Please see the full diskussion with the problem here: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2210245 (test with different Lightroom versions, confrontation with a weak laptop, that works fine, tests wit other graphic grafic card, test with other bios settings etc. No results. Only restart LR or minor display resolution helps.)
Can anyone with an XEON E5-1650 0 3.2Ghz confirm this?
- 29 Posts
- 11 Reply Likes
- frustrated
Posted 3 years ago
- 88 Posts
- 30 Reply Likes
- 29 Posts
- 11 Reply Likes
John R. Ellis, Champion
- 4756 Posts
- 1293 Reply Likes
- Does LR's memory usage as reported in Task Manager increase dramatically as it slows down? That's a typical symptom of a memory leak.
- Try restricting LR to running on 1, 2, 3, or 4 processors. Open a command prompt and paste this line:
start /affinity F cmd.exe /c "c:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Lightroom\lightroom.exe"An affinity mask of "F" specifies 4 processors; use "7" for 3 processors, "3" for 2 processors, and "1" for 1 processor. (The mask is a bit mask specified in hex.)
John R. Ellis, Champion
- 4756 Posts
- 1293 Reply Likes
- 29 Posts
- 11 Reply Likes
b) with your tip I tried different number of cores. With 1 core: slower, with 2 cores slower, with 3 and with 4 cores faster. The problem is not resolved with 4 cores, but seams not so dramatically. The brush is smoother and a little faster than with all 6 cores. On images with not so much local corrections, the difference (4 cores to 6 cores) is bigger (4 cores faster than 6 cores). With images with many corrections, the difference is not so big.
Seams that core support is the crucial point in LR.
John R. Ellis, Champion
- 4756 Posts
- 1293 Reply Likes
- 29 Posts
- 11 Reply Likes
a)
I would say: with 4 cores LR is faster than with 6 cores:
4 cores: faster and smoother
6 cores: slower and not so smooth
b)
Yes, LR does get slower over time and then become unusable:
with 4 cores: over more time
with 6 cores: over less time
No, when I do nothing, then no problem.
John R. Ellis, Champion
- 4756 Posts
- 1293 Reply Likes
Large numbers of people use LR with 4 cores (8 virtual processors). There have been a few reports on this forum of people successfully using 6, 8, and 10 cores (12, 16, and 20 virtual processors). So there must be something particular about your configuration or hardware.
- 29 Posts
- 11 Reply Likes
But yes, I think it's a combination of LR-PC-Configuration.
I exclude the graphics card, because I have already tested with two different cards in the same PC. And I exclude drivers, because I have updated all system components.
Now I look for people who also have a XEON E5-1650 0 3.2Ghz and be able to report their experiences.
- 203 Posts
- 62 Reply Likes
using a 6 (12) core i7 machine with a 4k display makes Lightroom nearly compleately non-usable!
reducing the used cores by the described command above and reducing the display resolution speeds LR up.
In my eyes it is absolutely inacceptable that the leading application for photography pros shows this behaviour. It's exactly this group of users who will use 4k displays and high performance PCs on which LR fails and slows down rapidly!
- 1 Post
- 1 Reply Like
But seriously -- even if not photography 4k isn't really exotic anymore. It's mostly gamers that still buy 1080p screens.
What i would like to see is that the Develop Module in Lightroom is 100% dedicated to the task at hand. Editing photos shouldn't be anywhere near slow on a modern system.
- 7 Posts
- 2 Reply Likes
w10x64 w/i7 3770K cpu @3.5ghz. OS, storage and scratch disks are on 3 separate 0-raided ssd's. The gpu is an amd r9 380. Asus Maximus V mobo
John R. Ellis, Champion
- 4756 Posts
- 1293 Reply Likes
Limiting the number of processors is an old debugging trick to help identify race conditions in multi-threaded programs. There's pretty clearly some problem with how LR uses multiple processors on some CPUs.
Todd Shaner, Champion
- 1621 Posts
- 549 Reply Likes

John R. Ellis, Champion
- 4756 Posts
- 1293 Reply Likes
I don't think using the Task Manager to set affinity of a running LR process would be as good a test. It's possible that LR makes some decisions about how many processors to use early in its startup sequence, and setting affinity with the Task Manager would be too late.
Todd Shaner, Champion
- 1621 Posts
- 549 Reply Likes
Puget Systems did similar testing of LR6, but they didn't run any benchmarks for Develop module control performance (Tone, Adjustment Brush, etc.).
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Lightroom-CC-6-Multi-Core-Performance-649/
- 29 Posts
- 11 Reply Likes
- 37 Posts
- 31 Reply Likes
Lightroom uses all cores (all 12 logic cores) when exporting, creating 1:1 previews etc. While editing it uses for 1 core of power, maybe 2. I can set affinity to only 1 core and performance would not suffer mauch. But it would be huge difference on export. If U se GPU there is boost in performance regardless of number of cores. But for brush, I need to switch off GPU in settings. Which is annoying, and I do not do it always. Brushes doing ok under GPU, I just do not see what I'm, painting until I stop and area get overlay. For simple things I paint on "air". If I need to be precise, I turn GPU off. Annoying. SInce I use Lr only for "preset/auto" stff latelly I don't care anymoore. Adobe will lost one customer when my 1 year CC runs off. No point wasting my creative life here. 100's of replyes and no solution. It can't be...
- 29 Posts
- 11 Reply Likes
I think that this excludes memory problems.
Todd Shaner, Champion
- 1603 Posts
- 540 Reply Likes
What I did notice is that CPU Usage never exceeds ~50% when using the Tone controls or Adjustment. When adjusting the Detail panel Luminance slider all 8 cores (4 core processor with Hyperthreading enabled) are at 100%. This is with an i7-860 quad-core processor:

John R. Ellis, Champion
- 4719 Posts
- 1281 Reply Likes
John R. Ellis, Champion
- 4719 Posts
- 1281 Reply Likes
Agreed.
John R. Ellis, Champion
- 4719 Posts
- 1281 Reply Likes
Thanks for finding that. I searched last night for similar reports but didn't find any. I'll consider whether to merge this topic in with the others. In general, it's important that all the reports of similar problems are merged into one thread, so that Adobe can properly appreciate the scope of the problem. But merging partially hides the existing replies.
- 29 Posts
- 11 Reply Likes
What I did notice is that CPU Usage never exceeds ~50% when using the Tone controls or Adjustment.I can confirm. Hyperthreading on/off no big difference.
- 1 Post
- 1 Reply Like
Premier, Photoshop, work tremendously well - no issues.
Lightroom - a piece of garbage.
https://forums.adobe.com/message/9026722#9026722
- 435 Posts
- 73 Reply Likes
I have an i7-5830K cpu and rendering 1:1 previews takes about 6/7 secs with 6/12 processors, but 10/12 secs using just 4/8 processors. So LR does seem to be able to use 6/12 processors efficiently.
Bob Frost
Todd Shaner, Champion
- 1603 Posts
- 540 Reply Likes
- 435 Posts
- 73 Reply Likes
I don't have any other slow problems, only preview rendering slowing down with time - overnight for example. I don't have a 4K monitor, but I can use the performance setting for gpu without problems. My graphics card is a Quadro K2000; NVidia and AMD cards often gave problems in the past since the drivers are designed for games. The Quadro drivers are designed for stability.
Bob frost
Todd Shaner, Champion
- 1603 Posts
- 540 Reply Likes
- 29 Posts
- 11 Reply Likes
Could you test and apply the same local corrections? Then in the develop module step to another photo, repeat this 20x, then return and make again extreme other local corrections. How does it look the speed? Especially in comparison to immediate LR start and after a few minutes of intense local adjustments. Thank you.
- 435 Posts
- 73 Reply Likes
I haven't tried editing your file, but I do have some evidence now to back up what you and others are saying. Normally, I only edit a few files at a time, and have no problems with speed other than rendering slowing down with time. But yesterday my wife wanted me to edit 40 files 'immediately' and print them. And towards the end of that LR did start misbehaving. It was slow doing anything, and sometimes showed me the wrong image in Develop; the develop screen was out of sync with the filmstrip and it took a few repeated clicks to get the right image on screen. Even in the print module it was showing the wrong image.
Bob Frost
- 29 Posts
- 11 Reply Likes
- 435 Posts
- 73 Reply Likes
But it is not just Xeons; my cpu is a i7-5930K, 6/12 core. Next time I have a lot of nefs to edit, I will try again with the cpu affinity set to 4/8 core for LR.
Bob frost
Todd Shaner, Champion
- 1603 Posts
- 540 Reply Likes
- 7 Posts
- 6 Reply Likes
Simon Chen, Principal Computer Scientist
- 1674 Posts
- 577 Reply Likes
- 18 Posts
- 1 Reply Like
- 18 Posts
- 1 Reply Like
- 148 Posts
- 46 Reply Likes
- 29 Posts
- 11 Reply Likes
In forum adobe a user sad: downgrade to 2015.4 helps.
I tested it. Result: not helps!
- 436 Posts
- 74 Reply Likes
Can we have a comment from Adobe on this please. Can't you replicate it?
Bob frost
Simon Chen, Principal Computer Scientist
- 1681 Posts
- 577 Reply Likes
Some made the observation that Lr was performant right after a launch and then gets slower after intense brushing. Is it on a single photo or do you typically have to walk several photos to reproduce it? Do you remember which version of Lr this started to happen? Do you have Lr mobile sync turned on? What happens if you pause the sync and then relaunch Lr?
Simon Chen, Principal Computer Scientist
- 1681 Posts
- 577 Reply Likes
- 3 Posts
- 0 Reply Likes
John R. Ellis, Champion
- 4732 Posts
- 1289 Reply Likes
Simon Chen, Principal Computer Scientist
- 1681 Posts
- 577 Reply Likes
Summary
- LR/Camera Raw has definitive a performance problem with some - especially my high-quality – PCs!
- I can reproduce the problem and I can demonstrate that the problem on other - especially my weak – PCs not persist or is not so strongly.
- With GPU on the problem increase drastically!
- Camera RAW from Bridge and Photoshop have the same problem.
- With higher lightroom version the problem increase! Also with the newest 2015.6.1!
- Camera Raw Cache amll/big. No difference.
- Minimize LR, not helps or helps only minimal.
- Downgrade helps a little, but not eliminate the problem in general.
- Restart LR, helps but restart LR every X images are not a good workaround!
- It is very frustrating that with LR my weakness machine is better than my best PC!
- 29 Posts
- 11 Reply Likes
Yes the same with LR 2015.7. The problem with 2015.7 seams a
little increased (=I can reproduce it faster!)
I can reproduce the observation that LR is performant right after a launch and
then gets slower after intense brushing also with one single photo, but
with walk over several photos I can reproduce it faster.
I tuned off all: sync, face recognition etc.
Now I will extent the summary:
1. Different photo
type of different cameras: no difference
2. Now I'm not sure that a reduction of CPU kernels helps a lot. I tested with:
start /affinity F cmd.exe /c "c:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Lightroom\lightroom.exe"
and also with the tool "Process lasso".
Seems that not help much. Helps only a little to increase the time until
the problem occurs. Or on 2015.7 helps fewer than with 2015.6.1 (I mad my first
tests with 2015.6.1, now with 2015.7)
3. The problem is not only a brush or a clone problem. It is a general
problem in the develop module when I must elaborate many photos in one session.
But with brush and clone tool I can reproduce it very fast!
Simon Chen, Principal Computer Scientist
- 1681 Posts
- 577 Reply Likes
- 435 Posts
- 73 Reply Likes
My main complaint in the past few years has been about the slowdown in rendering 1:1 previews of my 40MB nefs. However, some tests yesterday showed that this may have been cured somewhere along the update line to CC 2015.7
I selected 2700 40MB nefs (D810) without any edits (I reimported them into a separate folder and allowed LR to settle down for an hour or so), and then started rendering 1:1 previews (after allowing LR to render the standard previews as part of the import.)
At first they were taking about 4.0 secs per image, but soon settled down to 5.0 secs per image. They stayed at 5 secs until the completion in about 3.5 hrs. No slowdown with the i7-5930 6/12 core cpu (all 12 logical processors in use according to system info).
Then I ran LR (CC 2015.7) again (after deleting the 1:1 previews, restarting LR and allowing it to settle down again), but with the affinity set to FF (using logical processors 0-7). LR system info then said it was using 8 logical processors out of the 12 available. The time at start for each image was 4.6 secs, but soon settled down again to 5 secs, and stayed at 5 secs to the end.
Conclusions: No slowdown in rendering over 3.5 hrs, and no significant effect of using 4/8 cores or 6/12 cores. So my old problem seems to have been solved. I must do a big run sometime - overnight and see what happens then, but I'm optimistic.
But I haven't tested simply editing a load of files in succession with 8 or 12 cores. More coffee or something stronger needed for that!
Bob Frost
- 29 Posts
- 11 Reply Likes
- 435 Posts
- 73 Reply Likes
CORRECTION! My old problem of 1:1 rendering slowing down with time only seems to be true if the nefs are unedited.
I just repeated one run with LR using just 8 cores, but with the following edits (Autotune/Punch10/Sharpen/CameraNeutral/Noise/LensCorrection/ WBAuto/GradFilter/8Spotsremove). I edited the first file and then pasted the edits to the rest of the 2700 nefs, and re-rendered standard previews.
When LR had settled down, I then rendered 1:1 previews of the 2700 files. At start the edited images were taking 12 secs to render, BUT after only 1000 images they were taking 20 secs to render!!
I stopped the rendering and restarted LR and the rendering was back to 12 secs. That has been my experience in the past; so the increase in rendering time has something to do with rendering the edits.
I'll repeat this with all 12 cores used in LR tomorrow.
Bob Frost
- 435 Posts
- 73 Reply Likes
Same with 6/12 cores used in LR; 10 secs for rendering 40MB nefs + edits at start, and 25 secs after rendering 1000 images.
So its something to do with the edits that is slowing down rendering with time, not the no of cores.
Any ideas, Simon?
Bob Frost
- 29 Posts
- 11 Reply Likes
Yes you are right. Has do do with edits!
But why the PC goes slower and slower also when I step to another photo? And why the PC not return fast when the CPU utilization goes to zero? And why I can not reproduce the problem on my weak PC?
I think the problem is more complex: has do do with edits, CPU number, resolution etc. In my opinion, a fundamental problem in the kernel programming...
I hope in a revision of kernel programming of LR...
Simon Chen, Principal Computer Scientist
- 1681 Posts
- 577 Reply Likes
@Dietmar For your Lightroom slow down issue, could you try the following
- Open Lightroom.
- Invoke Lightroom > Preferences... menu command
- When the Preferences dialog appears, select the Presets tab.
- Click on the button labeled “Show Lightroom Presets Folder...”
- Lightroom will reveal the root preset folder in the Finder/Explorer.
- Now goto http://adobe.ly/2cEF782 and download the config.lua file and copy it into the root preset folder (under "Lightroom") at step 5. The config.lua file will reconfigure some Lightroom RAM usages for caching.
- Relaunch Lr and follow your normal routines to reproduce the issue to see if it improves. You can also try to tweak the numbers to see if it makes any difference.
- Remove or rename the config.lua from the root preset folder after the experiment (to restore to the original Lr 6.7 behavior).
- 435 Posts
- 73 Reply Likes
For my rendering slow-down, the only way to reclaim speed is to restart LR. Simply stopping rendering and letting LR settle down and then restarting rendering does not speed things up. I'll let Dietmar deal with the editing slow-down.
Bob F
- 29 Posts
- 11 Reply Likes
a)
Yes, I can "reclaim" the speed with restart of Lightroom
b)
Now I tested your suggestion with the config.lua file.
Result: unfortunately no solution :-(
Todd Shaner, Champion
- 1618 Posts
- 548 Reply Likes
AgGCCache.mainCacheFactor = 0.1
AgNegativeCache.factorOfAddressSpace = 0.01
- 29 Posts
- 11 Reply Likes
Point 11: When I reduce the resolution of my the display to 1280x1024 that helps a lot. Then slow down only after more time...
I would say that the problem "slow down" has to do with not only with cpu, but also with display resolution ( but not with graphic cards or driver because I tested with different graphic cards).
P.S. Is here anyone from Adobe? I wonder if it makes sense post experiences, or it is lost time? A statement: We know the problem and working on it, would help;-)
- 148 Posts
- 46 Reply Likes
slowness on hi resolution displays.
slowdown after working on some images and need to restart
the new thing is that you managed to narrow the decreasing performance problem to more than 4 CPU's which is a progress.
also there is a significant reduction in the speed of image export if lightroom was open and some image editing was done prior to the export. if you want fast export then restart lightroom then do the export or press the publish button.
Adobe at least tell us if you can replicate the problem or not and stop wasting our time on this forum.
don't keep us in the dark!
I live near the Adobe HQ in Maidenhead Berkshire, UK. I can bring my computer to you and show you all those issues. we can install testing software on it. anything you need. my copmuter is i7 5960X 8 core + 4K display which has similar issues to the xeon CPUs
let me know.
- 435 Posts
- 73 Reply Likes
There seems to have been no change in this problem since my last thread on this subject in June 2015.
Bob Frost
- 203 Posts
- 62 Reply Likes
I'm using LR on an i7 6 core machine and after upgrading to a 4k display I'm experiencing similar massive performance problems.
- 8 Posts
- 2 Reply Likes
- 3 Posts
- 0 Reply Likes
I can not live like this! I will have to go back to using the Photoshop Image processor if this does not change soon!
- 436 Posts
- 74 Reply Likes
Here is an interesting article on Lightrooms performance with differing core number -
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Lightroom-CC-6-Multi-Core-Performance-649/
Bob frost
Todd Shaner, Champion
- 1618 Posts
- 548 Reply Likes
- 12 Posts
- 3 Reply Likes
Todd Shaner, Champion
- 1442 Posts
- 474 Reply Likes
- 4 Posts
- 2 Reply Likes
Using a brush it takes up to 20/30 seconds just for the red overlay to display over the area I just brushed. Same for additional spot tool edits. LR basically becomes unusable.
Hw acceleration on or off does not make any significant difference.
Frankly speaking it is unacceptable for a professional photography software as LR is supposed to be.
Even more it seems there is no developer feedback on this matter.
Not exactly the type of support you'd expect.
- 7 Posts
- 2 Reply Likes
- 6 Posts
- 3 Reply Likes
When will Adobe address this issue?
Todd Shaner, Champion
- 1442 Posts
- 474 Reply Likes
- 6 Posts
- 3 Reply Likes
I'm on a 17" laptop, no dual displays, WIN 10 Anniversary edition and the latest update to LR 6. It's been creeping since the spring starting on the old machine which had been upgraded over and over. I thought the brand new build and hardware would change things.
One thing did help a little after reading this thread yesterday was turning off the GPU on my Invidia 1070 video card for Lightroom. I used the Invidia settings. It still lags a little when going from one photo to the next or pasting settings or adjustment brushing any amount at all, but not the four or five seconds it was taking.
In all, we shouldn't even be having this conversation. LR has an issue that we should not have to tweak away.
Simon Chen, Principal Computer Scientist
- 1681 Posts
- 577 Reply Likes
Here is a link where you can rollback to the earlier Lightroom versions https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/lightroom-downloads.html.
- 12 Posts
- 3 Reply Likes
- 20 Posts
- 28 Reply Likes
My 2013 Macbook Pro pushing the same 3440x1440 display is twice as fast as my new build (Windows 10 x64, i7-6900K, GTX1080, Samsung 950 Pro and 850's, 64GB Ram).
Why is this???
For importing 1,500 images and building 1:1 previews it's twice as fast...I've timed it.
The develop module loads faster and is far more responsive as well.
Can someone please help?
- 20 Posts
- 28 Reply Likes
- 148 Posts
- 46 Reply Likes
- 8 Posts
- 2 Reply Likes
Once the fix is out, I would be curious as to what the underlying issue was. I am really hoping that Adobe wasn't blowing smoke Scott and they are working on a fix
- 20 Posts
- 28 Reply Likes
- 8 Posts
- 2 Reply Likes
Related Categories
-
Lightroom Classic
- 14875 Conversations
- 3742 Followers
Dietmar Mitterer Zublasing
Hagens World Photography
Igor Socha