Is this typical lightroom performance for other people and how do i make it better

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Andrew
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Hi, I thought i had posted something like this before but i couldn't find it. I am starting to loose a bit of patience with the speed and slow navigation in lightroom that I recordered this video to see if other people suffer from the same.

its getting to a point where its not really usable. As any other canon user (with a mirrorless) knows, electronic shutter is "all or nothing". 20fps or 1 no in between. This means that if I use it (in this case as i was shooting at 500mm and subject a long way away) I get 1000s of photos I don't need (also using a remote rigged up to the hotshoe, so need to keep that finger pressed)

Clensing those photos post shoot and post processing for clients then becomes a right chore

that chore is made even worse by lightroom which just lags and doesnt keep up with my red flagging of images, Either the red flagging (Which you can see stops about 20s into this video then lags to catch up) AND even scrolling through photos - 25 seconds in starts to lag and doesn't keep up as it tried to "process" every image from the raw file each time..... and change the exposure. I really dont need that, i just want to scroll through them flag and delete - but whatever lightrooms processes do, make scrolling through 2000 photos take 2-3 hours - just flagging and deleting - and I've had 10,000 photos to go through for this event -> 3x remotes x 3x rally stages.... so 9 lots of cira 2-3000 photos..... you can see why i am loosing my patience.

Computer is not slow either. its a 2020 Dell inspron manually upgraded by me with a second internal SSD (with the photos on), 24gb of ram, an nvidia card, an I7 intell with 6 cores (2.6ghz) so its not "slow", but lightroom just crawls like this after a minute or so of fast paced editing...

What you can't see from the video is that i am spending aprox the same time on each image, but the scrolling goes slower and is quite inconsistant - in contrast to my mouse clicks as generally i am making call based on the film strip (Because the main image view can't keep up...), obviously that becomes more pronounced at the end of the video where you see it "jump" quickly through about 5 images as it trys to catch up to me.....


Thoughts?

Video here:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_1gfx55zxM
 
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When you import do you use standard previews which would mean that LR only has to access the catalogue which is normally stored on your fastest disk. Of course it is for you to decide how many shots you take etc. but I would not capture so many shots myself. After even a motor spots shoot, I would return with a few hundred shots not thousands.
 
Dave Canon said:
When you import do you use standard previews which would mean that LR only has to access the catalogue which is normally stored on your fastest disk. Of course it is for you to decide how many shots you take etc. but I would not capture so many shots myself. After even a motor spots shoot, I would return with a few hundred shots not thousands.
Click to expand...

easier said than done, also I have to write reports and get different angles (which also helps sales) - as i say, electronic shutter is 20fps or 1. No in between, and with 2x remotes set out to capture different angles both linked to me pressing the shutter button on my main camera this is the price you pay for that automation/to get the 3 angles. You can't see the remotes here as they are hidden behind the trees in front of me, but I need to keep shooting for those. Think about it logically - 20fps, for 2 seconds is 40 shots. 40 shots x 80 cars... 3,200 images.

But thats a seperate subject, lets keep it on topic!!!!


I don't create standard previews as this takes hours and hours to complete, would probably mean me leaving the computer on over night or all day to complete. I do create smart previews, but even so as you load every photo lightroom seems to "recreate" the preview, or change the exposure from the import to whatever settings have been applied on import.

It never used to work like this, but this seems to be how it works now.
 
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Have you looked at task manager to see if anything is maxed out and causing the slow speed?
 
Smart previews are for editing, standard previews are for sorting.
 
For starters try not scroll but just click around the middle of the sequence and if happy just take that. Failing that try next one or two and most the time it will do.

When you are importing don't use any auto settings and ideally have lens profile disabled as this adds the most processing time.

Is it perfect? No. Far from it. I hate that it tries to generate previews for the few images around current one at a time, so when you try to delete a bunch it will refuse to remove a couple that it is working on. Well I want it gone, not a preview made for it!
 
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Sangoma said:
Have you looked at task manager to see if anything is maxed out and causing the slow speed?
Click to expand...

Ram maxes out but I hear people using lightroom on a MAC with only 8gb and no problems like this.

Personally I thought its more likely to be the CPU because i am not loading a lot into memory - its the processing of the photo which is slow rather than recalling anything from RAM....

This is one of the reasons why i ask because i figure it may be something in my setup thats causing the issue rather than the system itself...!
 
A_S said:
Ram maxes out but I hear people using lightroom on a MAC with only 8gb and no problems like this.

Personally I thought its more likely to be the CPU because i am not loading a lot into memory - its the processing of the photo which is slow rather than recalling anything from RAM....

This is one of the reasons why i ask because i figure it may be something in my setup thats causing the issue rather than the system itself...!
Click to expand...
And what is the video card at?
 
A_S said:
Ram maxes out but I hear people using lightroom on a MAC with only 8gb and no problems like this.
Click to expand...
Their Mac would crash if they attempted any work such as this. Some people have taken less images in a year than we do in half a day
 
A_S said:
Hi, I thought i had posted something like this before but i couldn't find it. I am starting to loose a bit of patience with the speed and slow navigation in lightroom that I recordered this video to see if other people suffer from the same.

its getting to a point where its not really usable. As any other canon user (with a mirrorless) knows, electronic shutter is "all or nothing". 20fps or 1 no in between. This means that if I use it (in this case as i was shooting at 500mm and subject a long way away) I get 1000s of photos I don't need (also using a remote rigged up to the hotshoe, so need to keep that finger pressed)

Clensing those photos post shoot and post processing for clients then becomes a right chore

that chore is made even worse by lightroom which just lags and doesnt keep up with my red flagging of images, Either the red flagging (Which you can see stops about 20s into this video then lags to catch up) AND even scrolling through photos - 25 seconds in starts to lag and doesn't keep up as it tried to "process" every image from the raw file each time..... and change the exposure. I really dont need that, i just want to scroll through them flag and delete - but whatever lightrooms processes do, make scrolling through 2000 photos take 2-3 hours - just flagging and deleting - and I've had 10,000 photos to go through for this event -> 3x remotes x 3x rally stages.... so 9 lots of cira 2-3000 photos..... you can see why i am loosing my patience.

Computer is not slow either. its a 2020 Dell inspron manually upgraded by me with a second internal SSD (with the photos on), 24gb of ram, an nvidia card, an I7 intell with 6 cores (2.6ghz) so its not "slow", but lightroom just crawls like this after a minute or so of fast paced editing...

What you can't see from the video is that i am spending aprox the same time on each image, but the scrolling goes slower and is quite inconsistant - in contrast to my mouse clicks as generally i am making call based on the film strip (Because the main image view can't keep up...), obviously that becomes more pronounced at the end of the video where you see it "jump" quickly through about 5 images as it trys to catch up to me.....


Thoughts?

Video here:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_1gfx55zxM
Click to expand...
Although, not directly addressing your LRc issue, I also find it tedious for culling and one of the reasons I prefer Capture One, But Capture One isn't anywhere near as good a DAM as LRc.

However, my initial workflow starts with Fast Raw Viewer, which does everything "culling" faster than LRc or C1.

I now open the images from the card in FRV, and rapidly work through them with Cmd+period to select files I want to ingest. selecting a file auto advances the focus to the next file.

FRV has some keyboard shortcuts to check exposure and sharpness as well as adjusting exposure, contrast and white balance. these are saved in an XMP file and read by LR. So, depending on how quickly you want to get the files off the card, you can create a very tight cull and undertake some initial editing in FRV, before going near Lrc.

And although, this isn't how I do it, once you have selected the files you want to keep, you can choose to export to Lrc from FRV, and FRV will open the import page in LR with only the files selected by FRV selected for import by Lrc.

Although, adding this FRV step into the workflow seems like a bit of faff, I feel it not only saves time, but also allows a better technical assessment of a file than ether Lrc or C1 does.

It's only £18.00 at the moment (25% off until May the 20th) and there are some (rather out of date videos here https://www.fastrawviewer.com/tips-and-videos
 
myotis said:
Although, not directly addressing your LRc issue, I also find it tedious for culling and one of the reasons I prefer Capture One, But Capture One isn't anywhere near as good a DAM as LRc.

However, my initial workflow starts with Fast Raw Viewer, which does everything "culling" faster than LRc or C1.

I now open the images from the card in FRV, and rapidly work through them with Cmd+period to select files I want to ingest. selecting a file auto advances the focus to the next file.

FRV has some keyboard shortcuts to check exposure and sharpness as well as adjusting exposure, contrast and white balance. these are saved in an XMP file and read by LR. So, depending on how quickly you want to get the files off the card, you can create a very tight cull and undertake some initial editing in FRV, before going near Lrc.

And although, this isn't how I do it, once you have selected the files you want to keep, you can choose to export to Lrc from FRV, and FRV will open the import page in LR with only the files selected by FRV selected for import by Lrc.

Although, adding this FRV step into the workflow seems like a bit of faff, I feel it not only saves time, but also allows a better technical assessment of a file than ether Lrc or C1 does.

It's only £18.00 at the moment (25% off until May the 20th) and there are some (rather out of date videos here https://www.fastrawviewer.com/tips-and-videos
Click to expand...

Thanks - a very useful post - I had concidered something like an intermediary step, but i had dismissed it A.) Because with 10k photos to go through and needing to get some posted for both my socials and drivers who use my work (and have paid) then i need to get them into lightroom and get processing, so the only option is to cull retrospectivly.

In theory I could go into something like FRV and just use that after working on the files in light room, cull and delete, then resync the folder in LRc and remove all RAW files it doesn't find. However I'd be worried about deleting a photo I've sold, used, or edited/green checked without knowing if doing it this way. I guess I could move all "green" flagged items out of the folders first, but that would be quite a faf as well!
 
A_S said:
Thanks - a very useful post - I had concidered something like an intermediary step, but i had dismissed it A.) Because with 10k photos to go through and needing to get some posted for both my socials and drivers who use my work (and have paid) then i need to get them into lightroom and get processing, so the only option is to cull retrospectivly.

In theory I could go into something like FRV and just use that after working on the files in light room, cull and delete, then resync the folder in LRc and remove all RAW files it doesn't find. However I'd be worried about deleting a photo I've sold, used, or edited/green checked without knowing if doing it this way. I guess I could move all "green" flagged items out of the folders first, but that would be quite a faf as well!
Click to expand...
Well, here is what I actually do.

I go through the process I described (very quickly) but then use FRV to copy the selected file into a folder called "FRVIngest" on my built in HD. These files are then copied and renamed to an external HD into a folder called "RawOriginals" (I use Hazel to automate this). That means they are in two places and then backed up with my overnight backup.

I only reformat the memory card after I know the files are backed up in at least three places.

The next day, in my case, I reopen the FRVIngest folder with FRV and do a second cull, this is slower, and I spend time carefully checking sharpness, adjusting exposure etc.

At this stage I delete the files I am confident I am unlikely to need (but they stay in the RAWOriginals folder) and star rate any I feel I will want to process.

I then use LRc import all the files from the FRVngest folder, which moves them from the FRVIngest folder into a folder called RawMasters on an external SSD, which is also backed up.

In your circumstances, I would do my second cull immediately, select those you needed for your socials and drivers who use your work, and send the selection to lightroom for processing.

Then, when you had time run an import from LRc on the FRVIngest folder, and choose to not import duplicates. This would add the remaining files to the files you had previously sent to LRc.

I think that would work, assuming I have explained it properly :-(
 
myotis said:
However, my initial workflow starts with Fast Raw Viewer, which does everything "culling" faster than LRc or C1.
Click to expand...

Fast Raw Viewer was going to be my recommendation too.

Lightroom is not an appropriate tool for this job, and you should invest the relatively small sum required for a piece of software designed to fulfil this application.
 
A lot of my culling involves zooming in to see which of 300 damselfly photos has the best eye detail and so on. In LR this means running the 1:1 preview before doing this, otherwise the load time for every photo is ridiculous. So, I set it running and go and do something else. I then find it relatively easy using the Compare function to just go through them and flag the ones I want to keep for further review.
 
Bodian said:
A lot of my culling involves zooming in to see which of 300 damselfly photos has the best eye detail and so on. In LR this means running the 1:1 preview before doing this, otherwise the load time for every photo is ridiculous. So, I set it running and go and do something else. I then find it relatively easy using the Compare function to just go through them and flag the ones I want to keep for further review.
Click to expand...
This an aspect where the FRV approach I outlined in earlier posts works particularly well. It's very fast to zoom and compare (up to four images at a time) and only ingest the files you want to keep before ingesting them for subsequent importing into LR. I find (on my M1 Mac) that even the small delay when loading 1:1 previews in LR, is annoying compared to using FRV. And with FRV, I can open the files from the SSD and start culling within seconds.

But I appreciate the logic of setting LR going and doing something else while it imports and builds previews. It's still much slower than using FRV and how important, or irritating, this slowness is will vary between individuals, Being used to using Capture One, Photo Mechanic and FRV, I find LR particularly irritating for culling, but as I mentioned earlier. the LR DAM is much better than C1, (or PMPlus). The PMPlus DAM is faster than LR, but not as well featured.

Today I'm going to be going through the 400+ damselfly photographs I ingested last night. for my second cull before importing into LR. My initial cull last night allowed me to leave 200 of the 600 pictures I took on the SSD.

It's not just the overall speed that I find useful in FRV for culling it's also the hot keys to adjust exposure ( I expose to the right so a lot of images need an exposure reduction before assessing). There are also hot key to assess highlight and shadow clipping as well as sharpness. It also has a Raw histogram to allow a proper assessment of exposure.
 
myotis said:
This an aspect where the FRV approach I outlined in earlier posts works particularly well. It's very fast to zoom and compare (up to four images at a time) and only ingest the files you want to keep before ingesting them for subsequent importing into LR. I find (on my M1 Mac) that even the small delay when loading 1:1 previews in LR, is annoying compared to using FRV. And with FRV, I can open the files from the SSD and start culling within seconds.

But I appreciate the logic of setting LR going and doing something else while it imports and builds previews. It's still much slower than using FRV and how important, or irritating, this slowness is will vary between individuals, Being used to using Capture One, Photo Mechanic and FRV, I find LR particularly irritating for culling, but as I mentioned earlier. the LR DAM is much better than C1, (or PMPlus). The PMPlus DAM is faster than LR, but not as well featured.

Today I'm going to be going through the 400+ damselfly photographs I ingested last night. for my second cull before importing into LR. My initial cull last night allowed me to leave 200 of the 600 pictures I took on the SSD.

It's not just the overall speed that I find useful in FRV for culling it's also the hot keys to adjust exposure ( I expose to the right so a lot of images need an exposure reduction before assessing). There are also hot key to assess highlight and shadow clipping as well as sharpness. It also has a Raw histogram to allow a proper assessment of exposure.
Click to expand...
Sounds like I need to give it a go. On LR import, I also have an import setting (Auto, bump up clarity and dehaze a bit), which gets rolled into the 1:1 preview. I'll try the FRV though - I guess there'll be a free trial.
 
Bodian said:
Sounds like I need to give it a go. On LR import, I also have an import setting (Auto, bump up clarity and dehaze a bit), which gets rolled into the 1:1 preview. I'll try the FRV though - I guess there'll be a free trial.
Click to expand...
As with everything you need to spend the time looking at the training videos, to get the most out of it, and learn the keyboard shortcuts. The manual is also very helpful, as is the help forum.

One of the things that catches people out is that by default FRV doesn't add any sharpening to the preview, so they look soft. However, it has two levels of sharpening available (in addition to no-sharpening, You can toggle through these three sharpening options by using the "S" key, And you can change the default sharpening levels in the preferences.


it does have a trial version, and although you have just missed the 25% off, they regularly give 25% off. But it's not exactly expensive to begin with.
 
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