Well, after hearing so much about how smoking LR is, I downloaded the trail version and imported a few JPEGs yesterday. After importing the images it showed that something was being done to the images, similar to what Bridge does, like creating the thumbnails and such. Well after that I was moving through my images and my goodness, just switching from one image to the next it was so slow. I jumped from one image to the next using the arrow keys, and the next images shows up all pixelated and ugly, and LR shows a message saying Working.... I waited...... and then I waited some more...... and then some more..... and finally I waited a little longer.... and then the message dissapeared and the pixelation "got better"....and after a couple more seconds the image was clear. I timed this and it took a whopping 27 seconds for me to simply switch from one image to the next.

Oh, but that is not all. I decided to zoom into the image, I clicked on a part of the image that I wanted to see and it zoomed really quick, but it showed me a very pixelated image again.....and I waited.....and I waited....well you get the point. I waited 13 seconds for the zoomed image to be clear. Then I zoomed out....more waiting about 7 seconds this time.

Now after I had "seen" the images and zoomed into each one, I could go back and forth between them and the switching and zooming was almost immediate.

The problem with this is that on the same computer, that doesn't happen on Bridge and ACR with JPEGs. In Bridge after the images are imported and my presets applied and the thumbnails built, switching from image to image is instantaneous. Someone please tell me that there some sort of setting somewhere to fix this. Otherwise, I am sticking with Bridge and ACR.

I had the same problem with the original beta version. Okay... do me a favor and check a few things..... I'm really interested in this as I want to cover "performance tuning" in my training set.

1. You're using Jpeg - what size? Please shoot some raw files (you're shooting canon right? so they're CR2 files?) - do the same thing and see if it runs faster with raw files. I found my copy does seem to run a tad slower with Jpegs. Dunno why but that's what I saw. I'd like to see the same timing numbers with CR2's.

2. Go delete your entire library database file. On Mac it's inside your Pictures > Lightroom folder. Quit LR and just delete everything in that folder. When you re-lauch LR it'll prompt you to re-create it. This to make sure that file is clean and fresh with no junk or corruption or anything in it. Get rid of that "previews" file in the same folder also - just delete it all (and know you'll loose anything you've done in LR up to that point if that wasn't obvious).

3. What are the exact specs on your machine - processor, video card (and v ram), ram in your machine, as well as the total size of your hard drive and the amount of free space on your drive (is it more than 80% full?), as well as the speed of your drive - is it a current model 7200 rpm with a good buffer (like 8MB)? You using anything crazy like RAID arrays or anything? And of course your OS and version.

4. What size is your monitor? Running off my MBP on my 30" was slow because it has to render more pixels into the preview because the screen is so big. When I would grab the tab in the lower right corner and re-size the window down to cover less of the screen - it would switch images and update them much quicker. This isn't an idea solution, but that's what I had to do on the MBP. With my new Mac Pro, it runs butter smooth at full size 30" and that's no longer a proplem.

5. What version LR did you download? Is it the current v1.1 or is it the slighly older v1.0?

6. Goto "Preferences" and click "Go to Catalog Settings" on the "General" tab of "Preferences".

On "File Handling" tab of "Catalog Settings" dialog - set your Standard Preview Size to 2048 (or whatever is the highest), Preview quality "High". On the "metadata" tab of the same screen - UNCHECK "Automatically write changes into XMP".

7. When you import your set of pics, click the box "render standard size previews" which should slow the import process a bit, but once it's done. Do not go back and select "Render 1:1 Previews" after importing.


Try all of that and see if things change. If it's still a bit slow going from picture to picture, then go back into that Catalog Settings tab and set your Standard Preview Size to something a bit smaller like 1680 pixels and see what happens.


Let us know what happens. Good luck.

Thanx for the response Kevin, I am surprised though that there was only 1 reply to this in over a day, when there are quite a few people that use LR.


I am shooting Nikon and the JPEGs are 10.2 mp and around 5Mb in size. I have just shot some raw files and I will run those through to see how fast it is.


I don't have a problem deleting the library database because everything I have in LR is for testing purpsoes. But since I just installed it, the library db has just been created and the only thing I have imported are the JPEGs I mentioned. Maybe something that is happening is that I had already processed those JPEGs on ACR and LR may have been taking a while reading the XMP files associated with those JPEGs. I will also try importing some JPEGs straight in to LR to see if that makes any difference.


I have a 2.16 GHz MacBook Pro with 2Gb of memory and of a 120Gb-5400rpm HD, I have about 50Gb left.


I am running everything from the laptop, I don't have an external monitor.


It's version 1.1


I'll try this tonight.


Thanx again Kevin. I will try your suggestions tonight and post the results.

You may be right at the bottom end of what's acceptable in this case. That's what I was running - exact same thing except I had the upgraded 7200 rpm drive which means all the reading and writing of the files and the cache/swap/page file was faster on my machine. I was also editing 8.2 MP Raw files - your files are bit larger and are Jpeg which may again require more processing in a round about way.

What's really limiting you is that 2GB of ram. Your machine is having to go back to a (somewhat slow) hard drive to swap it's processing data in and out which is where I think your major slow down is coming from. You probably have the first generation MBP that caps at 2GB? That's what I have. If you can add more than that then you may consdier it - I think it would really speed you up.

Try what I suggested with setting up the preview size and all and see what happens. I'm really curious to know if your Raw files run faster than Jpeg.


I finally went to the Mac Pro because the MBP was "okay" - it got the job done but it did still lag a bit. Obviously you want to shut down all other running programs. You may also try it all after a fresh reboot. I know that's not ideal, but it rules out all the other stuff that could be getting in the way just for testing purpose if nothing else.

Good luck.

Ramiro-

Check this thread I just found on the Adobe LR support forum....

http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?128@@.3bc4941d

Sounds like un-checking that "auto write XMP" is a big key. They also seem to again allude to the app running considerably slower with Jpeg vs. Raw processing.

Hi !

I have a very different experience to share !

I have a black MacBook (2Ghz, 2Go, 160Go 5400rpm) and Lightroom 1.0 is really fast at editing even 1000's of RAWs (30D RAWs in my case)...

So I'm sure you'll find the way to make it way faster through configuration.

I don't generate full screen previews, just "standard" previews. I export XMP files only when I'm done editing...

I have noticed that editing JPEGs is slower than editing RAWs... but not that slow !

Hope you'll like it once you find out what's wrong !

Chris