Lightroom 4.4 excruciatingly slow.

<p>I have not been on PN in a while so forgive me if this has been addressed (could not find it if it was). I have been using Lightroom since the birth of Christ. I can't remember when I upgraded to 4.4 but LR is running like a slug. Worse than I can<strong> ever</strong> recall. So far I have freed up over half my hard drive, defragmented my hd, optimized the current catalog. Increased the cache to 25 MB, rendered 1:1 previews (took for EVER), purged the cache. Toggled between the catalog settings>file handling>standard>1024>quality> medium and catalog settings>file handling>2048>preview>high. At the moment I am working in JPG for Pete sake! Lightroom becomes unresponsive at times, the crop tool takes forever to crop. My computer is the same machine I've worked on for the last 18 months: (HP h8-1110, 8 GB ram, <a href="mailto:i5-24@3.1">i5-24@3.1</a> GHz, 64 bit, Windows 7, I know, it could be better).<br>

I am so frustrated, I want to punch kittens. I am out of idea's. Am I missing something?</p>

<p>What happens when you create a new catalog and import some of the photos from the old catalog into the new one? Optimized or not, how many images in your existing catalog?</p>

<p>If the same trouble, I'd look at the system to see what's changed around the time this problem started. Perhaps you have malware or a virus?</p>

<p>How many applications are installed on your computer ?<br /> How many processes running ?<br /> Is your computer slow on startup also ?</p>

<p>There is a diagnostics system tool to determine the problem, but the resultant advice usually comes as a message box saying that:</p>

<p>"Yeah! You must do something". - the way to go Microsoft!</p>

<p>Frequent culprit is background indexing, automatic catalog upgrades, search Internet for any updates for your installed applications, anti-virus scans, disc defragmentation goin on, computer and applications authorizations searches, trying to search and connect to devices that were once connected and no longer exist, or any automatic backup, never cleanedup registry and slow searches there, any volume or device synchronization, ...just to mention few obvious...</p>

<p>See how much memory all your applications and processes take ? Find the proces(es) hogging the computer resources and disable or uninstall them.</p>

<p>With each camera, or camcorder you get, there comes software that manages own catalogs of media. Multiplicity of such applications will compete trying to keep their own libraries, and files in synch, and do background jobs, even if not necessary, or you never wanted them to use. </p>

<p> </p>

<p>Hi Herma, Here follows some hints I have gleaned from an article at SLRLounge.com<br>

There may be something helpful here.<br>

1. During imports- ‘Render Previews’ to ‘Minimal’<br />2. Use an Adequately Sized Cache Folder (I assume you mean 25Gb- not Mb !) make larger if you have the disk space. Maximum possible 200Gb<br />3.If you have an internal drive, other than your operating system drive, then choose a different drive to store your Camera Raw Cache. Lightroom can have a dedicated harddrive for the Camera Raw Cache.<br />4. Choose an Appropriate Standard Preview Size. Having Standard Previews set too high will unnecessarily slow down your system without any benefit. For example, if you’re on a 17 inch monitor, you’re probably running 1280 x 1080 or smaller resolutions, so you can afford to get away with 1440 pixels or even 1024 pixels as your Standard Preview size.<br />5. Turn Off XMP Unless Needed - uncheck ‘automatically write changes into XMP’ Unless you absolutely need to have your changes in XMP format, do not select this feature. When this feature is selected, every time you make a change to one of your files, it is writing that information to a side card file and duplicating the amount of processing work.<br />6. Optimize the Lightroom Catalog. <br />7. Render 1:1 Previews Prior to Editing.</p>

<p>I would recommend going from 8 to 16GB of RAM as a first step.</p>

<p>What you generally find that applications become more memory intensive as you go to newer and newer versions. I started with 8GB, moved to 12GB saw a great improvement, went to 16GB, saw even more.</p>

<p>What speed is your hard drive (5400 or 7200rpm). The rotational speed can have a very large impact on your computer performance, especially when loading large RAW, TIF images.</p>

<p>I also saw a speed boost when I upgraded to Lightroom 5, but "individual results will vary"</p>

<p><em>"Am I missing something"</em><br>

<em><br /></em>I dunno, what with kittens, slugs and Christ in the one post ...... maybe a few Aliens?</p>

<p>First let us see what may be causing the problem.</p>

<p>Click on the START button and type the word RESOURCE in trhe "Search all programs and file" box. This should find the Resource Monitor. Click it and start it (I would also pin it to the Start Menu or Task Bar).</p>

<p>Look and see what resources are impacted. From your description I would look at Memory and Disks first.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>5. Turn Off XMP Unless Needed - uncheck ‘automatically write changes into XMP’ Unless you absolutely need to have your changes in XMP format, do not select this feature. When this feature is selected, every time you make a change to one of your files, it is writing that information to a side card file and duplicating the amount of processing work.</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

I disagree on a couple issues mentioned here. Writing your changes to xmp while we work is a safety feature that your changes/edits wont be lost if anything goes wrong with the LR database. Or, as many of us do, if you wish to see your post processing outside of LR afterwards. I also found it to be of benefit when I once started over with my LR library and all my previous LR adjustments was indeed stored in the xmp. It's also not "duplicating the work" as with my modern i7-2600K cpu and 16 gigs of ram, I notice nothing when this is or is not selected.<br>

</p>

<p>Herma, you did everything but clean and defragment your registry.<br>

Use Advanced System Care free in advanced mode. I do not use the internet boost, system optimization, disk scan, or disk defragment functions. I have used this program for a few years on both Win XP and now a Win8 machine from both Dell and HP. The program has never caused a problem and has fixed a few. It will speed up a slow machine.<br>

http://www.iobit.com/advancedsystemcareper.php</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I disagree on a couple issues mentioned here. Writing your changes to xmp while we work is a safety feature that your changes/edits wont be lost if anything goes wrong with the LR database. Or, as many of us do, if you wish to see your post processing outside of LR afterwards. I also found it to be of benefit when I once started over with my LR library and all my previous LR adjustments was indeed stored in the xmp. It's also not "duplicating the work" as with my modern i7-2600K cpu and 16 gigs of ram, I notice nothing when this is or is not selected.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I agree with you on principle concerning using xmp as a backup safeguard against losing those edits through catalog corruption or loss, but I do have that "Automatically write to XMP" feature unchecked because I prefer to manually write to xmp sidecar on my Raw files by hitting "Command S-save" (Mac) on my keyboard which acts the same as ACR's "Export To XMP" drop down menu, just a lot more faster and convenient.</p>

<p>http://help.adobe.com/en_US/lightroom/using/WS638E3AC9-A04C-4445-A0D3-F7D8BA5CDE37.html#WSFA6EBA44-BE96-4ac2-A72C-E7FB68D8FF11</p>

<blockquote>

<p>5. Turn Off XMP Unless Needed - uncheck ‘automatically write changes into XMP’</p>

</blockquote>

<p>To follow up on my post of hints- I am in agreement with Eric -that saving edits to XMP is a good safety feature.- if you use NEF CR2 raw files.<br>

For me that doesn't seem necessary- I convert all my NEF and CR2 raw images to DNG when imported. Lightroom automatically saves metadata and edit data to the DNG- embedded in the raw file. I have just tested this idea by editing in LR on my desktop, copying the DNG file to my laptop, importing to LR on the laptop- and all my edits, cropping, etc are still there with the image. I have no need to worry about XMPs ever! and the DNGs are smaller that original NEFs, and they can be made to load faster.</p>

<p>Just some clarification about DNG and LR as quoted from the Adobe Help page link above...</p>

<blockquote>

<p>In the case of camera raw files that have a <strong>proprietary file format </strong><em>(i.e. CR2, NEF, PEF, etc.)</em>, XMP isn’t written into the original files. To avoid file corruption, XMP metadata is stored in a separate file called a <strong><dfn>sidecar</dfn></strong> file. For all other file formats supported by Lightroom (JPEG, TIFF, PSD, and <strong>DNG</strong>), XMP metadata <strong>is written into the files</strong> <em>in the location specified for that data. (What location is that and where is it specified)?</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>The edits are <strong>embedded into DNG</strong>, jpeg and tiffs. Automatically writing or manually writing=(saving) will not affect your test of moving the DNG to another computer and reimporting-the edits are IN the DNG. Besides there's your catalog that remembers things as well. Quite confusing because you never know what the catalog is recording whether it's an xmp embed or sidecar situation.</p>

<p>If you think what I just wrote was complicated, I would totally agree.</p>

<p>And I'ld add such complexity is totally unnecessary since the only apps that are going to read your xmp edits anyway are Adobe's for interoperability between their suite of apps which are reassurances on Adobe's part for inclusion of all these options of embedding, sidecar and cataloging. What you get is a freakin' rat's nest of off/on, don't do that, do this preferences and options.</p>

<p>No wonder LR keeps nagging me with a dialog box after I quit out of it asking how often I want to backup my catalog. Backup? Does backup mean your updating all the new changes... (xmp edits? options & interface changes?) or are you just writing a copy of the entire catalog in some other folder directory? How will I know the differences between update and backup?</p>

<p>You might check those preference to see if something is being written without your knowledge as well. Also check the dialog box for "Synchronize Folders..." so when you add images to an already imported folder, it<strong> UPDATES</strong> the folder by adding those images which you'll see show up in the Library module thumbnail display.</p>

<p>Clear as mud, but you folks don't need to understand all of this, right? because what you don't see from all these nested options, you accept that the default settings will take care of everything when trouble comes up.</p>