Optimizing work in Lightroom: hardware and software (part 1). Speeding up Lightroom

Like any other program, things sometimes go wrong with Lightroom. It may stop starting, start to slow down terribly, and produce some errors and mysterious messages.

To avoid problems, first of all, don’t do typical mistakes when working with the program, which you can read about in the article ““.

What to do if Lightroom is broken? The main thing is not to panic.

Then - always have a backup copy of the directories. You've probably noticed that Lightroom periodically asks you to back up catalogs. Do you close this window or do what is recommended to you? Maybe it's time to pay attention to the advice before it's too late?

Ideally, in addition to backing up directories, you should make a backup copy of the source files, but with a large number of images, this can become problematic.

But having backup copies of catalogs and sources, you can sleep peacefully. No matter what happens, you won't lose your pictures.

Now let's look at the list of the most typical problems problems arising with Lightroom and what to do about it.

Lightroom won't open

Solution options. Firstly, a banal reboot of the computer. It may be funny, but it helps.

If this does not help, then first of all delete the file with the .lock extension, which is blocking the directory while you are working with it.
In a normal situation, the file is deleted automatically after closing Lightroom. But sometimes, if the work was completed incorrectly, it may remain and interfere with the launch.

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This file is located in the same place as all the files in the current directory. The default is

Windows: \Users\[username]\Pictures\Lightroom
Mac OS: /Users/[username]/Pictures/Lightroom

If there was no .lock file or deletion did not help, try deleting the Lightroom settings file

You need to look for it here:

On Mac OS X: /Library/Preferences
On Windows: c:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\Preferences\

On Windows these are files with the extension .agprefs on Mac - .plist

If the directory still does not open and you have backup copy, try opening it instead of the current directory.

At worst, try completely uninstalling Lightroom and installing it again. In this case, it is advisable to install the latest version.

Lightroom is slow

Optimizing Lightroom performance maximum performance- this is a separate topic. But the main tips are as follows.

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First of all, try optimizing the File -> Optimize Catalog directory.
Increase the cache size for Lightroom. Also, be sure that there is enough free space on the disk where the cache file is located.
You can find out where the cache is located and change its size in the Edit->Preferences menu (Lightroom->Preferences on Mac) on the File Handling tab

Lightroom is quite demanding on computer resources. Therefore, for speed, close everything unnecessary programs, update lightroom to latest version, and also be sure that everything is in order with the computer’s RAM.

Lightroom shows error when exporting

The easiest thing to do is to try restarting Lightroom first. If you are using any plugins that were applied during processing, make sure that the plugins are working correctly.
Do not use unofficial russifiers for Lightroom - no one knows who made them and how. Delete the settings file as described above.

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Lightroom doesn't show preview or photo itself

First, try deleting the folder with previews of your photos. It is located in the same place as all the directory files. On Windows it is a folder with the directory name and .lrdata at the end, on Mac it is a file with the same name. Try updating your video card driver and monitor profile.

Lightroom is acting strange

There may be a large number of"oddities", but their treatment is mainly carried out using shamanic methods. Check if there is enough space for the Lightroom cache, update your video card drivers and monitor profile, be sure that hard drive and RAM everything is fine.

A universal way to solve problems

Don't forget to update Lightroom. As a rule, updates include not only new cameras, as stated in official press releases, but also many bugs found and corrected in the program itself. Therefore, there is a possibility that next update your problem will already be solved.

This post could be titled “how to speed up Lightroom 7 times”, and I wouldn’t say that it would be a lie, but there is still some stretch here ;-) Continuing to study for myself the topic of Lightroom acceleration (which is already discussed in the hardware upgrade key parts and dependencies) I carried out additional measurements, exporting the same set of files in different scenarios.

Got a change in export time from 8 minutes 51 seconds to 1 minute 19 seconds. This is almost 7 times.

The backstory is simple - one of my friends complained that his old MacBook Pro with dual-core Core i7 2.8 GHz (supporting Hyper Threading), 8 gigabytes of RAM and cool matte screen, which not so long ago cost as much as 75 thousand rubles, exports images from Lightroom for a painfully long time, and this becomes a problem when he needs to output a thousand frames to the client. We measured 127 shots from Nikon D90, this MacBook Pro took 6 minutes and 30 seconds. Therefore, he would spend 51 minutes on 1000 photos. After doing a couple of operations, on the same computer you can make it so that exporting a thousand images will take 35 minutes, that is, get a 30% speedup. And if you cheat something else, then you can waste it for export in less time.

What I'm saying is that you don't have to buy it new MacBook(PC, laptop, processor, upgrade...) in order to make Lightroom move faster. You just need to understand how and what works in it and not commit simple mistakes. Such, for example, as export to USB HDD. By the way, some laptop owners are guilty of this, wasting their time.

Briefly: To speed up the output of your photos in Lightroom, you need to (1) export the files to a fast drive [DO NOT export to USB HDD or Laptop HDD] (2) do it in multiple threads. And now in more detail under the cut.

UPD. I wanted to clarify right away, because I already see comments where they misunderstood me. Speaking about “outputting pictures from Nikon D90” I mean “outputting pictures taken by Nikon D90 from NEF to JPEG/TIFF”, that is, about _rendering_ during export, and NOT about importing from a flash drive/camera to a computer. We are talking about the procedure when RAW with the application of all masks, filters, corrections and the rest turns into JPEG and TIFF.

I already know what and where resources are being consumed. But there are two underestimated factors. Firstly, as measurements have shown, export to a slow disk is significant, and under some conditions factor of, increases export time, especially if you output RAW to TIFF16. This happens because Lightroom is “sequential” - it doesn’t start next operation without finishing the previous one. The situation is partially saved by caching write operations, but only up to a certain limit.

Also, few people know about the possibility of exporting from Lightroom to multiple streams, and it, in turn, uses resources efficiently multi-core processors, such as Core i5 or i7 (and even the old Core 2 Duo). By default, Lightroom is optimized to allow you to do other things when exporting, such as retouching in Photoshop. If necessary, you can force LR to "fire at full capacity", and this can be a decent help if the retouching is "in background" not planned.

To take measurements, I used my “photodesktop” - a rather monstrous machine with Core processor i7 3960X, 32 gigabytes random access memory, a 2 GB video card with support for CUDA and OpenGL acceleration, an array of SSDs in RAID0 and other “goodies” selected to get the most out of Lightroom, Photoshop, Premiere and some other programs that are hungry for resources. I say this not to boast, but to understand the numbers. In addition, even this piece of hardware full of mips can be accelerated in Lightroom by one and a half to two times from scratch.

Here are the numbers obtained when exporting 127 NEF (RAW) shots from Nikon D90 to JPEG maximum qualities:

As you can see, the increase is almost 2.3 times, if instead of exporting in one stream to a slow external drive(write speed 35 MB per second) we will export in three streams to the SSD. But even easy replacement slow external hard drive to fast (USB 3.0) allows you to win 30 percent without changing anything. But even in the standard scenario, when the export is in JPEG on an SSD, you can win 48 percent simply by using multi-threaded export.

Let's complicate the task. Here are the export figures for the same 127 images in NEF (RAW) from the same Nikon D90 in TIFF16/ProPhotoRGB/without compression:

When exporting to external storage With USB interface 2.0 full time the procedure took a monstrous 8 minutes and 51 seconds. Compare this to 3:39 when exporting to JPEG. But what's funny is the most a short time export (RAMdisk->RAMdisk) even decreased and amounted to only 79 seconds (versus 91 seconds when exporting to JPEG, all other things being equal) - that is, our export procedure to TIFF is less processor-dependent, but much more disk-dependent. This is understandable - when exporting to JPEG, you also need to compress images into a format with data loss, which takes additional seconds of processor time.

What does all this mean?

a) Use at least two stream exports. This is done simply - select half of the files that you wanted to convert to JPEG/TIFF and Export them. Immediately select the second half and also export to them. Two bars appear at the top, the processor load increases significantly, and the export time is reduced. If there are more than two cores ( senior Core i7), you can try exporting to 3 and 4 streams. On an 8-core system, this allows you to raise CPU load up to 100% and beg for another fifteen percent compared to export in two streams.

b) Using a laptop, export not to the built-in HDD: Either buy a fast external drive (FireWire 800 or Thunderbolt for Mac, USB 3.0 for PC), or replace the built-in HDD with an SSD. This alone, all other things being equal (processor and memory) on a more or less current machine will speed up the process. It’s not a fact, moreover, that MacBook replacement from a 2-core processor to a model with a 4-core processor will greatly speed up exports, if you do not use multi-threading and a fast disk.

And now a request to the readers of this blog. If you have time and desire, please compare how much you are exporting 100 RAW images your camera in JPEG 100% and TIFF 16 bit for output in 1 and 2 streams. I would really like to see these numbers in the comments indicating the config.

P.S. If we compare it with the MacBook Pro that I talked about at the beginning, it turns out that with a skillful approach it exports 1000 pictures in 35 minutes, and my desktop in 10. It seems like the difference is one tea party, but I would also remember about the speed of rendering previews 1:1 (it is equal to the column “1 thread, RAMdisk -> RAMdisk”) - it turns out that that computer will cope with the task in 50 minutes (and in reality - more, running up against the access time to the terrible LR database), mine in 15. It turns out to be a net saving of 1 hour only on the import-export of one small photo shoot. And if you add Photoshop filters and the rest, then... the difference is striking, of course. This is me not because MacBooks are bad, but because desktops still make sense. I calm myself down ;-)

I was prompted to write this text by the need to update computer hardware. It had been brewing for a long time, but it finally hit me yesterday, while processing the shooting I had just completed: 1100 RAW files from a Nikon D810 camera (36 MP, RAW 14 bit). It was necessary to quickly import, review, set ratings, pre-process (crop, brightness-contrast, gradients, WB and color, noise reduction) and export the result as a gallery. The task was complicated by the fact that the material had to be delivered to the customer by morning. I sat down at 11 pm and for the first time did not have time to finish my work before dawn. Let's select the optimal hardware to work in Adobe Lightroom CC and look at some recommendations for speeding up the processing process.

A little retreat: You can blame Adobe for a long time for clumsy profiles, the outdated ACR 9.x with its eight-lane HSL or the lack of masks in curves, but I state a simple fact: today there is no better cataloger and organizer of the processing process than Lightroom. Yes, the work is based on 9.x ACR. Yes, Lightroom is resource-hungry and terribly slow. More precisely, he uses them very irrationally, and it is difficult to say what is more here - the crookedness of Indian programmers or the fact that Adobe forgot about old projects when developing ACR 10 version. At the same time, it is impossible to say for sure whether ACR or Lightroom itself as an add-on over the standard ACR engine is slowing down.

Iron in my office

Mac Pro (Mid 2010) with OS Sierra (10.12.1) installed
2 processors 2.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
memory 32 GB 1066 MHz DDR3
video card ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB + two monitors 30" and 26"
working disk for the system and LR directory: Samsung 850 PRO with 512 GB
Data drives: multiple WD Red 6 TB SATA

1. We are not currently considering catalog optimization, computer restart and sprinkling with holy water. By the way, the speed of operation does not significantly depend on the size of the directory (if the number of imported files is less than 50,000).
2. The very first step is to generate thumbnails at the import stage (or immediately after it) “one to one” for the entire shooting. Let's do it.
3. Generation of “smart” previews for the entire shooting. Let's do it.
4. Starting with Lightroom CC (2015.6), it became possible to work with “smart previews” on the fly without disabling the originals: Preferences/Performance/check “Use Smart Previews instead of Originals”. Let's connect. As a result, to generate previews on the screen, the system uses a smaller amount of data (compressed DNG 10-15% of the original), which really increases speed. When exporting, the original will be automatically connected.
5. Increase the cache size for ACR from 1 to 20 GB: (Preferences/File Handling/ Camera RAW Cash Settings).
6. CPU usage graphics card(check Preferences/Performance/Use Graphics Processor) does not always work and will not help everyone: even if your accelerator is supported by Lightroom, people complain that the system starts to slow down instead of giving the promised “tenfold increase in performance.” When using my ATI Radeon HD 5770 I noticed next thing: when moving from file to file, the system slows down more (which is logical, because data from RAW files is loaded into the video card), but processing a single frame is much faster. Verdict: I definitely turn off the checkbox at the stage of viewing the material, but I will turn it on when individually processing a file with big amount gradients (M), brushes (K) and artifact removal (Q).
7. Adobe recommendation I always dismiss “convert RAW files to DNG” for this reason: DNG is a simplified standard that cuts off (among other things) undocumented fields from the original RAW. Sacrifice data for the sake of compatibility with other software? We send DNG by forest.

The problem that remains after all the dancing with a tambourine

1. The system slows down when viewing files when moving from one 36 MP file to another, which significantly reduces the speed of material selection.
2. When moving from one processed file to another, the system tries to generate a new preview, which takes several seconds. It's unrealistically annoying.
3. Processing slows down significantly on files above 24 MP and on files with a higher (14) bit depth. On old 12 megapixel shots (D700, D3S) and 16 megapixel (D4) everything works 2-3 times faster.
4. Generation of 1:1 previews and “smart” previews helps to cure the problem from point 1, but for 1000 frames the generation process takes several hours.
5. There is an opinion that Lightroom begins to slow down on weak (up to 2GB) video cards on configurations with large diagonal monitors. No one has conducted comparative tests.

What to consider when choosing components?

Still, you need to upgrade. After analyzing the proposed hardware, we decided the following recommendations by position:

1. CPU clock speed. For LR it is of paramount importance. The higher the better. Ideal for today - Intel Core i7 (6700K).

2. Number of processors. One is enough. The second one in LR is not needed in FIG.. Moreover, in some cases, the second processor even reduces performance. What you definitely shouldn't take: server architecture and several XEON processors E5 with a large number of cores and low frequency. It is best to take one i7 processor with maximum clock frequency and overclocking/cooling options.

3. Number of Cores. Even though Adobe recommends 4-6 cores for optimal performance, multithreading in LR is poorly implemented (exception is the export of processed frames). Lightroom generally does not parallelize tasks well. When comparing two processors, for example, 4 core 6700K versus 6 core 5820K, it is better to go with 4 core 6700K.

4. RAM. Uses up to 16 GB of RAM. If subsequent work in Photoshop is expected, then it makes sense to install 32 GB. The higher the memory frequency, the better. ECC is not required. The ideal for today is 32 GB DDR4 2400 MHz.

5. Disk subsystem . Adobe recommends using an SSD for system disk and the lightroom catalog. The data itself may live on another disk. I tried storing data on the same SSD - it didn’t add one iota to the speed. FW and USB drives gave generally the same values as internal SATA drives. Conclusion: SSD for system and directory, but data separately. Actually, Adobe says the same thing: when testing disk arrays with a recording speed of 80-1200 MB/sec, the operating speed did not change significantly. So we are left with data from standard HDDs.

6. Video card. A good video card is good. Not all accelerators are supported by the system. Adobe recommends for optimal performance GeForce GTX 960 4GB and GeForce GTX 970 4GB, but it is immediately stipulated that today work with accelerators is at an embryonic level.

The optimal configuration for today (November 2016) looks like this

Core i7 Skylake-S (4.00 GHz Intel Core i7–6700K)
- 32 GB DDR4 2400 MHz
- NVIDIA GTX 970, 4 GB, 2 DVI, HDMI, DP (1664 CUDA cores)
- SSD 850/860
- I will continue to use Mac OS (the so-called hackintosh) as the operating system.

Have you ever wondered how to speed up Lightroom and increase productivity? Yes, Lightroom is a great program for professional work with a photo, but sometimes it is not as fast as we would like. How to optimize Adobe Photoshop Lightroom?
You can add an SSD to the system - an excellent option, but expensive. We'll do it for free.

By googling articles on this topic, you will mainly find advice on a) changing cache settings Adobe Camera RAW and b) disabling automatic creation of .XMP files. Personally, I don’t like to do this: if the Lightroom catalog fails, you lose all the work on processing RAW files. (Yes, these .XMP files can be saved to disk manually from Lightroom, but will you remember to do this?)

So I suggest another method. The idea is simple: disable some Lightroom modules (plugins) that you don’t need in your work, and the program will launch and work noticeably faster.

Adobe program architecture Photoshop Lightroom is that function blocks saved as separate files in the program folder. You decide which modules to disable:

AdobeHelpClient.lrmodule- Lightroom Help. Rarely needed, only available in the Mac OS X version.
Develop.lrmodule- one of the main modules. Should not be disabled.
Import.lrmodule- used to replenish the catalog with new photographs. Should not be disabled.
MultipleMonitor.lrmodule- the module is responsible for the operation of a multi-monitor configuration. If you are not one of those lucky people who work with two monitors, you can turn it off.
Print.lrmodule- printing support. As for me, I almost never print photos at home, only in a professional laboratory.
Slideshow.lrmodule- allows you to show slideshows. If you only need this from time to time, you can turn it off. *Keep in mind that this module is somehow needed to work in a multi-monitor configuration.
Web.lrmodule- used to create web galleries. You can turn it off if you mainly work on sorting and processing photos.
The Windows version also includes Gallery.lrmodule . I don't recommend turning it off.

I disable AdobeHelpClient, Print and Slideshow.

So how do you turn them off? Here's how:

Mac OS X

2. Open Finder, navigate to the folder Applications and search for "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.app". Click the icon right click and select "Show Package Contents":

3. New things will open Finder window, go to /Contents/PlugIns/ and highlight unnecessary files modules. Move them somewhere nearby, for example, directly into the parent Contents folder:

4. Done! Launch Lightroom and feel the difference.

Windows XP/Vista/7

1. Quit Lightroom if you have it open.
2. Open File Explorer and go to the folder C:Program FilesAdobeAdobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.6.
3. Select the .lrmodule files that you are going to disable:

4. Cut them (Ctrl-X) and paste them, say, into the parent folder.
5. Done! Launch Lightroom and feel the difference!

Now you see fewer active modules in the upper right part of the window
and Lightroom programs. The package starts and runs faster and also uses less RAM.

1. Iron.

Probably the most important thing. Lightroom loves more powerful computers. But most important parameter is RAM. The more RAM, the faster LR will work. Based on my observation, I found that it loads into the RAM the entire catalog of photographs with which you are in this moment you are working. That is, if you imported a catalog with 1000 photos, some of these photos will be kept in RAM. Depending on the size of the source files, the amount in memory may vary. This is exactly what causes one of the brakes in Lightroom when you select the last photo in the list. It frees memory and loads another block with a photo into it.

2. Lightroom Settings

Lightroom settings can be found in the tab: Edit - Preferences

It is important to make two global settings here.

Directory setup

This setting does not particularly affect the speed of operation. Rather, it's about setting up your restful sleep and here's why.

Example: I work as a wedding photographer. I have a lot of footage. One day something bad happened and Windows crashed. The screw was not damaged, but operating system it was necessary to rearrange and preferably from scratch. If I demolished old Windows and installed a new one, then all the information that Lightroom stored in its catalog would be lost forever. Lightroom stores all service information, all history, all presets, all actions with ravs in its catalog. So, in order to somehow be on the safe side, it’s better to put the Lightroom catalog on separate disk. This is done very simply. see pic 1

Rice. 1

The catalog settings are located in the General -Default catalog tab. There you can select one of the suggested locations or set your own.

Do this first - THIS IS IMPORTANT!

Cache Settings

In the File Handing tab you can set the Cache value. As you know, there is no such thing as too much cache. See figure 2

Antivirus settings

As practice has shown, correct setting antivirus allows you to speed up Lightroom quite significantly.

You just need to configure your antivirus program to exclude the folders in which you store your RAW files. This action is quite safe, because viruses do not attach to such files. The exception is configured in the antivirus settings. How to do this at Kaspersky can be seen in Figure 3.