LR5 sluggish? (on Mac)

[Downrigger]

I just had a birthday with a rather large number, and missed the techy bus years ago.

LR5 has, over the couple weeks since I upgraded to it, become very slow to respond. This is most pronounced with the radial filter where response times (with the lovely spinning rainbow thingy) can be a good fraction of a minute, but lots of manipulations provoke annoying hang-ups in response time.

Mine is a MacBook Pro -retina, new in April. I run it "clean and simple" -- Aside from Firefox and office stuff, nothing else besides the LR, and usually run the LR by itself. Sometimes it seems a little better after a re-boot, but if so, not for long. Other programs seem normally brisk.

Anyone else seeing this? Is there a diagnostic I should examine? Should I look for help from Adobe, or Mac first?

Thanks, anyone.

[Manfred M]

Some of this functionality is very memory intensive (RAM). How much RAM did you install on your machine? Given all of the other things that you note, that is one thing that comes to mind.

[Downrigger]

Some of this functionality is very memory intensive (RAM). How much RAM did you install on your machine? Given all of the other things that you note, that is one thing that comes to mind.

You probably hit the nail on the head, Manfred, thank you. I guess that’s it.

I have 8 GB installed and the activity monitor shows LR using 1.48GB with LR's kernel_task using another 558.1 GB. With Firefox and Word Running I am using about 7.4 of my 8 GB. I suppose that’s a tight fit and explains the problem I'm having?

[Downrigger]

Further... on the activity monitor, with manipulations of LR, %CPU usage for LR pops up to the +/- 100% neighborhood. I think not expected that LR chews up that much of the capacity at 8GB - I'll see what Adobe has to say...

[Manfred M]

You probably hit the nail on the head, Manfred, thank you. I guess that’s it.

I have 8 GB installed and the activity monitor shows LR using 1.48GB with LR's kernel_task using another 558.1 GB. With Firefox and Word Running I am using about 7.4 of my 8 GB. I suppose that’s a tight fit and explains the problem I'm having?

Something strange seems to be happening on your machine. I've opened the same three programs on my laptop (8GB RAM) and have a huge file open in Word and a large (36MP) RAW file open in Lightroom 5.2. I am showing 3.7 GB in use out of a pool of 8GB of RAM. Unfortuantely, I'm on a Windows 8 machine, not a MAC, so direct comparisons are probably not possible.

[benm]

One thing you can try is to run the "File>Optimize Catalog" command. That speeds things up for me. Also make sure you have enough free disk space, though since your computer is still so new that should not be a problem.

[Macmahon]

Mark

Did you update to Lightroom 5.2?
I recall the initial release caused a few people problems with speed.
Click on LR's 'Help' tab and then 'Check for updates'. A couple more clicks and the latest release will install itself.

My Mac setup is older than yours,* albeit with more memory. But it runs just fine. Nevertheless 8Gb should be heaps.

This page from Adobe provides suggestions about things you might try, but I'd be making sure I have the latest update first.

Cheers

Tim

* I bet my last birthday had a larger number!

[Downrigger]

Thanks Manfred and Ben - optimizing the catalogue didn't correct the situation (but looked like a good idea), and my total memory used with Firefox running and lightroom open is still 5.25 GB of which about 1.5GB is LR (CP usage is for LR spikes to 100+% with use of adjustments in LR). The Apple tech support people thinks it's my LR, that I shouldn't need to add more memory.

So...Tim, on with your option. Then Adobe. All helpful responses but none indicate others are similarly afflicted.

[Downrigger]

Attempting to contact Adobe for coherent assistance is certainly an experience that provides a wonderful opportunity to improve core equanimity.

LR5.3, I learned, has shown serious sluggishness for many Mac users and Adobe is aware. This problem is seen with adequate hardware (like my nearly new MacBook Pro Retina) and is associated with high %CPU readings on the Mac's activity monitor during manipulations (> 100%).

I was told Adobe is working to address this problem, no timeframe provided.

I was directed to http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/...lightroom.html Taking the steps suggested here doesn't seem to help. One of the suggestions here was to turn off autowrite XMP (in LR/catalogue/metadata) if you don’t work with multiple applications. I assume plug ins (Nik, Onone, etc) would constitute “multiple applications, and wish to add one of those, so did not do that step.

So PP work is less fun because so many steps hang - maybe I'll just spend more time making images.

[Adrian]

I have periodically encountered this on some Macs. Aside from the points made already, our IT guys at work say that if the SSD drive is more than half full, performance on some applications can be slowed dramatically. Don't have anything else running in the background : use Activity Monitor in Utilities Folder (in Applications via Finder) to ensure everything else is turned off ("Force Quit" will not spot everything).

I have found with one iMac that if the library in Lightroom is large, processing can run slowly. I don't keep anything in LR itself for this reason, once I have processed a project.

Current iteration of LR runs fine on MacBookPro quad core 2.6 Ghz i7 with 16Gb memory and 1TB - instantaneous.

[Downrigger]

if the library in Lightroom is large, processing can run slowly. I don't keep anything in LR itself for this reason, once I have processed a project.

Clarify if you can, Adrian, for a tech deficient dummy - the above means you move your already processed folders to an external drive - Or your whole catalogue?

[Adrian]

I never keep catalogues in Lightroom Mark.

I download from the camera into a named and dated project folder in my user id - saved in "Pictures" in the Finder system on the Mac. I then duplicate it so I have an untouched back up (Raw files). The duplicate is then imported into LR (or whatever I choose), and I do the selections, PP etc. The processed photos are then exported out of Lightroom in various formats including raw, jpeg and tiff, each into separate folders within my named project folder (of that shoot) stored in Pictures. Then backed up again onto external drives (a RAID array in my case). Can removed from laptop at this point to avoid clogging the SSD as I have a three layer backup system (RAID, supplementary hard drive and, for key things only, remote cloud).

This means I am never keeping anything except the current job in the Lightroom catalogue. Therefore LR is always "clean" and I am not at the whim of Adobe! My experience is that when Lightroom catalogues build up, LR slows down. (Aperture is the same - I don't use Aperture now).

As it happens I tend to use Bridge for selecting which images I am going to process as it is a bit quicker than LR. I sometimes use Photoshop and other apps but for every day processing LR is fast.

TIFF is useful because practically anything will open tiff and it is lossless.

This means I don't really have a LR catalogue except for whatever project I am currently processing. I have project folders each of which covers a shoot (say a holiday for example) and in that folder I have untouched originals, elected processed originals exported back from LR, processed jpegs and processed TIFFS. All backed up twice and all very easy to search for as I use a consistent naming convention.

This system word extremely well in a backup system and it means I am not locked into LR. It also means LR always runs very fast.

I can import everything into LR from this system in a matter of seconds if, say, I want to produce a book or adjust some images.

It also means that I can access my photo files from anywhere (dial into the RAID) and anyone I give permission to can share them (for example my wife and I share folders for trips).

In my experience both LR and Aperture are sometimes flaky when software upgrades occur. Catalogues / libraries are easily damaged.

Adrian