Lightroom 4 vs 3

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Engineer73

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Jeff
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Apologies if this has been asked before but I 'm interested in the pros and cons of upgrading from LR 3 to 4 from people with experience of having done so. I have heard that it is not necessarily a no brainer as LR 4 is reported to be slow on some computers. What has been your experience please?
 
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Engineer73 said:
Apologies if this has been asked before but I 'm interested in the pros and cons of upgrading from LR 3 to 4 from people with experience of having done so. I have heard that it is not necessarily a no brainer as LR 4 is reported to be slow on some computers. What has been your experience please?
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Worth it for colour curves alone. The decrease hasn't been too bad for me - I do notice it but not like others have.
 
LR 4.3 works fine on my Win7 64 bits, 12 GB Ram machine, no decrease at all compared to LR3. If you have the right configuration, LR4 will do the job with ease. Adding more Ram (at least 10 GB) is the first thing to do if LR lags.

The LR4 basic panel in the Develop module (Process 2012) has been reprogrammed: the new Shadow and Highlight sliders are awesone, the exposure slider works now on global midtones. The Clarity slider was also reprogrammed and it's does a better job (you can push it to 100 without creating artifacts such as halos on some pictures).

And quite important too: the Graduated Filter and the Adjustment Brush are much more powerful since you can adjust 12 parameters (6 parameters only in LR3)

And the Tone curve allows individual adjustment for each color channel, a big improvment.

So LR4 is worth the upgrade. And don't forget this: if you have LR3 develop presets you like, you can use them in LR4 but you will have to switch to the old Process 2010. And LR4 develop presets will not do the right job in LR3 since the sliders in the basic panel are not the same.

Another thing about presets: if you work with PS CS6 and LR4, you can export your LR4 develop presets in ACR, since ACR is exactly the same engine as the LR4 Develop module .
 
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ecoleman said:
Download the trial and try it out for yourself.
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Hi Elliot

Thanks for this. I've never used a trial when I have had the earlier version on my computer. Am I correct in assuming that 3 and 4 would run in parallel so I can use both versions without difficulty?

Have you any experience of this please?

Best wishes

Jeff
 
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Broto said:
LR 4.3 works fine on my Win7 64 bits, 12 GB Ram machine, no decrease at all compared to LR3. If you have the right configuration, LR4 will do the job with ease. Adding more Ram (at least 10 GB) is the first thing to do if LR lags.
.
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Hi Jack

Thanks. This was really useful. I have Win 7 32 bits and 8GB Ram so I think I will probably be OK.

Lived in Montreal 1987-1992. Had a great time.

Best wishes

Jeff
 
I think that if you are running Lightroom 4 on Windows 7 32 bit then it can only utilise 3GB of RAM.
 
Engineer73 said:
Hi Elliot

Am I correct in assuming that 3 and 4 would run in parallel so I can use both versions without difficulty?

Have you any experience of this please?

Best wishes

Jeff
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Both will still be there like different programs with their own start thing to click.
It gets complicated to continue using both for long though - for example if you have it set to open and import when you plug in a card/camera you can get in a muddle.
Later you can simply uninstall either one if required.
 
Gaz J said:
I think that if you are running Lightroom 4 on Windows 7 32 bit then it can only utilise 3GB of RAM.
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Gaz
Thanks for your help

I had not realized this but I have now looked into it and you're right

If I upgrade to Lightroom 4 and have to go to 64 bit it's not trivial for me as my peripherals may need to be changed as they are quite old.

Hmm needs more thought

Best wishes

Jeff
 
neil_g said:
32 bit windows will only be seeing 3.2ish of that 8gb anyway. Needs win 64 bit, it's memory is being wasted you may as well sell it.
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Neil

You're right. See my comment to gaz above. I'm going to have to think more

Thanks

Best wishes

Jeff
 
4wd said:
Both will still be there like different programs with their own start thing to click.
It gets complicated to continue using both for long though - for example if you have it set to open and import when you plug in a card/camera you can get in a muddle.
Later you can simply uninstall either one if required.
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Hi Elliot

Looks as if I just have to be careful but there are also issues about using win 7 at 64 Bit if I need to for LR 4-see comments from gaz and Neil.

I'm going to have to think this through

Thanks for your help

Jeff
 
russellsnr said:
If you don't want to download a trial version but want to see how much better 4 is over 3 have a look at http://www.jkost.com/lightroom.html
Russ
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Hi Russell

This is a really useful site. The section on what's new in LR 4 needs reading and digesting

I may have some issues if I have to go to 64 Bit to make LR 4 work fast-see other helpfull comments on this thread. I really need to think about this.

Many thanks

Jeff
 
Hi Jeff

You could check to see if you can get updated 64 bit drivers for your kit. The windows compatibility centre can give you other information also.

To change to 64 bit your CPU must be capable of running the 64 bit version .

There is a patch to force 32 bit to recognise more RAM but it seems a bit hit and miss and can cause instability.
 
if you mean enabling PAE then you still have a 2gb memory limit per application.

if you have more than 3gb ram (and want to be able to use it) then install 64bit windows, its the best bet.
 
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Engineer73 said:
I have Win 7 32 bits and 8GB Ram so I think I will probably be OK.
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As I've mentioned a couple of times, unfortunately it seems very difficult to predict LR4 speed based on system spec (many "slow" systems handle it fine and many high powered ones struggle). It would be really nice if Adobe could find the time to look into this rather than adding maps and stuff.

In fact, all evidence seems to suggest that the GPU (rather than CPU) makes a difference. So laptops with integrated graphics sometimes suffer and highly specced machines that have average graphics cards can find it slow going. The only thing wrong with this theory is that Adobe say it doesn't use the GPU for acceleration at all.

Really, the only sure way to know if it will work at an acceptable speed on your machine is to try it. For one thing, "acceptable" is a very subjective thing.
 
I don't think Lightroom is gpu accelerated? I'm post from a mobile so will check that later.

In this instance I'd get windows up to 64 bit so the whole system isn't choking on 3gb ram and can get some caching running.

E: quick google says no gpu acceleration on Lightroom.
 
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JonathanRyan said:
mmm-hmmmm.

I believe on Macs, the GPU can help the CPU out when it gets tired.
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Yeah spotted that after the edit sorry.

I don't think gpu on mac works that way, you might be thinking of the duel intel and nvidia chipsets (also on some pc laptops) where the nvidia kicks in for higher graphics performance and the intel is for low performance and better battery.

The CPU and gpu are two separate areas, adobe have coded some specific graphical areas to work better with nvidia chipsets in photoshop and premiere but its not helping the CPU persay.
 
neil_g said:
The CPU and gpu are two separate areas, adobe have coded some specific graphical areas to work better with nvidia chipsets in photoshop and premiere but its not helping the CPU persay.
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http://appleinsider.com/articles/09/09/04/inside_mac_os_x_snow_leopard_gpu_optimization.html

I only understood about half of that. But I THINK it's saying that since Snow Leopard the GPU is used by Grand Central Dispatch to basically share out some of the work. So even if Adobe don't acknowledge it, a better GPU MIGHT make LR run faster on a Mac .

Like I say, it seems to make some sense of some of the odd results people get.
 
Hard to beat an Apple iMac. For the last 3 years I've been using OS X with a minimum 3 GHz with Intel Core 2 Duo without any problems of speed on LR4 and Final Cut Pro X. When the time comes soon, I know what I'll be upgrading to! Good-luck with whatever way you choose to go.
 
JonathanRyan said:
I only understood about half of that. But I THINK it's saying that since Snow Leopard the GPU is used by Grand Central Dispatch to basically share out some of the work. So even if Adobe don't acknowledge it, a better GPU MIGHT make LR run faster on a Mac .

Like I say, it seems to make some sense of some of the odd results people get.
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Another good Apple FUD article ;)

If you want to see what is GPU accelerated, the best place to look is probably here: http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html

And as you can see... it's precisely nothing........

Just make sure you have a graphics card which can handle your monitor and you're done.

Faster processors, fast SSD and some more memory for disk cache (LR doesn't use much more than 2.5G of memory) and you're done.

PS6 on the other hand does have some (typically non-photographic oriented) video card accelerations.
 
I always forget about this section, I wish more technical questions would go into computers and this section was more how to on actual editing. But anyway..

Apple gcd does use opencl for gpu acceleration but the app still needs to support it.

Unless apple have managed to fundamentally alter intels architecture it'll be the CPU that divvies up the work anyway.
 
Thanks everyone.

This has been very useful. I have read all the references you gave me which were all very educational.

The net net is that I will download a trial version of LR4, take some photos and process them through my normal procedures and see what happens.

I understand there is a new version coming soon so I will wait for that.
 
I'm using a 7 year old Dell desktop, win7 64, 3ghz dual core processor, 8gb ddr ram, 64gb ssd running programs and OS and 2x 1tb hdd's for data.

I find LR 4.3 painful to use, images just seem to take forever to load. When i try to zoom in to an image, the image will be a horrible blurry mess with a "loading" message for a good 12 to 15 seconds before it finally snaps into focus. I increased the cache size 20gb in lr's settings and it's made not one bit of difference. Anything i can do to try and get this a bit more useable??
 
TBH LR is very processor dependent. You're always going to have issues with the desktop. But, one thing you could try is generating the previews at import. This won't speed you up overall, but will remove that frustrating 12-15 second wait, because LR will have the preview already
 
That is what i feared..... I'm trying to recall if i had this issue with 4.1 but as i pretty much installed the update to 4.3 the same day i can't remember clearly, but, i'm sure things seemed a bit smoother on 4.1..... Might be a daft question, but can i pop my 4.1 disc back in and reinstall 4.1 over the top without losing all my catalogs etc and see if that does run any better?
 
what hugh said really. if you have task manager open while youre doing this I bet the CPU graph is pretty maxed out?

also what are the data disks, if theyre slow drives then LR will also struggle.
 
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