What computer spec is required to run lightroom 5 smoothly?

ancient_mariner

ancient_mariner

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Toni
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I've been trying LR5.3 on my Macbook (2GHz core 2 duo, 4Gb RAM, SSD - meets Abode's recommended specs) and after doing some spot removal/healing or brushwork it gets increasingly laggy. I was watching the Antony Morganti training videos and he has the same problem with the machine lagging behind input.

Does anyone know why and is there a recommended spec for a machine that won't bog down after a bit of editing? Does one really need - say - 8Gb ram (for editing a 20Mb file? really?)
 
I have a fairly ordinary laptop, under 12 months old, that seemed to cope fine with LR4 but when I started using LR5 it was very very laggy. So upped from 4gb of RAM to 8gb for £30 from Crucial & it made an amazing transformation. NO lag & everything (the whole machine) generally so much faster. In my case I felt the basic design/specification was poor & it should have been 8gb at source.

Hope you get sorted :)
 
hi toni have you been into the settings to allow the max memory usage for this program? or increase your cache size

Increase the Camera Raw cache
Increasing the Camera Raw cache in Lightroom's preferences can help performance in the Develop module if you repeatedly work on the same set of images.

To reset the Camera Raw cache:

  1. In Lightroom, select Edit > Preferences > File Handling (Windows) or Lightroom > Preferences > File Handling (Mac OS).
  2. Increase the Camera Raw cache. If you're not sure how much to increase it, start with 2-3 GB initially, depending on the amount of space on your hard disk, and how you use Lightroom.
  3. You can also change the location of the cache if you want.
 
On Windows, LR 4 (and I assume 5) only uses around 2.5G of memory. Of course, if you have other programs using another 2.5G, then 4G is not going to be enough. LR on OSX may have some memory leak bugs as I've seen a number of people claim extra memory helps. The way to see is see if the memory is being paged - if your page file usage is 0, extra memory won't help. As to processor, the generally recommended minimum is quad core i5 or quad core i7 on a laptop.
 
Mine is a 'low end' (I'm a poor pensioner) but with the 8gb RAM works very fast :clap:

Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU B960 @ 2.20GHz
 
Don't forget guys, on windows 32bit you only have access to 3gb of ram no matter what you add. Anything over 3gb with windows requires a 64bit OS.

For me, running the program from an SSD and the cache and database on its own separate SSD and allowing 100mb cache turned LR into a pretty much instantaneous experience no matter what I am doing with it.
 
Thanks for the cache tip - I'll try that. It also sounds like taking memory to 8Gb is necessary, even with nothing else running.
 
ancient_mariner said:
also sounds like taking memory to 8Gb is necessary, even with nothing else running.
Click to expand...
You should see what your swap space is doing first. I'm not saying don't buy an extra 4G, just that LR doesn't seem to need the extra 4G on PCs...
 
what andy said, even LR5 (recently upgraded from 3) uses minimal memory even on 64 bit. CPU and disk speed has more of a benefit than throwing ram at it, but as said if other apps are using the memory that wont help.

check resource manager and see what your system is up to.
 
I set the cache for 3Gb, and it seems a little less laggy, though far from smooth. 2GHz core 2 duo processor, so I'd have thought it to be man enough. It's running off an SSD, but the images being processed are on an external USB HDD - could that be causing lag?

I'll have a look & see what's using resources tomorrow, but I wonder if it is the memory leak issue since the memory monitoring software sees available memory drop away quite rapidly to a couple of hundred meg.
 
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I always found lr3 to struggle with a core 2 quad when processing 5dmk2 raw. Moved to an i7 and ssd and all was good in the world (an i5 quad will be 90% as good and a fair bit cheaper).
 
neil_g said:
I always found lr3 to struggle with a core 2 quad when processing 5dmk2 raw. Moved to an i7 and ssd and all was good in the world (an i5 quad will be 90% as good and a fair bit cheaper).
Click to expand...

So basically my Macbook is 4 years too old - fairy snuff.
 
ancient_mariner said:
It's running off an SSD, but the images being processed are on an external USB HDD - could that be causing lag?
Click to expand...
Initial reading will probably be slow (assuming USB2). Browsing through thumbnails may well feel slow. I agree with Neil though - C2D is way old....
 
Whatever the reasons, I don't think LR and my Macbook are happy together. There is one image where I have done extensive brushwork, and the machine grinds to a halt with the beachball of boredom spinning furiously away. Any further alterations require one to make a tiny change, then wait, make a change then wait. May see if I can find a W7 machine to try it with.

For basic editing it's very good, but I'm going to be terribly frustrated if I can't do much brushwork.
 
There was an optimisation video I watched recently which covered the requirements, including where to store catalogues and images. I'll see if I can dig it up.

Obviously if the images you're working from are on a slow external drive, the performance will take a hit. I import direct to the local SSD and move to an external (USB3) drive when I'm done.

EDIT: Here's the video.
 
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Thanks for the video - I'll watch it in a mo.

On the memory side of things, I monitored while exporting a (heavily brushed) file and available memory dropped to 8Mb before recovering to 225Mb after export completed (when lightroom first opened available memory around 2.2-2.5Gb). :p

Edit
That was funny. Faster processors, drives and more memory help LR run faster, but SSDs don't make much difference. And if you do intensive tasks with LR then it will slow down.

I appreciated the tip about lens corrections, though I'd already picked that up from the Antony Morganti videos. Basically to get it to run optimally I need the fastest processor I can afford and at least 16GB ram.

IIRC I have a of W8 at home to update XP, and might well try that to update the XP drive I have for experimenting. It's a slightly faster processor with a separate graphics card, so that combined with better memory handling might be enough to stop the herky-jerkies.
 
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I've also noticed just lately that the lag in LR5 is worsening for me. I'm running a lowly Intel Celeron (!!!!!) 1.8GHz with 4Gb of Ram. It has previously handled my files fine but it has started to lag all of a sudden. I have followed the tip about the cache and increased it to 10Gb. Now i just need some pics to import to see if it's any better.

I am thinking of upgrading to this next month, perhaps? Thoughts?
 
Do you need a laptop? I *think* it's a reasonable spec, but the screen will be horrible for image work. Might be cheaper elsewhere too.
 
Well I was gonna go for a desktop, but I haven't 'really' got the space for it without it looking big and nasty. I'm used to editing on a laptop so I don't think it would bother me too much. If i was doing it daily or professionally then i would go for a full PC. But I do agree, a desktop would be much better. Hmmmm...

Back to the previous point, I've also upped the cache in PS cs5 to 100% rather than 60%. I'll see if it makes any difference next time I come to edit something.
 
Yeah speed's all relative- I remember editing 400mb images on a 1gig Athlon Machine- that's how you make a computer bleed!
Lightroom 5 on my i3 8GB SSD win 8.1 do da is more than enough juice. You don't need an i7.
 
no you dont need an i7, youll only really gain 10% over an i5. depends what else you want the machine to do and what budget you have.

but yes it is relative, my old Q9550 (marginally slower than an i3 3325) struggled with 5dmk2 RAW. moving up to a modern i5/7 quad core will benefit hugely.
 
I ended up putting Windows 8.1 on my home PC (Core 2 duo E5200 2.5GHz, 4Gb DDR2 PC8500 ram, spinning rust) and it's coping really well compared to the Macbook - there's a small lag when doing lots of brushwork, but it is acceptable, and images render much faster. I'm not sure how much slower the Macbook really is (Core 2 duo 2GHz 4Gb DDR3 1066 ram) but the user experience is enormously better with Windows.

just debating whether to buy more ram for the home PC so I can run perfect effects 8 or saving a little longer and then doing a complete upgrade to something i5 spec with more recent (much cheaper) DDR3 memory. And I could really do with an IPS monitor too, instead of the old TN Samsung panel (which was so nice 7 or 8 years ago).
 
Above anything else RAM is king if you want to run LR5 comfortably, assuming you have the basic requirements to actually run it! I suggest 8gb as a minimum, 16 and it will run fine. An SSD will also help no end but get the RAM sorted first.

Andy
 
Keebsuk said:
Above anything else RAM is king if you want to run LR5 comfortably, assuming you have the basic requirements to actually run it! I suggest 8gb as a minimum, 16 and it will run fine. An SSD will also help no end but get the RAM sorted first.
Click to expand...

A few years back I had the cash to do one upgrade to my PC - go up from 4GB to 8GB or install a 128GB SSD. Both cost about the same (around £300). I nearly followed the old adage and bough the RAM. Luckily I did some tests and saw that LightRoom was never using all my 4GB - so I bought the SSD. The difference was phenomenal.

Two years later the price of RAM had dropped so that I could afford the 4-8GB upgrade. The difference was not noticeable.
 
Quad-core i5 here, 24GB RAM, and LR5 flies. It also flew when I only had 8GB.

The speed difference between LR4 and LR5 on the same box was staggering.
 
hollis_f said:
A few years back I had the cash to do one upgrade to my PC - go up from 4GB to 8GB or install a 128GB SSD. Both cost about the same (around £300). I nearly followed the old adage and bough the RAM. Luckily I did some tests and saw that LightRoom was never using all my 4GB - so I bought the SSD. The difference was phenomenal.

Two years later the price of RAM had dropped so that I could afford the 4-8GB upgrade. The difference was not noticeable.
Click to expand...

If you were on LR 4 then that seems likely to have made a difference regarding ram use. Adobe have suggested an SSD will not increase performance of LR (though it may open quicker) and that has been my experience too.
 
There was a video by adobe that was linked by Steve in post 16. Basically she said that having a faster processor and more memory will make lightroom work quicker, but apart from opening more quickly, an SSD won't make any difference.
 
hollis_f said:
Really? Where? Because my real tests show a significant difference.
Click to expand...


The only difference a SSD will give is in opening, saving, reading and moving of files. The exception to this is if you have very little memory, and you then assign a SSD as the system's main swap file disk, or scratch disk instead of a HDD. That will make your system faster in that case. Other than that though... a SSD will not actually have any affect on how quickly LR processes images.
 
What you have demonstrated there is that the SSD makes disk operations faster.


File Handling: Copy as DNG and add to catalog (disc operation)
Copy to: Original folder (disc operation)
Organise: By original folder (disc operation)

etc....


I think what this thread is about is how much faster the actual retouching and application of the computational tasks; adjustments, or processing of RAW images is. The SSD will have no effect on this unless the SSD is being used as virtual memory.

Any batch processing of disc based operations is bound to be faster with a SSD... as many of us have said, copying, moving, loading saving fles etc will be greatly enhanced with a SSD... I don't think anyone is arguing that. I already stated this in my previous post... reading, writing, moving, copying files is bound to be faster from/to a SSD.
 
Pookeyhead said:
What you have demonstrated there is that the SSD makes disk operations faster.


File Handling: Copy as DNG and add to catalog (disc operation)
Copy to: Original folder (disc operation)
Organise: By original folder (disc operation)

etc....
Click to expand...

(the Copy to: and Organise by: are not separate processes, they are the import settings used to tell LR where to put the DNG files. So LR was doing these operations:

Read raw file (Disk Operation)
Convert to DNG (Processor Operation)
Write DNG to disk (Disk Operation - that should be carried out in parallel to the conversion)
Preview Generation - (Processor Operation)
Write Preview to disk (Disk Operation - again, should be done in parallel to Preview Generation)

As explained in the thread, I did this test as a request by another member. I'd assumed that creating previews would be a processor-intensive operation and would show a minimal difference. I was wrong, holding the images on an SSD it took 0.6 times as long to generate previews as when the images are held on an HDD.

Now this was some time ago (over 3 years) so I wouldn't be at all surprised if LR had been re-written so that these differences were no longer so huge.
 
I can't say I noticed a difference in preview generation when I moved my LR folder to the SSD. It all depends if the actual image file itself (the RAW) is used for preview generation I suppose. If so, then the only way you can get the advantage would be to actually have all your RAW files stored on a SSD, and as they are small, and expensive, it makes no sense to use a SSD as storage. I've a few TB of RAW files here. It would be incredibly expensive to use a SSD to store that many.
 
Pookeyhead said:
the only way you can get the advantage would be to actually have all your RAW files stored on a SSD, and as they are small, and expensive, it makes no sense to use a SSD as storage.
Click to expand...

But that's exactly what I do. Not all of them, obviously, just the images I'm currently working on. When I import the images they all go to a temporary folder on the SSD while I work on them. Once they've been processed I move them, from within LightRoom, from the SSD to their permanent home on the HDD.
 
Can't be arsed doing that. It takes a second or so to gen a preview.... and once it's generated, it's done from then on.
 
Interesting, and thank you both for the digging on this one.
 
ancient_mariner said:
There was a video by adobe that was linked by Steve in post 16. Basically she said that having a faster processor and more memory will make lightroom work quicker, but apart from opening more quickly, an SSD won't make any difference.
Click to expand...

Keebsuk said:
Above anything else RAM is king if you want to run LR5 comfortably, assuming you have the basic requirements to actually run it! I suggest 8gb as a minimum, 16 and it will run fine. An SSD will also help no end but get the RAM sorted first.

Andy
Click to expand...

Pookeyhead said:
The only difference a SSD will give is in opening, saving, reading and moving of files. The exception to this is if you have very little memory, and you then assign a SSD as the system's main swap file disk, or scratch disk instead of a HDD. That will make your system faster in that case. Other than that though... a SSD will not actually have any affect on how quickly LR processes images.
Click to expand...

LR uses little memory compared to other processing apps, across LR3 and LR5 ive never got mine above 2.5Gb tops. certainly nowhere near needing 8gb (unless you have a tonne of other apps open also).

as a test have task manager open and see how much memory it is actually using.

thread is a bit old now but @arad85 info below is still relevant regarding SSD and LR:

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/ssds-and-lightroom.417126/
 
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Next time I'm running LR I'll do that, but monitoring memory availability on a freshly booted Mac with nothing else running I've seen memory drop right away. Do you think it's processor power that makes the difference after using the brush a little and it runs so slow?
 
Check real memory usage. LR may cause the OS to cache data image which would make you think RAM matters. I've seen a number of people complain about RAM usage on OSX. On PCs, LR is quite frugal.
 
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