Help re Lightroom Classic working slowly

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Marion Anstis

Marion Anstis

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Hi all, especially gurus!!

My Windows 10 desktop has the following hardware: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz 3.40 GHz, 32GB RAM, 64 bit operating system and x64-based processor. I have a 2TB SSD C drive and a 4TB additional SSD internal drive, plus all my LR files are processed from a NetGear NAS system with x4 14TB drives. I have an NVIDIA Quadro Pro P1000 graphics card. A 4K display monitor.

Lightroom Classic has become pretty much useless to use because of its slowness, and I have tried processing folders on the internal drive instead of from the NAS, but with no obvious difference in speed. When I start to develop a file, the NAS starts doing things and even adding a rating or a X for deletion can be delayed in showing on the thumbnail file in the library until the NAS stops doing things. The Lightroom backup and preview folders are kept on the SSD C drive. I have thousands of photos from over the years, and more recently have been importing folders from a Z9, so they are big files, and the folders can be large at times - even up to over 6,000 images (before excess deletion), so that probably slows things down too. I have been taking JPEG high quality plus RAW, because often Jpeg in camera processing is so good, it gives me ideas for processing the RAW. And if I want a quick file for posting online, I might sometimes use a jpeg to save time. Anyway, I realize the extra files probably add to slowing the system down and will just take RAW if that will help.

My question is, will an upgrade to the motherboard/processor be a great help, or is it accessing the NAS system that is the main slow down factor? I don't have a problem with speed when using any other Adobe program, only LR Classic (latest version).

I would really appreciate your suggestions, as I am feeling very frustrated using LR.
 
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I am definitely not a guru!!!

The first thing I would do is use the Windows task manager (alt-ctrl-delete and choose task manager) to monitor my system resources while using LrC. It will tell you the percentage of resources (CPU, Memory, Disk, Network, and GPU) you are using. Organize your windows so you can do some basic tasks in LrC while watching the utilization on task manager. Watch to see which resources hit 100% and stay there.

The second piece of advice I would give is to check your LrC performance preferences and at the bottom of the window there is a link to an Adobe site with more performance tips. You can also check your Catalog Settings - File Handling and adjust preview size and quality.

You LrC catalog and preview folder should be on your fastest drive, probably an internal SSD drive. If I were to make a guess, I would say that upgrading your GPU would probably provide the most improvement, but that is just a guess. You computer is probably 10 years old and you may struggle finding a graphics card that would perform a lot faster in your computer.

Do you allow LrC to regularly backup your catalog? If you do, it should optimize your catalog before it does the backup. If not, you might try optimizing your catalog under file-optimize catalog.

Make sure your graphics card driver is current and it is being used by LrC. Look in Preferences-Performance and make sure LrC is recognizing the card. You might also change from Auto to Custom and specifically checking the actions for the card.

You might want to do a little research on what previews you want built on import.

Another thought, but make sure you do this carefully and do an internet search for specific instructions before doing this!! I don't know how much this helps performance but it does make it possible to keep you LrC catalog and previews on your fastest internal drive.
I do a lot of sports photos during the course of a year and I find my preview folder gets extremely large. So at the beginning of each summer I delete my previews folder. It will slow down my LrC processing of images I have already imported because a new preview has to be built but it keeps my previews folder manageable. If I have collection in LrC that I regularly revisit to edit I just select that collection and ask LrC to build previews and let it run overnight.

Good luck!
 
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Marion Anstis said:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU
Click to expand...
Is this correct, or should this read i7-12600?. If correct, you are over 10 generations back in terms of your processor and an upgrade would not be out of line. Second, how full are your drives? If they are very full, Windows will not have space to do swapping as needed. And, what version of LRC are you running? Versions after 9.x rely heavily on both CPU and GPU to do a lot of the heavy lifting. And I suspect that your GPU may not be up to the task at hand. Finally, what happens if you disconnect the NAS?

--Ken
 
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As you stated no difference with files on the internal drive than with the external NAS, the problem is elsewhere. Adobe applications are more dependent on the CPU than the GPU for overall performance. You might benefit from a better graphics card but what will fit and can be connected to your power supply connectors can be a daunting problem.

Others have mentioned using Task Manager to see what applications and services are using a lot of the processor's cycles. Anti-virus and firewall apps can also be verifying each file and this can have a big impact on performance when opening them in an application.

Microsoft has always been poor at doing garbage collection and with Windows 10 I find myself running Disk Cleanup on a weekly basis and also doing a %temp% command and then deleting the temp files on my computers.

There may be performance tuning of the Lightroom app and its catalogs worth checking. With normal databases an integrity check of the records and reindexing is important. With LR having a flat file structure it will have other aspects that can degrade performance. I may be worth exporting the catalogs and then deleting the ones on the PC and then importing the catalogs fresh. I would check the Adobe Lightroom forums for guidance.
 
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MartyD said:
I am definitely not a guru!!!

The first thing I would do is use the Windows task manager (alt-ctrl-delete and choose task manager) to monitor my system resources while using LrC. It will tell you the percentage of resources (CPU, Memory, Disk, Network, and GPU) you are using. Organize your windows so you can do some basic tasks in LrC while watching the utilization on task manager. Watch to see which resources hit 100% and stay there.

The second piece of advice I would give is to check your LrC performance preferences and at the bottom of the window there is a link to an Adobe site with more performance tips. You can also check your Catalog Settings - File Handling and adjust preview size and quality.

You LrC catalog and preview folder should be on your fastest drive, probably an internal SSD drive. If I were to make a guess, I would say that upgrading your GPU would probably provide the most improvement, but that is just a guess. You computer is probably 10 years old and you may struggle finding a graphics card that would perform a lot faster in your computer.

Do you allow LrC to regularly backup your catalog? If you do, it should optimize your catalog before it does the backup. If not, you might try optimizing your catalog under file-optimize catalog.

Make sure your graphics card driver is current and it is being used by LrC. Look in Preferences-Performance and make sure LrC is recognizing the card. You might also change from Auto to Custom and specifically checking the actions for the card.

You might want to do a little research on what previews you want built on import.

Another thought, but make sure you do this carefully and do an internet search for specific instructions before doing this!! I don't know how much this helps performance but it does make it possible to keep you LrC catalog and previews on your fastest internal drive.
I do a lot of sports photos during the course of a year and I find my preview folder gets extremely large. So at the beginning of each summer I delete my previews folder. It will slow down my LrC processing of images I have already imported because a new preview has to be built but it keeps my previews folder manageable. If I have collection in LrC that I regularly revisit to edit I just select that collection and ask LrC to build previews and let it run overnight.

Good luck!
Click to expand...
Thanks very much for your helpful tips Marty, I will work through them and let you know the story. In answer to some of them, I have read that turning on smart previews and importing standard preview size is better, so I will be trying that. The catalog and previews are on the C drive (SSD). Yes the computer was set up in 2016, but I have had graphics, RAM and hard drive upgrades since then, but the motherboard/processor is probably the main issue needing upgrading. Have just recently optimized the catalog, but didn't do it for some time before that. I had been keeping about the last six preview folders, so perhaps I need to delete more. Thanks again. Marion
 
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Replytoken said:
Is this correct, or should this read i7-12600?. If correct, you are over 10 generations back in terms of your processor and an upgrade would not be out of line. Second, how full are your drives? If they are very full, Windows will not have space to do swapping as needed. And, what version of LRC are you running? Versions after 9.x rely heavily on both CPU and GPU to do a lot of the heavy lifting. And I suspect that your GPU may not be up to the task at hand. Finally, what happens if you disconnect the NAS?

--Ken
Click to expand...
Thanks Ken, yes, it is i7-2600 (!), so I realise it probably has to be upgraded. Have just replaced the nearly full C drive, upgrading from 1TB SSD to 2TB SSD. Running the latest LR Classic, so that is probably another pointer to the necessary upgrade. I have been looking at upgrading suggestions on this site, but there are quite a few different suggestions, so not sure yet which way to go with that, except it seems they all use a core i9. I will see what happens if I disconnect the NAS. Thanks, Marion
 
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Calson said:
As you stated no difference with files on the internal drive than with the external NAS, the problem is elsewhere. Adobe applications are more dependent on the CPU than the GPU for overall performance. You might benefit from a better graphics card but what will fit and can be connected to your power supply connectors can be a daunting problem.

Others have mentioned using Task Manager to see what applications and services are using a lot of the processor's cycles. Anti-virus and firewall apps can also be verifying each file and this can have a big impact on performance when opening them in an application.

Microsoft has always been poor at doing garbage collection and with Windows 10 I find myself running Disk Cleanup on a weekly basis and also doing a %temp% command and then deleting the temp files on my computers.

There may be performance tuning of the Lightroom app and its catalogs worth checking. With normal databases an integrity check of the records and reindexing is important. With LR having a flat file structure it will have other aspects that can degrade performance. I may be worth exporting the catalogs and then deleting the ones on the PC and then importing the catalogs fresh. I would check the Adobe Lightroom forums for guidance.
Click to expand...
Thanks for your tips Calson. I will certainly get onto Disk Cleanup more often, plus the temp files deletion. Don't know how to check records and do reindexing? Will also check forums further. Marion
 
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Puget Systems provides performance tests for Photoshop and users that run the test have the results automatically added to the database. Can be helpful in determining how much a new CPU can improve performance. What surprised me was the test results from laptops with a variation of the 4090 GPU.

benchmarks.pugetsystems.com

PugetBench List

Build your own computer, workstation, mini pc, or server at Puget Custom Computers.
benchmarks.pugetsystems.com benchmarks.pugetsystems.com

But I suspect the problem is with Windows and or the Lightroom application. The Adobe forums may be helpful in going further with your troubleshooting.
 
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Marion Anstis said:
Thanks Ken, yes, it is i7-2600 (!), so I realise it probably has to be upgraded. Have just replaced the nearly full C drive, upgrading from 1TB SSD to 2TB SSD. Running the latest LR Classic, so that is probably another pointer to the necessary upgrade. I have been looking at upgrading suggestions on this site, but there are quite a few different suggestions, so not sure yet which way to go with that, except it seems they all use a core i9. I will see what happens if I disconnect the NAS. Thanks, Marion
Click to expand...
In brief, to run well, LRC needs a good performing CPU, enough RAM, a fast primary drive, and of late, a reasonable dedicated GPU. I would say that your CPU is probably the weakest link at this time. If you prefer Intel CPU's then look at 13th i7 and i9 processors. You could see if the new 14th generation are starting to become available, but I do not know what they bring to the table as they are relatively new. Intel made some performance changes in the 12th or 13th generation and unless you are really pushing the limits in your use of ORC, the i7 series should serve you well.

For RAM, 32GB is a good minimum, and 64 GB give you a bit more to work with if need be. The need for a good GPU is more recent, but many of the new features rely on it, and there too may options to give a specific recommendation. There is a very, very long thread at the LR Queen forums on GPU performance if you want to dive down that rabbit hole. But basic tasks mostly rely on your CPU and drive performance, give or take depending on the task.

Good luck,

--Ken
 
Member's gallery
Replytoken said:
In brief, to run well, LRC needs a good performing CPU, enough RAM, a fast primary drive, and of late, a reasonable dedicated GPU. I would say that your CPU is probably the weakest link at this time. If you prefer Intel CPU's then look at 13th i7 and i9 processors. You could see if the new 14th generation are starting to become available, but I do not know what they bring to the table as they are relatively new. Intel made some performance changes in the 12th or 13th generation and unless you are really pushing the limits in your use of ORC, the i7 series should serve you well.

For RAM, 32GB is a good minimum, and 64 GB give you a bit more to work with if need be. The need for a good GPU is more recent, but many of the new features rely on it, and there too may options to give a specific recommendation. There is a very, very long thread at the LR Queen forums on GPU performance if you want to dive down that rabbit hole. But basic tasks mostly rely on your CPU and drive performance, give or take depending on the task.

Good luck,

--Ken
Click to expand...
Thanks Ken, I have been watching the Task Manager while I work, and without the NAS connected, the CPU can go as high as 98% at times when just selecting 8 thumbnails and cropping them using Sync. Other times it was from 66-78% with that task. But the Power usage
is pretty much always in the Very High range and red! If I am in LR and choose to edit a file in PS from LR, the CPU goes to 100% (power usage very high), so it's obviously pushed to the limit at times. The GPU went up to 56% when I used Topaz de noise in PS on a raw file - will check it out further.
 
Last edited:
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Marion Anstis said:
Thanks Ken, I have been watching the Task Manager while I work, and without the NAS connected, the CPU can go as high as 98% at times when just selecting 8 thumbnails and cropping them using Sync. Other times it was from 66-78% with that task. But the Power usage
is pretty much always in the Very High range and red! If I am in LR and choose to edit a file in PS from LR, the CPU goes to 100% (power usage very high), so it's obviously pushed to the limit at times. The GPU went up to 56% when I used Topaz de noise in PS on a raw file - will check it out further.
Click to expand...
Good that you are monitoring and are aware of how hard your machine is working. You can continue to problem solve, but I would also start looking at a replacement PC.

--Ken
 
Member's gallery
Calson said:
Puget Systems provides performance tests for Photoshop and users that run the test have the results automatically added to the database. Can be helpful in determining how much a new CPU can improve performance. What surprised me was the test results from laptops with a variation of the 4090 GPU.

benchmarks.pugetsystems.com

PugetBench List

Build your own computer, workstation, mini pc, or server at Puget Custom Computers.
benchmarks.pugetsystems.com benchmarks.pugetsystems.com

But I suspect the problem is with Windows and or the Lightroom application. The Adobe forums may be helpful in going further with your troubleshooting.
Click to expand...
The only problem is I am in Australia, so Puget tests would probably not apply?
 
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