14 Messages
•
396 Points
Fri, Jul 26, 2019 2:54 PM
Lightroom Classic: Poor Performance on Mac with 5K display
Lightroom is broken.
I recently purchased a new 5K iMac, reasonably well specced up, and certainly far beyond the recommended system requirements. And Lightroom performs like a one-legged donkey on it.
I've been using Lightroom since the first release and loved it right from the start. It allowed me to edit photos with an ease and control that I could never manage in Photoshop. But now, for the first time, I'm considering abandoning it in search of something that actually works.
There are endless reports online, on Adobe's forums in particular, about how poorly Lightroom runs on the 5K iMac. And these have been acknowledged by Adobe Staff Contributors. Yes, I understand that the resolution of a 5K display is demanding and resource intensive, however I don't have any issues editing in Affinity or Capture One, or any other graphics/processor intensive software I use for that matter. So inevitably the issue comes back to Lightroom and how it has been designed.
I've followed every troubleshoot step I can find regarding this issue in the hopes of resolving it, and have had Adobe support screen share to do their thing. Nothing has helped the situation. So I'm left with a piece of software that I'm paying good money for, and which is currently essential to my workflow, but which I simply cannot use.
What's the answer here? It seems this is an issue that has been reported for a number of years so I'd ask why nothing has been done about it?
I'd like to be able to continue to use Lightroom. It's still in my mind the best all-round photo editing software, but in it's current state I (like many others) have no choice but to look elsewhere.
I recently purchased a new 5K iMac, reasonably well specced up, and certainly far beyond the recommended system requirements. And Lightroom performs like a one-legged donkey on it.
I've been using Lightroom since the first release and loved it right from the start. It allowed me to edit photos with an ease and control that I could never manage in Photoshop. But now, for the first time, I'm considering abandoning it in search of something that actually works.
There are endless reports online, on Adobe's forums in particular, about how poorly Lightroom runs on the 5K iMac. And these have been acknowledged by Adobe Staff Contributors. Yes, I understand that the resolution of a 5K display is demanding and resource intensive, however I don't have any issues editing in Affinity or Capture One, or any other graphics/processor intensive software I use for that matter. So inevitably the issue comes back to Lightroom and how it has been designed.
I've followed every troubleshoot step I can find regarding this issue in the hopes of resolving it, and have had Adobe support screen share to do their thing. Nothing has helped the situation. So I'm left with a piece of software that I'm paying good money for, and which is currently essential to my workflow, but which I simply cannot use.
What's the answer here? It seems this is an issue that has been reported for a number of years so I'd ask why nothing has been done about it?
I'd like to be able to continue to use Lightroom. It's still in my mind the best all-round photo editing software, but in it's current state I (like many others) have no choice but to look elsewhere.
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james_hess_4809339
305 Messages
•
4.6K Points
2 years ago
0
0
jcliff123
14 Messages
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396 Points
2 years ago
0
0
Johan_Elzenga
Champion
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3.4K Messages
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59K Points
2 years ago
Johan W. Elzenga,
http://www.johanfoto.com
0
jcliff123
14 Messages
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396 Points
2 years ago
In short, the application slows to a crawl whenever I use adjustment brushes, spot removal, crop, graduated filter...basically any of the basic develop tools.
1
0
carlos_cardona_4982447
799 Messages
•
11.5K Points
2 years ago
But I digress. If you have just "upgraded" your Mac OS several times, and not done a "clean install", you may have tons of "cruft" (technical term) that is slowing down EVERYTHING, not just Lightroom. Doing a clean install of Mojave and then using Migration Assistant to bring your data and apps back from an external boot drive backup may be just the ticket.
Or, if you're lucky, you might just have corrupt caches or application states, or directory damage. Please give your Mac the "once over"! Run the free Onyx (https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/o...), reboot. (In Onyx just run almost everything in the Maintenance tab, deselecting things you may not want deleted, like Launch Services. (Hit the "Options" button and deselect more stuff like Cookies & Other Site Data, Browser History, Form Values, etc.), then hit Run Tasks. After it's done it will ask for a reboot.
If that doesn’t fix it run Disk Warrior if you can ($120), (https://www.alsoft.com), to fix directory damage, reboot. If you can’t do Disk Warrior, at least run First Aid from Disk Utility. Also just doing a "Safe Boot" can clear out caches (restart, hold down shift until you see "Safe Boot" on the screen, then reboot normally.
If that doesn’t work try launching Lightroom from your other (admin or test) account, with a new catalog, as a test. Does it run OK? If it does it may be a corrupted preference in your Username/Library folder. Check The Lightroom Queen site for instructions on how to reset your preferences (https://www.lightroomqueen.com). Let me know if this improves it?
5
zigi_putnins
62 Messages
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1.1K Points
2 years ago
So what is horrible? maybe one person's horrible is another person's slow is another persons ok.
How about this..i am in develop mode. i got to a never-before editd photo. i hit the crop icon and i grab one of the grab segments on the edge. i click the mouse and drag the edge and let go of the mouse. nothing fancy
Frequently, i have to wait up to 3, sometimes 5 seconds, before LR recognizes that the mouse button was released. if i move the mouse too soon after releasing the button, LR thinks the mouse movements are part of the crop action and i wind up with crop sections that are just a single point.
i can tell that LR registered the button release by some cursor change (cant rememer of the top of my head.
This weird action is only with LR. Not PS. Not vegas. Not On1. Not word. Not outlook. Not chrome.
Windows 10, 32G RAM. GPU disabled/enabled does not matter.
And if you look further, adobe actually suggested (and it worked in my case), to change the core (CPU core) affinity settings for LR - in otherwords, dont let it run on all 8 cores i have, but only let it run on two. That did actually help. a couple of releases ago. Then an upgrade later its back to bad behavior. But this type of solution shows these type of issues go way way way beyond driver updates or gpu acceleration or cache cleaning.
So i get it sounds like generic whining about slow performance and with that i see lots of generic , but a bit of research will show that LR has, for some users, really bad performance, and requires some more substantial answers.
0
Krystof
9 Messages
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228 Points
2 years ago
0
carlos_cardona_4982447
799 Messages
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11.5K Points
2 years ago
Please give your Mac that once over that I suggested in my previous post, because the most likely culprit is damage/waste in your operating system. This is likely to fix your issues, but don’t complain until you’ve done it !
16
0
andy_bitterer
1 Message
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100 Points
a year ago
Obviously, there is no point in buying a 5K machine and then not run it at the highest resolution, but I rather have a fast UI than the highest possible resolution. As I said, it's only a quick fix. Adobe, over to you.
2
bill_3305731
891 Messages
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10.4K Points
a year ago
0
0
kyle_heinemann
1 Message
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64 Points
a year ago
0
0
jcliff123
14 Messages
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396 Points
a year ago
Adobe have consistently failed to provide a solution to the issues I'm still experiencing. I have escalated and escalated, had endless chats, calls and screen shares. I've tried all the steps they suggested. Nothing fixes the problems I'm encountering and Lightroom remains practically unusable. It is broken and I've given up trying to get any support from Adobe.
With the current situation and my city in lockdown, I've finally found the time to properly learn Capture One and I only wish I'd done so sooner. It just works and is a far more powerful, efficient piece of software. And, unlike Adobe, they actually listen to their customers and implement requested changes. Sure, sometimes they take a while to do so, and there are some features/functions missing from the software, but overall it's a significantly better option for me and I would imagine for most others.
I'm looking forward to the day when I can ditch Adobe software altogether. Thankfully that day doesn't look too far off.
Good luck to those experiencing similar issues - I know all too well how frustrating they are.
Stay well!
7
bill_3305731
891 Messages
•
10.4K Points
a year ago
For Lightroom Export, Lightroom will dispatch tasks for each one of the images to be exported. So for 100 files on a 10 thread CPU. it will dispatch 100 tasks that the OS will serialize; it will almost 100% control all 10 threads until the files are exported.
Assuming that you: 1) don't want to switch to Windows (which is impacted by Export though not as severely) AND 2) want to continue with Lightroom; export to a slow device such as a USB stick and when done, copy the exported files to the desired location. Then the process becomes write gated and there will be CPU resources available for other tasks.
What Adobe needs to do is offer a setting to restrict the number of threads used by export. Many rendering applications offer this feature.
What we all need is a desktop OS which is interrupt driven with symmetric multitasking. Lightroom is not the only tool with this problem, various non-Adobe video rendering applications have the same issue.
0
zion_johansson
6 Messages
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110 Points
7 months ago
I'm also a user of both PS and LR.
So I'm wondering is this only on the 5k screens this issues appears? If I'll go with a 2k screen instead will that help me out. 5k isn't a must for me.
And or is the problem fixed yet?
0
0
carlos_cardona_4982447
799 Messages
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11.5K Points
7 months ago
0
0