Hello. I have gone back and forth between Lightroom and Aperture since deciding that Caputure one's new interface was for me, five steps back.
I find some advantages to both programs but in the end decided to go with Lightroom for the simple reason that aperture seemed to slow. I shoot motorsport and so I need something that can chew through files quickly. What I mean specifically, is that I want to look at a shot and decide in less than a second if I want to tag it for processing and then when I do go through the shots to be processed it would be great to have an instant update as I edit, as it was the case with Capture One.

Here is my problem. I have three machines. I tested Aperture on the fastest, a Dual 2gz G5 Mac with 4 gigs of memory and it was too slow with four or five second freezes which would grow longer and longer. So I demoed LR 1.4 and loved the speed.

The machine I use at work is only a bit slower - a Dual 1.8 G5 with 2 gigs of memory ... but a less capable card. (both os 10.5.4) Aperture runs about 50% slower on it. My surprise now all of a sudden is that Lightroom is as slow as aperture.

I wonder if some setting may be off. when I look at a file there is a six to eight second ( timed it) delay while LR tells me that it is loading the file. I would have thought that LR would render all the file previews ... and then things would fly. That is how it seems to have worked before.

I have the preview set on medium size. Does anyone have any advice for how to improve the performance of LR via options? Thanks ... and sorry for the long description.

Well to add to my post: I installed LR2 on my home box. This is the one that I used to run LR1 on with good results. It's a Dual 2 gz G5 with 4 gigs of ram and the video card is an ATY 9650 with 256 megs (an aftermarket add on)
This machine is of course no longer the latest, but then that was the attraction (among other things) to running LR instead of Aperture - the speed on less that the best hardware. LR version 1 certainly performed on this box, while aperture could get bogged down less than I was willing to live with on it.

To get to the point, LR version two run unacceptably slowly. It run exactly the same speed as Aperture on my two year old hardware. That is a grand surprise to me, and a major disappointment.

I've noticed that several posts had people judging processing speed as the only metric. In that regard LR is fine, but that metric is pointless to me. Its the speed of working with the program, that counts, I believe.

Why, when LR1 was instant, does LR2 take four or so seconds each time you look at a file in the develop module to render the file? That would be frustrating enough ... but it does so each time I look at it, even if I've just worked on the file two minutes earlier and go back to it. Does that not seem strange? Is that how you gents have it work? Or does LR, like Aperture require the best hardware of today or tomorrow?

As I had mentioned earlier, I like some things about each program but it was time to get off the evaluation pot. I was quite happy to live with some of the short comings of LR2 due to the expected performance advantage, as I had grown to expect from my adventures with LR1. I was all pumped, and now I'm back to square one - having to deal with Capture one's new and convoluted interface. At least the feedback is instant.

I do have to confess that this experience makes me feel a bit like I've been cheated. Not cheated ... but misled by all the glowing LR reviews. Nowhere is there a suggestion that performance sucks on but brand new hardware. I know that such shall be an unpopular opine ... but either my experience is unique or people have become partizan about converters the way they are about camera brands.

Lastly, there is the ever more faint possibility that I've missed some vital setting. Any ideas? I'd love to eat humble pie here ... and have a converter I can love and use as I need to, without looking at unexpected beachballs many steps of the way. Does Adobe perhaps ship ... and optimize later?

It's unlikely to be my system. I'm an apple certified (or was with 10.4) sys admin and keep the box running as well as a two and a half year box ever will.

So ... any suggestions would be appreciated. LR seems like the best mix of possibilities of the raw converters out there. I really am looking forward to the day when its more that just a "possibility" for my needs.

Thanks!

1) In Catalog Settings uncheck "automatically write changes to XMP"

2) On my Windows machine I see a significant improvement if the Lightroom catalog is located on a separate physical drive from the photos.

Thanks theophilus. I will uncheck the xmp writes as you suggested. I do have the files on and catalogue on separate drives, though just by chance.
I'm also going to try installing LR2 on my notebook in a few hours and see what the results are. I haven't yet because its a dual core2 Macbook with 2 gigs but their poor video card. Aperture is insuferable on it. I wonder if LR depends more on processor or video performance? Well at least I will see.

I could always be that Adobe wrote this for both the PPC as well as intel architecture but spent their resources optimizing only the Intel flavor. I sure could not blame them for that. In either case, if both aperture and LR run the same speed - I still prefer LR. I find it lacking in the database aspects and a few rough edges that surprise me, such as not being able to define your own shortcuts (or can you?) but the workflow is simply the best as far as I'm concerned. Simply, solely the way Adobe has implented the presets is worth the price of learning and living with LR.

So does anyone know if LR depends heavily on the video card? Time for a new box for me in a few months, I guess.

My impression is that LR 1.4 was faster than LR 2.0. I'm going to go back to 1.4 for my next project. 2.0 has wonderful features, but I believe it has introduced some new slowness.

The video card should NOT have a significant impact on performance.

If you haven't already done so, run the Relaunch and Optimise command found in Catalog Settings

I don't think there is any impact on LR performance from a video card. THere is no 3D rendering nor any GPU processing offload that I'm aware of. Photoshop CS3 however can use a GPU somewhat.

The only thing different I notice so far between 1.4 and 2.0 is the sometimes slow wait when it's first opened when it updates the file/folder count. I rarely ever saw it under 1.4 but frequently see it update itself for a few seconds in 2.0.

Things that will speed it up? First, optimize the db. Then do a defrag of the disk. Moving your catalog to a raid0 drive helps. Moving it to a separate drive than your files will help during some proceses, not all.

Make sure you have enough free RAM while it's running. On most systems, having LR and PS open at the same time will make both slow. Check your PS RAM use slider if that's the case, and make sure you are set correctly. LR will continue to eat RAM as needed, sometimes as much as 1GB during large operations. During normal editing it usually hangs around 300MB.

CPU speed is a big boost. LR is not terribly CPU dependant but some operations do spike it to 100% for short durations. BY FAR the larest bottleneck is the hard drive. Use fast RPM drives in raid0 for the best performance.

I meant to write NOT. Need to read my posts before hitting Add Reply button

Get a MacPro! LR 2.0 runs really nice on my MacPro 8-core with 12GB of RAM 4TB of internal storage (2 x 1TB drives in RAID 0 config for data files).

Bud

I think you are correct that LR2 requires more HP to run = to LR 1.4.1. I have an older Mac Pro quad core with 13 gig RAM and 2 1/2 TB..I see the spinning ball of death much more with LR2 than with 1.4.1 with 6 gig RAM.
Steve

Does there seem to be a trend with more people experiencing slow downs while on a Mac than PC?

I really don't mean this to be a snide remark, but I think the slowness issue is relative. By that I mean relative to the way in which one particularly uses LR. I have not changed any of my hardware since upgrading to LR2 from 1.4.1. I have a MacPro Intel, Dual Core, 4gig RAM with LR app on main 7500 rpm HD and Photos with Catalog on 2nd internal 7500rpm esata HD. I DO NOT use the new Brush Adjustment (which seems to be an issue on these forums). I have noticed NO slowdown Except for writing changes back to a DNG. My impression from reading the various Forums is that the slowdown trend seems to be more of an issue with PCs rather than Macs, but even that comment may energize some folks.

That's a good question. I use a Windoze box with a 2.4G quad-core OC to 2.8 and 3G RAM and I've noticed an overall improvement in speed between 1.4 and 2.0. particularly in the Library where 1.4 seemed to take forever to refresh info on the "slides" when I paged down or scrolled. I have noticed the slowdown when first opened while 2.0 updates the count in the Folders panel. I have about 7K photos in the catalog and it takes 5-6 seconds to refresh the image counts.

The only performance hit I've noticed is when using auto-mask with the brush tool. the response time for the display lags noticeably behind the tool. Turn off auto-masking and the display tracks the tool just fine.

I was experiencing the "Loading" problem in Develop that Pavel mentioned in the OP but I recently un-installed 1.4 and that lag is cut down to a second or two now.

As an experiment, I just deleted my all my previews and opened a couple of the D300 .nef files. Going from grid to "fit" view in the Library took about 2 seconds while the screen displayed "rendering preview", another couple of seconds of "rendering larger preview" when I went to 100%. It took about the same amount of time "loading" in Develop regardless of whether I had viewed the file in "fit" in the Library.

Interestingly, using the grid view on the second monitor to open the file, it took about 3 seconds of rendering to open in "fit" mode but going to 100% was immediate, no "rendering" display at all.

""Curiouser and curiouser.." said Alice."

Hardware-wise, my catalog and previews reside on a RAID 0 array while the photos live on a RAID 1 array. Nothing special about the video, just a 256Mb Radeon 1950 driving two monitors. XP Pro SP3 for the OS.

I've been watching the LR2 video and, frankly, I was appalled at the program response on both Jeff and Michael's laptops. If I couldn't get any better than that I'd consider the program unusable.

Just some observations,

Bill

NO ideas about PCs but my mac is definitely slower, with 10 sec hangs, crashes and other foibles that weren't there in LR1.4.1

Dual 2.3 G5 with 6G ram

Bill....

I also noticed the slowness in the video. However, it should be noted that most likely (only Jeff and Michael know for sure) that they were NOT using the shipping version for the demo; i.e.; they were using some form of the beta for 2.0. Did you try to LR 2.0 Beta? I noticed a decent speed upgrade between the public beta and the shipping version; so that might account for the speed difference on video vs. what we are using now. I use Windows Vista (not 64) with 4 GB memory (only 3 effectively used) on a Dell Duo core (LOL...if I remember correctly). I think performance is ok...I wouldn't say it screams but you get some killer functionality. I have removed all prior versions of Lightroom as well.

:-) Just my .02.

Cheers....

Todd

I use a MacBookPro (dual core 2.16GHz, 3GB RAM, latest OSX version and updates) and a MacPro (2008 8 core machine, 10GB RAM, same with the OS).

I use the 32bit vn of 2.0 on my macbook pro and I would say the speed is OK (I find somethings a little slower, some a little faster vs 1.4.1). This is using a converted catalogue file but optimized and with the previews rebuilt in 2.0.
As with 1.4.1 I can import files from a usb drive, convert to DNG and resave on another usb drive while navigating around the interface and browsing the image previews.

When I then try to import images already in DNG format from a catalogue on my MacPro.... it's a disaster. All 2.0 needs to do is copy the DNGs to one of the internal harddrives (separate from the catalogue file location) and reimport. This runs noticeably slower than it does on 1.4.1 and worse, the program is locked up while it is doing this. No browsing previews etc. I can use other programs on the MacPro while LR 2 is working but cant do anything in LR till it is finsihed. I will need to do some more controlled tests (incl back to 32bit).

Anyone eslse noticing this effect?

Muir