Lightroom slooooowww

M

morleymackam

Suspended / Banned
Messages
122
Edit My Images
Yes
I'm running LR2 with a library of 12210 RAW pictures and find it hugely slow to use. Scrolling through the library to find a selection of pics is a chore as it chugs along.

Will the spec of my machine be to blame or can I somehow speed it up?

Athlon X2 5600+
2Gb RAM
Running from 500GB SATA drive with 250GB free space
 
It could be to do with the amount of RAM, I have 4GB and mine seems ok with a catalog of around 10k.

What speed is the hard drive that the catalogue is running from, again this could be a contributing factor.

Have you tried to optimise the catalogue?
 
2GB of ram isn't as good as 4GB but you should notice some improvement if you 'Relaunch & Optimise' the catalogue.

To optimize, go to your Catalog Settings dialog (Lightroom menu on a Mac and Edit menu on a PC). Go under the General tab and click the Relaunch and Optimize button at the bottom. This could take a wee while with 12K+ images so put the kettle on.

Failing that and assuming a RAM upgrade isn't possible, it may be an idea to have smaller catalogues.

I have separate catalogues for each of my clients and personal ventures. Catalogues can always be merged and individual files can always be shared at no expense of the HD.
 
I have the one catalogue, but have always wondered whether to split catalogues into year or subject
 
Byker28i said:
I have the one catalogue, but have always wondered whether to split catalogues into year or subject
Click to expand...

I've always split them between client assuming that it would contribute to a healthier performance, but according to the Lightroom buffs, the engine doesn't work like that and optimising catalogues is all that's needed :shrug:

Still, I find it hard to break out of the habit now, it's all nice and tidy and if anything does go wrong it shouldn't happen on a global scale ;)
 
I have all mine in one catalogue and find it runs better if I have plenty of space on my laptop hard drive, as soon as it starts to fill up the LR gets very sluggish so I have most images on external hard drives

I do back up my catalogues (save to external drive) on a regular basis now though and back up LR nearly every time it opens as I have had a few problems in the past and lost all the recent editing
 
I keep one catalogue per category of images as I was told a while ago that this would be better for performance but oh well.

I find it works nicely as my workflow is different depending on what type of image I'm working with :)
 
I find it takes a few minutes to open (due to backing up each time) but if I want to find a picture of a particular breed of dog that I know I have photographed a few times over the years I can just set it to search for say "newfoundland dog" and it will search the whole catalogue instead of my having to do multiple searches. I am gradually importing my earlier photos and keywording everything as I go
 
I think you have hit the nail on the head there, make sure that everything is keyworded well, that way you don't have to search through 1000's of images to find the one that you want.

I have only recently started to keyword everything properly and already I can see the advantages.
 
Try running the catalogue optimising option, to see if that helps.

I tend to breakdown my images into year, plus assignment, then subheadings within assignment if necessary. That does help speed things up.

You might like to use keyword to help find images. You might not need anything more than a suitable file name and maybe one or two additional keywords, such as Beach, seascape, landscape etc
 
Sorry to crash this thread but how do you change multiple keyword entries, i have labeled a load wrong and if i multi select them it only appear to change the keyword for 1 picture....

By the way, i have all my pics in 1 cat broken up into year then event and i find it VERY slow at times. I will try the optimisation option as well and see if that helps.
 
in the library function, select all the photo's and on the right hand side menu if you scroll down there is a keyword section with your keywords. You can change them here.

I've made this mistake before as I keyword on import
 
Another vote for single catalogs here, I'm gradually merging them back together, it makes finding files so much easier (assuming your keywording is up to scratch!!!)
 
Raws on one disk, catalogue on another, backups on another, exported jpegs on yet another, then the whole lot backed up weekly to a NAS box.

Hopefully that's ok ;)
 
morleymackam said:
I'm running LR2 with a library of 12210 RAW pictures and find it hugely slow to use. Scrolling through the library to find a selection of pics is a chore as it chugs along.

Will the spec of my machine be to blame or can I somehow speed it up?

Athlon X2 5600+
2Gb RAM
Running from 500GB SATA drive with 250GB free space
Click to expand...

Remember, if you have LR set to" import and copy to a new location" set and you then backup onto the same hdd you'd end up with 24420 raw images -that'll slow the whole 'puter down....
 
Kerioak said:
I find it takes a few minutes to open (due to backing up each time)
Click to expand...

You're joking, yes?! A few minutes! Even with my old system a 30,000 image catalog didn't take that long.

On my new system an 18,000 image (I culled a few!) catalog does the verification, backup and open process in 6 seconds. That's with LR and its catalog on an SSD - they really are the canine's gonads.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top