# Is Lightroom working any faster for you?



## Hector1970 (Oct 30, 2017)

One of the main improvements in Lightroom is supposed to be that its working faster. Importing should be faster etc. My own experience is that appears to be slower and more tempermental than it was previously. I'm curious to what others experiences are.


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## IglooEater (Oct 30, 2017)

I wasn’t aware the new version had been released; I’m very curious to see the results of this.


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## Talys (Oct 30, 2017)

For me, definitely faster. I believe there is a memory leak, as it _eventually_ gets slow, especially if I apply a preset to hundreds of imports and then go through them all to cull. At the end of a couple of hours, it gets choppy, I have to close and re-open.

7.01 is also out, which theoretically fixes some bugs. 



IglooEater said:


> I wasn’t aware the new version had been released; I’m very curious to see the results of this.



There's Range Masking, which I've fallen in love with. You can create a gradient (linear or circular), apply manipulations to it (exposure, highlights, saturation etc etc), then mask it to only colors you select or mask it to a luminance range. Then, clean up with a brush. 

It is very nice, for example, to lighten/darken the sky, or to underexpose a white, or whatever.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Oct 30, 2017)

Hector1970 said:


> One of the main improvements in Lightroom is supposed to be that its working faster. Importing should be faster etc. My own experience is that appears to be slower and more tempermental than it was previously. I'm curious to what others experiences are.



You may have misread Adobe's claims about speed, or misunderstood them.

You should ask about those claims, not some that were not claimed like faster importing.

Here they are.
*"Here are some of the highlights of where we have made gains that we have tested internally and are betting you will see:*
*Application launch time*
*Preview generation including in Standard, 1:1 and Minimal previews*
*Import selection workflow with “Embedded & Sidecar” preview option (tips here)*
*Switching between Library and Develop Module*
*Moving from photo to photo in the Develop Module*
*Responsive brushing"*

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My impressions of those claims.


Application Launch time: I have not seen any faster launch, it still takes a long time.
What I've noticed is that 1:1 preview generation is much faster.
I have noticed faster generation of the import selection thumbnails, but they do not seem to speed up the overall import process. Import selection workflow is not the same as faster importing, for example, it means that the thumbnails generated to select files for import appear faster, but the import process is not claimed to speed up.
I've never really noticed a issue switching between library and develop module, nor did I notice a speed difference. I just tried it, and it is fast.
Moving from photo to photo in the develop module is much faster, almost instant.
I had not used the brush yet, I did not have a issue with it before, a little slow, but not a big deal. I went ahead and tried it, wow, It is fast, that will speed up retouching.
Not having edited more than perhaps 3 dozen images with LR classic, I don't have a feel for speed when it counts - editing thousands of images. Certainly the faster brush tool and image to image switching will incrementally improve my speed, but if something else is slower, it may be a wash. Temperamental is a undefined term and not measurable, some specific issues I could look at. Its never crashed or hung for me. I do have a new catalog, it created a new one based on my old one, and its a lot smaller, so a lot of junk is cleaned out. 

These are just my perceptions of speed, I have not clocked them, setting up two identical computers with identical installations and clocking the times is the only way to say for sure, but I do think that their claims were met.


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## Hector1970 (Oct 31, 2017)

Could be I did misread their actual improvement claims but prior to it Adobe said they were intent on speeding up importing etc. Maybe it wasn't really a top priority.
https://petapixel.com/2017/07/11/adobe-admits-lightroom-slow-says-speeding-top-priority/
I'm also importing 1000-2000 photos in one go.
I wouldn't have an issue either if I were importing a handful.
Maybe Lightroom isn't designed for big imports from modern cameras with big file sizes.
I should stay away from sports photography.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Oct 31, 2017)

Hector1970 said:


> Could be I did misread their actual improvement claims but prior to it Adobe said they were intent on speeding up importing etc. Maybe it wasn't really a top priority.
> https://petapixel.com/2017/07/11/adobe-admits-lightroom-slow-says-speeding-top-priority/
> I'm also importing 1000-2000 photos in one go.
> I wouldn't have an issue either if I were importing a handful.
> ...



Yes, I read that article, but I also know that improvements are going to be incremental. LR is so much faster than software like DXO that it puts things in perspective. One of the areas in LR that slowed way down about a year or more ago, was exporting images to jpg format, I had to wait for a batch to finish before the next batch could be done. They did something that caused that. I put jpg copies of photos for a book into separate folders for each page, and then my book software can easily find the right ones. Sometimes I've done 40+ pages of 4-7 images and exporting each page seems slow when I could not have multiple exports running at once. I hope that's fixed.

I once tried 10 fps with my 1 series camera, and wading thru hundreds of photos that were nearly identical was a pain. I can understand that the level of competition for the prefect image in a sports event forces that, but I'm retired and only have to suit myself.

Even with me shooting 1 frame at a time, I find myself capturing way too many images in a evening, 1500 or more is too common. after culling the 5% that are duds out, I try to edit similar groups using the same settings for cropping, lighting, and NR. That could be 10 images or 200. Then I go back and tweak them individually, and look more carefully. I never seem to be brutal enough and end up with only another 10% tossed, then I turn them over to someone else to do the final selection of 200 or so that go into a book. Then I produce it.

With age, my fingers are painful and stiff, so it gets harder every year to edit large numbers of images, but somehow, my finger keeps pushing the shutter button an incredible number of times.

I did a cleanup of image files on my pc, and imported many thousands of images into LR Classic. It took a very long time, but importing 40,000 images that were not in the catalog is a unusual occurrence. many of them were jpg exports from the original raws, and really did not need to be in the catalog.


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## Talys (Oct 31, 2017)

A fast PC, lots of RAM, SSD, all make a huge difference.

I don't know if video card makes a difference at all (ie if anything is offloaded to a GPU). It's hard for me to tell, because my desktop rig with a monster GPU also outperforms my other PCs in every way that counts. 

LR doesn't _seem_ to run much super-duper faster on a Surface Book with an i7 with a discreet video processor versus an i5 with integrated video (it is only slightly snappier, in my opinion). However, there's a huge caveat that I rarely use either, because LR is a whole order of magnitude faster on my desktop.


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## Hector1970 (Oct 31, 2017)

We complain about Lightroom but its our own fault for being in love with photography and being unable to resist pressing the buttons. Modern cameras are creating files sizes too big.
I'm surprised that the mainstream PC manufacturers are targeted photographers with high end Laptops and PC's optimised for Photoshop and Lightroom.
There are a few specialised companies that do but Dell and HP aim more for the gamers than photographers.
Anyway keep shooting Mt Spokane. Your wisdom is highly valued here.



Talys said:


> A fast PC, lots of RAM, SSD, all make a huge difference.
> 
> I don't know if video card makes a difference at all (ie if anything is offloaded to a GPU). It's hard for me to tell, because my desktop rig with a monster GPU also outperforms my other PCs in every way that counts.
> 
> LR doesn't _seem_ to run much super-duper faster on a Surface Book with an i7 with a discreet video processor versus an i5 with integrated video (it is only slightly snappier, in my opinion). However, there's a huge caveat that I rarely use either, because LR is a whole order of magnitude faster on my desktop.


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## jolyonralph (Oct 31, 2017)

MacPro 2013 16GB ram, and big difference in retrieving and displaying thumbnails. Very much more useable than before.

Haven't noticed other improvements, but that one change makes the whole upgrade worthwhile.


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## SecureGSM (Oct 31, 2017)

Hector1970.

Check HP Z Workstations range of products out. 
These are truly built like a tank and massively over engineered power beasts. Canon quality level.

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations-desktop-mlp/index.html


http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations-z8/index.html?jumpid=cp_r11260_us/en/psg/hp_desktop_workstations/z8-mdplink

http://h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/GetPDF.aspx/4AA4-6108ENW.pdf


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## YuengLinger (Oct 31, 2017)

Asus strix gl703VD is GREAT for PS & LR CC!


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## andrei1989 (Oct 31, 2017)

hm..interesting, most of you don't notice any difference.
i was a bit skeptical i would notice anything but damn it's so much faster now. what i have noticed was that when i import without smart previews it's quite a lot faster, not only to import (obviously) but when going through photos and selecting the keepers, it just loads the full res almost instantly


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## Talys (Oct 31, 2017)

andrei1989 said:


> hm..interesting, most of you don't notice any difference.
> i was a bit skeptical i would notice anything but damn it's so much faster now. what i have noticed was that when i import without smart previews it's quite a lot faster, not only to import (obviously) but when going through photos and selecting the keepers, it just loads the full res almost instantly



Right -- and that is a huge, time-consuming part of the post process. Speeding up culling is a big deal, especially the wait between photos.


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## Larsskv (Oct 31, 2017)

andrei1989 said:


> hm..interesting, most of you don't notice any difference.
> i was a bit skeptical i would notice anything but damn it's so much faster now. what i have noticed was that when i import without smart previews it's quite a lot faster, not only to import (obviously) but when going through photos and selecting the keepers, it just loads the full res almost instantly



+1. My experience as well. I’m happy about the improvements.


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## meywd (Oct 31, 2017)

For me moving between photos, and between develop and library is a lot faster now, which is most important.

Next i wish they make zooming in and out faster.


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## IglooEater (Oct 31, 2017)

Hmmm, the results aren’t convincing me to upgrade; though I wasn’t planning on it...


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Nov 1, 2017)

IglooEater said:


> Hmmm, the results aren’t convincing me to upgrade; though I wasn’t planning on it...



The upgrade is automatic and free, assuming you were using the old version of CC. If you have LR6, then its a individual decision as to what features you need and use. Nothing wrong with staying with LR6, eventually, your my buy a new camera and decide that work arounds to edit the raw files are too much of a hassle, but if you use jpeg, there is never a need to upgrade.


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