Performance Issues in Lightroom 2015.7 ?
Ever since upgrading to the latest version of Lightroom, I’ve noticed that the software has been running much slower for me than it had been previously. At first I thought it was something to do with my computer, but I checked it out out on my Laptop, and it seems to be having some issues too. There are a few specific problems which I’ll go not shortly. Before that, I would like to point out that I’m not saying that these issues are affecting everyone, as I don’t know if it’s a widespread problem or not. There are reports of similar performance problems with the software on various forums though.
The main issues that I’m seeing is a slowdown in processing Sony RAW files, and a decrease in speed when importing Fuji RAF files. I first noticed it when I was working on some files from a Sony A7II camera. I had been using the newer uncompressed RAW format, and I had been working on some images before the update and it was fine. Afterwards, the performance when editing the same files was abysmal. You could drag a slider for several seconds before the display would update. I checked some other images from different cameras, and they appeared to be ok, or at least, not as noticeable.
I then though that maybe it was a problem with the newer Sony uncompressed RAW format, so I tried it with some compressed RAW files. These weren’t quite as slow, but they were still very sluggish. By comparison, images from my Fuji X-Pro2 (which have a bigger file size) are as responsive as normal. I’ve also noticed that building 1:1 previews seems to be talking a lot longer than it used to.
The other issue I that noticed was when I went to check a project on my laptop. I was importing some Fuji files off a memory card, and it was taking forever. I have a very fast retina MacBook Pro with a fast SSD and it was coming off a high speed SD card. This would normally import pretty quickly to the software, but this time it was taking ages.
I’ve been doing some research and there are a few threads on different forums where people have discovered that Lightroom seems to have a problem with machines with a large number of cores, and Xeons in particular. My main computer is a MacPro with 12 Cores, and it is Xeon based, so that would seem to follow that pattern. I’ve tried all the usual troubleshooting tips, including optimising the catalogue, and setting a large camera raw cache, but nothing seems to make any difference. My computer seems to be running fine otherwise, so it doesn’t seem to be a system problem, and again, there are others reporting similar slow downs.
I was very cynical of this release of Lightroom when it came out because of the Smart Preview hack that Adobe was offering up as an alternative to actually fixing the performance issues of the software. Little did I know that performance would actually get even worse. I guess it’s a good thing they added that feature then, seen as it may be the only way to responsively edit certain images now. Which, is kind of crazy, but any way. It’s starting to get a bit ridiculous. Every version seems to introduce some new bug. Some get fixed but I’ve been keeping a list of long running bugs in my notebook, and the list is starting to get pretty long.
I’d really like to know if anyone else has had issues with Sony files and 2015.7 (6.7). I’m curious to know how widespread this is, or if it is just some weird random issue with my library, so if you’ve been having any problems please let me know in the comments below.
