LR seems slow

Hi,

For some reason, my LR seems too slow to me. When loaded onto my server, it takes pretty much the same amount of time (5-15 seconds) when moving from image to image. This is pretty much same amount of time it takes on my laptop. Of course my latop has only few 100 images while server has thousands but loading from previews shouldn't make (at least to me) much difference in speed regardless of number of total images in the catalog.

On the server all my images (and catalog) are sitting on a 4 disk RAID 5. I did a test of exporting full size JPGs. LR kept processing at its own speed while I monitored my system. Server simply sat there with about 35% CPU (Xeon) usage, barely any disk usage, and minimal memory usage.

Could someone please shed some light regarding how can I make LR go a bit faster? I am more interested in what tweaks that I can make as I think hardware wise my system is good (and maxed).

Thank you.

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Baadil, I'm not clear what OS you are using -- it doesn't look like Win7 or Vista -- is it XP64? And, are you using the 64 bit version of Lightroom?

The biggest slowdown when moving from image to image in LR is rendering previews -- one thing you can experiment with is rendering blocks of images in 100% mode prior to processing them. It does take some time but may save some time as you go. You have plenty of memory and of course 8 processors, but unfortunately any one task in Lightroom will only use one processor at a time.

Thank you Tony.
That image is from my server. It is using Windows Server 2008 R2 (64bit).
To be honest, I do not recall if I used 32bit or 64bit LR during install. Is there a way to confirm that? I checked the about dialog but it does not show either way.

OMG, I just rendered 1:1 previews of the images I am working on and what a difference. Instant switch between developed images. I love it. Thank you so much This shows I have tons more to learn about LR.

It is a shame that LR cannot use multiple processors for individual tasks. There would have been a lot more performance in the app for systems with multiple processors.

Anything else I shold watch out for?

Thank you.

Baadil, that's good news! Now, as far as the 32 bit or 64 bit version of LR, it sounds like you are probably using the 32 bit version, otherwise I think that you would see "64 bit" specified -- at least that's what my LR3 Beta specifies in numerous places.

What you might want to try is to download the LR3 Beta 2 yourself and install it -- if it detects a 64 bit OS it is supposed to install the 64 bit version, but the question is will it recognize Server 2008? I don't have a clue, but it might be something to check Adobe support about.

As far as running on multiple processors go, well, that is the nature of multiple processing vs. multi-threading. I've heard that there are some things you can do with an app like Lightroom to split out your processing, and there are background process that it does run that take advantage of the multiple processors, but it may not be as sophisticated as some multi-threaded apps and I don't believe that Windows is nearly as straightforward as, say, Unix/Linux in how you approach working in multiple threads.

tonylong wrote in post #10062992
if it detects a 64 bit OS it is supposed to install the 64 bit version

It'll only install x64 version on Vista x64 or W7 x64 - those are the only officially supported x64 versions. That said, when you run the install, you can press the 'show installation files' or something like that and go find the setup64.exe file and run that to install. Server 2008 isn't officially supported at all, but as you've seen, that doesn't mean it won't work.

More speed tips here if you're interested: http://www.lightroomqu​een.com …room-the-best-speed-tips/

Hi Badill,

Your system is similar to mine. What I do is when I am importing images in the first place is to select the Render Previews "1:1" rather than "Standard" in the Import Dialogue box. This will take only a *bit* longer on your level of machine, but it means that the images are already rendered when you want to work on them. I also have the "remove 1:1 previews after 30 days" selected so that as I try to initially process within a couple of weeks it will help to keep the size of the preview folder kinda down...

ken

Victoria Bampton wrote in post #10063144
It'll only install x64 version on Vista x64 or W7 x64 - those are the only officially supported x64 versions. That said, when you run the install, you can press the 'show installation files' or something like that and go find the setup64.exe file and run that to install. Server 2008 isn't officially supported at all, but as you've seen, that doesn't mean it won't work.

More speed tips here if you're interested: http://www.lightroomqu​een.com …room-the-best-speed-tips/

Thank you Victoria.

kencas wrote in post #10064471
Hi Badill,

Your system is similar to mine. What I do is when I am importing images in the first place is to select the Render Previews "1:1" rather than "Standard" in the Import Dialogue box. This will take only a *bit* longer on your level of machine, but it means that the images are already rendered when you want to work on them. I also have the "remove 1:1 previews after 30 days" selected so that as I try to initially process within a couple of weeks it will help to keep the size of the preview folder kinda down...

ken

Thank you Kencas, I will give it a try. I am sure it will make a big difference in the whole workflow