Lightroom 4 Performance

[Swordfish]

I recently upgraded from LR3 to 4 and agree with other comments about it being a big step forward in capability, however I have found that it is noticeably slower on my laptop than LR3 was - to the point of being really irritating. I can find no other laptop issue that might be causing this and I wondered if anyone else had experienced a similar problem?

BTW, a possibly daft question, but I assume it is OK to delete LR3 after installing the upgrade?

Martin

[OlyPaul]

Re: Lightroom 4 Performance

Yes it is a lot slower and sometimes irritating, hopefully it will get better with the next release getting the bugs out of it and is not going the way of other bloat ware programs, thankfully I do not rely on it to much at the moment. And yes you can delete LR3.

By the way if you shut it down and restart it this seem to cure it for a while.

[David Morison]

Re: Lightroom 4 Performance

At the moment it is so slow that I have given up using it for the EM-5 RAW and gone back to jpegs on LR3 or PSE9 for the moment. For my E5 RAW I use LR3 which I won't uninstall for that reason, but I wonder whether having two versions of LR on my laptop is causing an issue?

David

[theMusicMan]

Re: Lightroom 4 Performance

Are you on LR4 RC2?

I don't seem to have any performance issues with this release candidate. I will say though that occasionally it seems to slow down refreshing the previews if I am browsing and change to say smaller thumbnails etc, but I have to say on the whole, the performance is akin if not a little better than LR3. Capability, especially for light/shadow recovery and control is a huge improvement and close to exceptional.

[Grumpy Hec]

Re: Lightroom 4 Performance

I've upgraded to LR4.1 and although performance may be slightly better it is still less than ideal and certainly significantly slower than LR3. This is a shame as functionaly it is a real step forward in many areas.

Interestingly I have just taken the plunge and gone for the montly subscription on Photoshop CS6 now that it is just about acceptable on price. The performance on that is very much better. It starts and closes quicker and is generally much snappier to use. Some of the functions which I imaging are pretty resource intensive run very well which is I'm sure a result of the new engine in use and the fact that it uses the praphic processor directly.

So if it can be done for CS6 why not LR4.1?

A shame as I really like LR but it is putting me off using it for some tasks and now that I have CS6 which integrates well I am using that more.

Hec

[StephenL]

Re: Lightroom 4 Performance

Lightroom 4.1 runs like a terrier after a rat on my machine, which I must admit is reasonably well specced. The release version is faster than the RC version, but I've found that's always the case with Adobe products. They seem to tidy the code up once they go to full release.

[Kiwi Paul]

Re: Lightroom 4 Performance

LR4.1 runs fine on my PC too, mine is also well speeced although I'm only running with 4GB RAM but have no performance issues.

Paul

[Grumpy Hec]

Re: Lightroom 4 Performance

Interesting comments. I have a quad core with 6GB of RAM. Looking at the stats the system is not stressed with CPU rarely exceeding 50% and RAM also showing plenty of spare at all times.

Have I missed a performance configuration setting somewhere in LR?

As I say CS6 performance is excellent and exceeds LR by a significant margin in terms of real life usability.

Hec

[steverh]

Re: Lightroom 4 Performance

Here is a useful link:

http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html

The way previews are created seems to make a lot of difference.

HTH

[Grumpy Hec]

Re: Lightroom 4 Performance

Thanks Steve

I do exceed the spec in all cases. What is worthy of checking is the preview type and size. From memory I have it at standard. Certainly imports take time, longer than in LR3, so I'm fairly certain that's the case. Have to check that this evening along with other performance settings. Most of them will be as before of course as I upgraded so if they have changed then that upgrade process would be suspect.

What is certain is the imports, opening in develop module and various adjustment brush operations are all slower than LR3 by some margin. Looking on various forums this is not confined to me so I think Adobe have released code that has poorer performance than before.

Being in software myself if we did that I would expect and receive complaints from customers who in our case are mostly corporate and so complaints can cost money in service credits.

Hec

[Gwyver]

Re: Lightroom 4 Performance

Thanks Steve

What is certain is the imports, opening in develop module and various adjustment brush operations are all slower than LR3 by some margin. Looking on various forums this is not confined to me so I think Adobe have released code that has poorer performance than before.

Hec

As you will know, LR4 introduced 'Process 2012' which provides improved RAW conversion and distortion corrections etc.. I think it's not so much a question of the code performing more poorly, rather that the de-mosaicing and suchlike for Process 2012 requires more intensive computation - and hence seems slower.

[yorky]

Re: Lightroom 4 Performance

What benefit does Lightroom 4 have over Elements 10? I am considering buying Lightroom 4 but have never used it at all

[Ian]

Re: Lightroom 4 Performance

Lightroom complements Photoshop. I use Lightroom for routine adjustments and for dodging and burning. For more object-centric editing you can send the image from Lightroom to Photoshop.

Lightroom does require a big change in the way one thinks about editing photos. Instead of loading, editing and then saving, think of Lightroom as a catalogue of your images and you can instantly enter edit mode to adjust a selected image. You can make adjustments and roll back and forth through the changes you have made and preview the effects almost instantly. There is no need to load or save anything. The changes are recorded in real time as commands associated with that image. You can switch from one image to another instantly, compare images, keyword tag images, etc.

Any adjustments and edits are virtual - no changes to the original file are made - this means there is no danger of irreversibly changing a precious original image. This is known as non-destructive editing.

Using the powerful synchronise function you can selectively apply some or all of the changes you have made in one image to ANY number of others. Press go and the changes are applied automatically. Lightroom saves an immense amount of time when editing multiple images.

When you have finished editing an image you can create a physical copy incorporating those adjustments using the Export function. Exporting can apply to one or any number of selected images, again maximising the versatility and convenience of batch processing.

Needless to say, the Lightroom way of doing things is increasingly popular and there are now rival programs that work in a similar way, like CyberLink PhotoDirector and Corel AfterShot Pro (which used to be called Bibble). Apple's Aperture program is very similar to Lightroom and has been around for just as long.

I would be absolutely lost without Lightroom and I have only described the most basic features and functionality here It is, howevger, not for everyone as it has a very steep learning curve. It took me several weeks to suss Lightroom. But I then had that light bulb experience and many others describe the same sudden feeling of - wow, I get it and you never look back.

Ian

[theMusicMan]

Re: Lightroom 4 Performance

Great explanation, Ian. No need to add much there at all so I'll just make two random comments.

1 - Lightrooms noise reduction yields some of the best results I have seen.

2 - If you want to know what photos you took during the 3 year period between 2007 and 2010, @ 75mm with your 50-200mm lens, @ f11 and with a shutter speed faster than 1/10th... voila. Lightroom will allow you to get that info in a few seconds.

3 - It doesn't have to be light in your room to use it

Enjoy!

[Swordfish]

Re: Lightroom 4 Performance

I fully support the above comments.

Fundamentally, irrespective of whether you shoot in RAW or Jpeg, the manner in which you can exert control on an image in LRoom is way ahead of what you can do in Elements.
You can ultimately achieve the same results in Elements, but it is much more long-winded and potentially destructive in terms of the original image, whereas as Ian points out LRoom is completely non-destructive.

In my opinion my move to Lroom from Elements was the best thing I ever did. I retain Elements (9) for things that you can't do in LRoom, which in my case is usually a bit of cloning etc.

Martin