferior to your Core 2 duo, and it handles both CS5 and LR3 easily...however, I do have 3 gigs of ram. So, your microprocessor is plenty fast. Your IO bus speed is fine at 1 gig. What you need is more ram. But, I see you know that. If you run out of RAM, then your computer will use hard disk space to set up a virtual hard drive...and swap data in and out of it...as needed. This is way slower than popping data in and out of RAM.

    So, just looked up RAM for you...seems that it's not so expensive, $49 for 4 gigs.

    Here's a Link. http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=MacBook%20Pro%202.4GHz%20Intel%20Core%202%20Duo%20%2815.4-inch%29&pl=MacBook%20Pro&cat=

    Hope you get this fixed soon.
    Remember, no one may want you to take pictures, but they all want to see them.
    Educate yourself like you'll live forever and live like you'll die tomorrow.

    Ed
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