Looking for cheap way to speed up Lightroom

[Codebreaker]

I've just upgraded from LR V5.7 to Lightroom Classic and while the actual performance once up and running seems to be much the same, the start process of Classic is somewhat slower and the screen is fragmented as it starts. This is not really a big deal because, as I said, once up and running it's pretty much the same as before.

However, this got me thinking about potential ways in which to speed up LR without too much cost. i.e without getting a next generation processor, tonnes of memory etc.

It's a PC I'm using and I have the OS and Programs on an SSD (C). All image files and LR Catalogs are on the same HDD (E). It occured to me that perhaps I should add another smallish SSD and put the LR Catalog on this and possibly point Pageing files to this as well.

Any other suggestions would be welcome.

Thanks

[DanK]

Colin,

putting the program on an SSD should substantially speed up initial loading of the program.

Re the speed of the program when operating: an enormous amount has been posted on the web about this. You can change the size of previews, the size of the cache, which parts of the operation are assigned to the CPU and GPU, and probably much more. For example, Anthony Morganti, https://onlinephotographytraining.com/, recently posted a video about this, with four steps to increase the program's speed.

Dan

[Manfred M]

I agree that the SSD is the right way to go. If you have a choice about it (i.e. your motherboard supports it), then an M.2 type drive is even faster than a standard SSD because if by-passes the need for a disk controller and the associated data rate limitations.

If you have spare slots for RAM on the motherboard, this is often a fairly cost-effective way of increasing speed as well.

If you are running and AMD CPU, they have kept their sockets reasonably up-gradable, so a newer generation of CPU is often just a drop-in.

[pnodrog]

Having the catalogue on a SSD will speed it up especially when doing a search or browsing through the catalogue (in fact any library function). In develop the advantage will not be as great unless applying the edits to multiple images.

Your cache should also be mapped to the SSD.

[davidedric]

Lightroom creates lots of temporary files while it's running (in Develop), which it will create where your Catalogue is. If you put your Catalogue on an ssd and allow lots of space for those files, it will help with speed of operation.

I don't think that will help with start up time, though

[Codebreaker]

Thank you for all the replies.

Dan - the link you posted was interesting, Fortunately I'd already made the same settings except for having a smaller cache size.

SSDs are relatively cheap so that may be my starting point.

[billyb1191]

I agree with opinion above about using SSD. It can help to make the working process faster and it is not expensive enough to buy SSD.

[Codebreaker]

I installed a second SSD, the first one being the C: Drive and containing the OS and all the programs. On the second SSD I now have the LR catalog plus allowing PS to use it as a scratch disk.

The startup time of LR isn't any different. In fact the slow start of LR Classic compared to the old version 5.7.1 is due to Classic taking a longer time to display the Loupe view on my second monitor. Typically it takes about 10 seconds to start LR on one screen but then another 10 seconds to get the second screen displaying the Loupe view.

However, startup time isn't really that problematical. What the second SSD has done though is make scrolling through the Catalog much quicker and I suspect the process of making previews will also be improved. So not a complete waste of time. There may be other benfits but I haven't noticed them yet.

Couldn't use my M2 slot as its an old motherboard and only supports PCIe x 2.

[billyb1191]

Try to check the system. any viruses or malware? It is good that SSD works, even if the difference is not as tangible as you would like.

[Codebreaker]

Thanks for the reply. I keep my system secure and there's no general degradation of performance - just the new version of LR is a bit slower. I notice the minimum recommendation from Adobe for Ram is 12Gbytes and I only have 8 so I may add some more.

[billyb1191]

Good idea

[billyb1191]

Have you already knew how much it would cost for you?

[Codebreaker]

I added another 8Gbytes to the PC and can't say that it's made much of a difference yet. It may become more apparrent when I have multiple applications running at the same time.

120Gbyte SDD was about £20. 8Gbyte DDR3 PC1600 memory about £35.

Annoyingly some of Adobes products, for example Bridge, still want to use my C drive SSD as a cache and I can't seem to change it to my new SSD which I want to keep specifically for Catalogs and Cache.