How to speed up Lightroom?

Zascar

I love Lightroom but it annoys me how slow it is. Even just changing between photos takes half a seconds, it's ridiculous it should be instant. I'm not concerned with importing and exporting being slow - I just leave it and do something else, but I want to speed up navigation between shots for rating etc. Can anyone suggest how?

My pc is a good new years old but it's still an i5, 8gb ram and an SSD. The Lightroom catalogue is not on the SSD however, so I was thinking of buying a second one, you can get 120gb ssd's for cheap.

Someone else mentioned the previews etc can be adjusted to load faster - any ideas?

Bacchus

Zascar wrote: »

I love Lightroom but it annoys me how slow it is. Even just changing between photos takes half a seconds, it's ridiculous it should be instant. I'm not concerned with importing and exporting being slow - I just leave it and do something else, but I want to speed up navigation between shots for rating etc. Can anyone suggest how?

My pc is a good new years old but it's still an i5, 8gb ram and an SSD. The Lightroom catalogue is not on the SSD however, so I was thinking of buying a second one, you can get 120gb ssd's for cheap.

Someone else mentioned the previews etc can be adjusted to load faster - any ideas?

I went through this list last year and there's some good tips in it...

http://lightroomzen.com/blog/2016/5/18/10-ways-to-speed-up-adobe-lightroom-for-better-performance

What version are you using btw? The CC version periodically makes performance improvements (not that they're particularly noticeable).

Myksyk

This is a good link. Thanks. My poor old 2012 iMac has definitely run its course (took 40 minutes to save and close 3 large format PS files recently) ... I'm excited to be about a day from putting my blingy new pc (i7 9700k/32GB RAM/RTX2070 GPU/M.2 SSDs etc) into operation and will be interested to see if performance will improve significantly .... (!) but I will definitely make sure I put these tips into play.

ED E

1. More RAM. RAM is relatively cheap. 32GB, give LR 15GB to cache with.

2. NVME SSD. Those cheap SSDs give you 550MB/s at best. NVMEs give you 2-3000MB/s. Responds faster than you can click.

Portlawslim

Myksyk wrote: »

This is a good link. Thanks. My poor old 2012 iMac has definitely run its course (took 40 minutes to save and close 3 large format PS files recently) ... I'm excited to be about a day from putting my blingy new pc (i7 9700k/32GB RAM/RTX2070 GPU/M.2 SSDs etc) into operation and will be interested to see if performance will improve significantly .... (!) but I will definitely make sure I put these tips into play.

Green with envy!!
Best of luck with it

Zascar

ED E wrote: »

1. More RAM. RAM is relatively cheap. 32GB, give LR 15GB to cache with.

2. NVME SSD. Those cheap SSDs give you 550MB/s at best. NVMEs give you 2-3000MB/s. Responds faster than you can click.

Wow thanks I have never heard of an NVME hard drive. I'm sure that would massively improve things and definitely a nice easy upgrade.

I had read previously that Lightroom does not need more than 8gb - but a Google bring conflicted results. Worth adding 8gb anyway probably.

Myksyk

Portlawslim wrote: »

Green with envy!!
Best of luck with it

Thanks Portlawslim! Bringing home this afternoon. First PC I've built myself ... great fun. Have PS/LR booting off an M.2 NVME SSD (Samsung 970 Pro) .... takes about 3 seconds for them open compared to the 2'54" (yes, I timed it) on my current Mac!! The PC boots from fully off to desktop in about 10 seconds. A lot of bells and whistles and intend to tweak it a little too to get a bit more from it.

PS hardest part of build was last night ... telling my better half! Went ok-ish ... Sorry have to go ... Next on triage list.

Portlawslim

Built my own 6 years back, built it primarily as a gamimg PC and then got into photography and I don't game anymore. But the PC is the business for Photo editing(needs a RAM upgrade from 8gb to 16gb) Hoping to do so soon. Building your own is defo the way to go more bang for buck!
Built one with my son for a friend of mine last summer to replace his ageing Mac He paid €2500 in total and got a 2k screen with that....Mac Killer is what he called it.

CabanSail

I really do not like LR at all but have it for RAW's taken on iPhone. It does not seem that slow when using it on a 2016 MBP with 32GB of RAM.

I take it that the images have been loaded sometime before. Would have thought that you would only be switching between Previews. Something is nagging me that there is a setting which controls that. Seems slower than when I switch between PSD's with over 40 layers.