Solution to Adobe Camera Raw 12.3

[Manfred M]

There are a lot of people complaining about the "new and improved" ACR 12.3 on the Adobe support forum.

It's nice to see that I am not the only one who finds it slow and awkward to use.

There is a solution for us whiners; roll back to ACR 12.2 or earlier.

The installers can be found here:

https://helpx.adobe.com/camera-raw/k...ller.html#12_x

Just close all open Adobe applications and run it.

[Stagecoach]

Yep, I reverted back the other day due to the problem with the sluggish intermittent operation of the Crop Tool that is being raised by many.

Strangely, last night I watched a You Tube video by someone who appeared knowledgeable and he mentioned that Adobe had made changes to "speed" up certain functions that had previously operated slower.

[Astro]

Thanks Manfred,
I accepted the upgrade 5 days ago, New and Improved! ... not convinced but I have given it a try and have decided to stop trying. Thanks for the link, I will be reverting.
For me the key criticism is 'awkward' and I could not see quite what improvements were on offer.

[Manfred M]

Yep, I reverted back the other day due to the problem with the sluggish intermittent operation of the Crop Tool that is being raised by many.

Strangely, last night I watched a You Tube video by someone who appeared knowledgeable and he mentioned that Adobe had made changes to "speed" up certain functions that had previously operated slower.

That has long been a problem with Lightroom's Develop Module and would also have affected ACR. It's a fundamental issue with the core design of both tools. Parametric editors have to recalculate every edit that has been applied every time a change has been made. That is not an issue when there are relatively few edits done, but as the number of edits pile up, the software starts to slow down.

With a pixel based editor, each change is "permanent" and does not have to be recalculated. That being said, non-destructive edits can share some of the issues with a parametric editor and some slowing can be noticed when there are many adjustment layers.

Adobe has been working to speed things up over the past number of releases. Unfortunately, they are constrained by the underlying architecture of the tools and the real issue is trying to add more and more functionality to a tool that was essentially a raw convertor because that's what the users want.

There is a reason the ACR / Lightroom software has been packaged together with Photoshop; certain things are best done in ACR / LR and others should be done in Photoshop.

[davidedric]

Yes, I find it ironic that users ask for more and more functionality - and then complain about performance.

For the kind of editing I do, Lightroom has about the right balance between the two (and I'm only interested in the desktop Classic product). Not so for others, of course. It's a problem for any parametric editor such as DxO PhotoLab, though I suspect Lightroom, being an older product, is hampered by a large legacy code base.

Of course, the engineers' job has been made easier by increasing computer power.

[Manfred M]

Yes, I find it ironic that users ask for more and more functionality - and then complain about performance.

For the kind of editing I do, Lightroom has about the right balance between the two (and I'm only interested in the desktop Classic product). Not so for others, of course. It's a problem for any parametric editor such as DxO PhotoLab, though I suspect Lightroom, being an older product, is hampered by a large legacy code base.

Of course, the engineers' job has been made easier by increasing computer power.

On the other hand, Adobe has a lot more developers to throw at a problem. I remember when they did a total re-write of the Premiere code base after version 6.5 came out and with the first new code base came the new name; Premiere Pro. The re-write was necessary because of stability issues.

I still remember using the second beta of Lightroom and commenting to Adobe that the product seemed little more than a tool they were using to get people to upgrade to Photoshop. Global adjustments were fine, but detailed adjustments were impossible.

[DanK]

Parametric editors have to recalculate every edit that has been applied every time a change has been made. That is not an issue when there are relatively few edits done, but as the number of edits pile up, the software starts to slow down.

This is the core issue, I think. I vaguely recall reading that this was the original reason why the lens correction option was placed near the bottom of the panel. The original recommendation was to work more or less top to bottom, and this would put off a mathematically very complex operation until near the end.

In practice, it has been a long time since I have noticed many performance problems, and I apply the lens correction as part of my default input profile. My current main computer is a Dell with an Intel i7-770 @3.6 GHz, with 16 GB of RAM and an AMD Radeon R5 430 video card, and it handles LR, even with very extensive edits, well enough.