I updated when the update was released - I have a Fuji X-T3 and was happy to see new camera support added.
Since then, LR is so slow as to be almost unusable:
- when switching between Library and Develop mode, screen often goes white
- histogram takes a long time to appear, and often says "calculating"
- LR needs to be force closed repeatedly because it will not respond (and it slows down the entire computer)
- CPU consumption spikes erratically when LR is open, with LR going from approximately 5-90%, even when open and idle
I contacted Adobe for support via chat (and subsequent remote control). Case #
ADB-4164592-M8L1 . After almost an hour of troubleshooting, agent told me that 8.0 had known issues and to roll back. I don't want to do this because I want the X-T3 support. Agent tried clearing cache and video cache. Each time, the cache would not clear and LR had to be force killed.
I also took the following steps, as suggested by an Adobe Digital Imaging Advocate, to no avail:
Close Lightroom
Restart the computer
Use the Adobe Creative Cloud App to uninstall Lightroom Classic CC
Restart the computer
Install Lightroom Classic CC via the Creative Cloud App
Restart the computer
Launch Lightroom
Wait 5 minutes
I need some help here , please.
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- frustrated
Posted 4 months ago
Rikk Flohr, Official Rep
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I am sorry for the issues you are having. Are you using a Mac or Windows machine. What is your OS version?
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If it wasn't for Loupedeck+ I would go back to LR6. LR7.5 to LR8 have been a huge disappointment as far as performance is concerned.
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I don't see a preference file mentioned:
A Preference File will survive a Lightroom uninstall/reinstall. Sometimes weird behavior is corrected/cured by resetting the preferences.
Reset Procedure:
1. Close Lightroom.
2. Hold down [Alt/Opt]+[Shift] while restarting Lightroom.
3. Overwrite the Preferences when prompted by the dialog.
4. Close Lightroom.
5. Restart Lightroom.
Does the behavior continue after resetting the preferences?
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Since we've checked the preferences and you've done a clean reinstall, let's look at your configuration.
GPU (Checked or Not)?
Location of Catalog?
Free disk space at location of catalog?
Location of images? (describe the drive hardware)
Number of Monitors active
Resolution of Monitors
Video Card specs
Status of Lightroom 7.5 -(installed or not)
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Location of Catalog? /users/(name)/pictures/lightroom
Free disk space at location of catalog? 66GB
Location of images? (describe the drive hardware) external 5TB HD
Number of Monitors active - sometimes one (retina display on macbook pro - 2560x1600), sometimes external monitor plugged in. External monitor is 1920x1080 res
Resolution of Monitors - see above
Video Card specs - not sure where to find this on mac. If it's under "about this mac", it says Graphics Intel Iris 1536 MB
LR 7.5 uninstalled.
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(GPU (Checked or Not)? - where do I find this? If under "preferences", "use graphics processor" is checked)
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Rikk Flohr, Official Rep
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Would you be willing to accept a remote connection so that I could view your issues first hand?
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- Close Lightroom
- Navigate to your folder where your catalog is stored:
- Locate a file called yourcatalogname Previews.lrdata and rename this file to yourcatalogname Previews.old
- Restart Lightroom
- Allow the previews to rebuild.
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Rikk Flohr, Official Rep
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I am happy to help you continue to troubleshoot your system's issues. Did you attempt to rebuild the preview cache as mentioned above?
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do I have to do the same for smart previews?
I can't even open LR to view catalog preferences without it locking up.
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I'm beyond frustrated!
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to recap:
You've reinstalled, reset preferences, attempted to rebuild previews.
Next on the troubleshooting steps are to attempt to create and use a new catalog and see if the behavior persists.
After that we are looking at creating a test new Mac User and seeing if there is something about your user account that is causing this.
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Do I need to do smart previews too?
Yes, I have reinstalled, reset preferences too.
Rikk Flohr, Official Rep
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Any reason why you are rebuilding 1:1 previews instead of standard previews. 1:1 will certainly take longer and isn't necessary to get you operational.
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Also, I missed the part where you asked if I would be willing to do remote control - I would. Thank you.
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Once completed, verify that Lightroom is working. If it isn't or is behaving differently then we need to know exactly what is happening.
The only file you will need to delete is from the steps above: yourcatalogname Previews.old .
Since previews can be built on demand, Previews from older catalogs can be deleted with minimal risk. I would keep old catalogs for now.
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I use separate catalog in its own folder for each shoot and when done I can easily pick up the whole folder with originals etc and dump on external drive to free up space.
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I echo the sentiments of others - these releases are poorly tested and are trending in the wrong direction.
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I too am suffering with huge amounts of RAM usage, and completely slowing to a halt.
I have tried resetting preferences and rebuilding syncing data, but without any success.
Today I left Lightroom Classic running on my Mac (running Mojave) while I was at work, but with syncing paused, and I still found it had frozen, and using more RAM than I have installed. I hadn't even applied any edits or anything like that.
Looks like a massive runaway memory leak or something.
Cheers,
Andy.
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I too can leave LR8 doing nothing, not even writing to XMP files in the background, and by morning it will have gobbled up as much as 95-98GB.
When it's working, I have to clear memory in order to get LR to come out of its stall. Memory Clean will oft times notify me that "Lightroom is inactive and you can clear nnGB of memory by stopping it" where nn is lots of RAM.
Poor programming effort by Adobe.
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So far now I have tried:
Rebuilding Syncing Data
Resetting Preferences
Uninstalling and reinstalling Lightroom.
I'm very reluctant to try deleting CC web data, as the problem occurs even with syncing paused, so I think this is more a localised problem.
Performance should not be an issue, my system isn't new, but is no slouch either:
Apple iMac (Late 2013) 27" 3.2GHz Quad Core, Nvidia GeForce GT755M 1GB, Crucial 500GB SSD (250GB free) where the catalogue is. My photo originals are on an external 3TB HDD (partitioned to 1.3TB for the photo storage) connected by FW800. GPU Support is ON.
Until the last few weeks this has proven to be a very well performing setup for editing and managing my photos, and I have rarely, if ever, noticed any of the lags that others have found with more powerful, or newer, hardware.
The issue is occurring with Lightroom running, but idle (even in this state it continues to eat up more and more memory), so there is a very bad problem somewhere.
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GPU support can be ON or OFF, machts nicht. I can have LR open on a monitor, be working elsewhere, come over to LR, and be greeted by the rotating beachball. Infuriating!
The so-called Holy Grail of resetting LR preferences make no never mind. LR 7 and LR8 are memory hogs...pure and simple.
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Thanks again for responding.
Here are some screen shots of Activity Monitor.
The first one is after a few minutes running:

The next is after only 9 minutes:

And the last of after a day at work with the computer left to idle:

I hope that's of use to you.
By the way, I have also tried reinstalling Mojave, and I tried the permissions adjustments someone else suggested. I've also logged out and into my account, and rebuild the sync data again. Nothing is helping.
Regards
Andy
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Thank you for the Activity Monitor timeline. That is not normal behavior. You keep mentioning rebuilding the sync data. Does this rampant memory usage only occur when sync is active? All the time?
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I've only been rebuilding the sync data in a desperate attempt to see if I can fix this. Rebuilding does seem to temporarily improve things for a short time. It very quickly syncs the bulk of images in my collections.
I've just tried it with syncing paused, and it stayed steady at around 980MB of memory usage. However, I did try that a few days ago, and I still got the rampant memory problem.
I do seem to be getting syncing stuck on a certain number of images each time though. Currently around 6,900 that are re-syncing (although nothing should actually need syncing). Each time I try the rebuild the number goes down slightly.
When I pause syncing, the sync system settles down to show no errors, and all images selected for syncing are showing as synced. No errors show on the Web CC either. As soon as I activate syncing, then the errors counter goes up, the All Synced counter goes down, and the 'Syncing xxx photos' goes up and down.
Of course I have tried just leaving it to work the issue, but eventually stalls when it get to the 'unresponsive' state. It doesn't seem to have actually crashed though, as with a little patience, it does eventually carry on working, albeit very very slowly.
And, yes, I've tried with and without the security software I'm running.
Quite a puzzle this one.
[edit] Just an update, I've just run Lightroom Classic and paused Sync, and it's had a really bad rampant memory consumption, jumping from 10GB to 16GB in 2-3 minutes.
Pretty much unusable right now.
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I think I might have solved my rampant memory usage with Lightroom. I had TechTool Pro installed, which is supposed to be reasonably OK with Mojave, although a full update is due soon. I uninstalled it and now that part of Lightroom's issues seems too be resolved. I'm seeing RAM usage around 2-5GB depending on what it's doing.
I have also been able to complete syncing now, but it was still a slow and painful process with much work to do to finish off the layout I had. Even after it settled down, I was left with nearly 2,000 images in the Errors section. Clicking on each one appeared to allow it to re-sync - but that was going to take forever that way, and selecting all did not seem to do anything. So, I cleared the sync errors, which has removed them from the synced collections.
After all the mucking about, I now have a shed load of loose albums in CC, which all need reorganising back into their folders. We really really need to have syncing of collections and folders enabled, that would help an awful lot.
Overall though (I know, probably not relevant to this thread, but I just want to vent a little), I have to say that I am getting more and more frustrated with using Lightroom. I seem to continuously battling against syncing problems, and various bugs, or simply stuff that just isn't right (thinking about poor colours with certain Profiles, and also with the new Process 5).
If I were a professional photographer, I would be a bit more than frustrated. The CC system does not feel robust enough to anything serious, if even a hobby user can stumble on issues too often.
Anyway, I thank you for your time and effort, you are always gracious and helpful.
Regards
Andy.
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I will pass along your syncing comments to the Classic team.
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Syncing took a bit longer to sort. They were stuck on 1996 left for a long time, then eventually it all cleared. After that I had a count discrepancy between CC and Classic. After a bit more mucking about with logging out and back in, and yet another sync data rebuild, I finally managed to get all my synced images singing off the same hymn sheet.
Regards.
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