optimizing lightroom speed and performance

[Ian.B]

some good info to get LR and the computer swinging along --- but I still haven't worked out why my LR 5 has such a dislike of keywords and keywording . As stated in the article a LR restart usually fixes it although a 'puter turn off / restart works better

You might need a cuppa or stronger
Photography Life

True; not everyone will agree with every bit of it , but ............... . Enjoy

 

[clee01l]

Our own Lightroom Queen has a series of blog articles that cover performance issues. I can recommend these too. Performance

 

[tspear]

some good info to get LR and the computer swinging along --- but I still haven't worked out why my LR 5 has such a dislike of keywords and keywording . As stated in the article a LR restart usually fixes it although a 'puter turn off / restart works better

You might need a cuppa or stronger
Photography Life

True; not everyone will agree with every bit of it , but ............... . Enjoy

There are a fair number of items in there which I think are bad advice. Further, the author makes statements and assumptions which are just not true; and if they ever were true are very much out of date.
A few examples:

• One catalog per year is bad advice for anyone who wants to use Lr as a asset management tool. For a professional photographer who rarely goes back it may work. But anyone else? This defeats the primary purpose of Lr.
• Folder structures? What happened to using keywords, meta data and collections
• The whole rant on image culling is also kinda funny. If I time constrained (almost never), I can cull images as they are still being imported. Works like a charm. Adding another tool does not improve performance any, in fact when you add the additional steps it often slows things down. I recently met a professional photographer while hiking (he was testing a new camera and I was playing with my new Alpha Labs Pulse). We got to discussing Lr, on his laptop he used PhotoMechanic to cull the images. Copy the image files, then edit them in Lr. We twice repeated the flow of import and cull while importing direct in Lr versus his old flow. Total time was a lot less. It just feels faster to use multiple tools because you are "doing something".
• First he says keep separate catalogs by year to keep cache size small, then proceeds to tell you how to have Adobe automatically trim the cache. This is just moronic. You are now doing work manually and making your own life more difficult for something Lr does automatically. Oh, his logic on why to delete the cache entries also is full of crap. He really needs to go look closer at how Lr generates and maintains the cache files and folders.
  
• The improve editing speed section makes very little sense. lens correction is a "global" adjustment. To ensure the best image you always start with global adjustments before local adjustments. If you apply a global adjustment after local adjustments, you may (likely) should revisit the local adjustments and may need to make corrections.

The author would likely be better off just using Ps with Adobe Bridge and Windows Explorer. I am sure there is more, but those are the obvious ones.

Tim

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

We got to discussing Lr, on his laptop he used PhotoMechanic to cull the images. Copy the image files, then edit them in Lr. We twice repeated the flow of import and cull while importing direct in Lr versus his old flow. Total time was a lot less. It just feels faster to use multiple tools because you are "doing something".

I'm a bit PhotoMechanic fan as well. It is faster if you are culling heavily, and especially if you also use it for crop/straighten, as in PM there is no wait. It moves as fast as you can move.

Now that said, if your culling is slow and thoughtful, if your cropping/straightening is slow and thoughtful, and lightroom CAN keep up with you, then it is twice the work. But I'm in a hurry after a shoot, and I NEVER wait for PM, and I ALWAYS wait for Lightroom.

It cut my post-event post processing in half, at least (say 4 to 2 hours for a sports shoot).

 

[tspear]

I'm a bit PhotoMechanic fan as well. It is faster if you are culling heavily, and especially if you also use it for crop/straighten, as in PM there is no wait. It moves as fast as you can move.

Now that said, if your culling is slow and thoughtful, if your cropping/straightening is slow and thoughtful, and lightroom CAN keep up with you, then it is twice the work. But I'm in a hurry after a shoot, and I NEVER wait for PM, and I ALWAYS wait for Lightroom.

It cut my post-event post processing in half, at least (say 4 to 2 hours for a sports shoot).

When we discussed, he only culled images in PM. Zoom in checking focus on multiple locations on an image, often going beyond 1:1 (now that I think about it, I am curious to know more; he was looking for specific types of pixelation which represent problems in the focus). I wish I kept his card...
I can see how cropping and straighten might be faster in PM.

 

[Ian.B]

Our own Lightroom Queen has a series of blog articles that cover performance issues. I can recommend these too. Performance

but I like throwing a bit more confusion into it haha . I have often said we are better to follow one trusted source for most of the info we need; like we used to find in a good old fashion book

If you are newbie trying to get your head around LR I would suggest you follow Victoria mostly the same way as I followed via a book by another popular writer from the usa. I didn't have the www then but I seem to have much more spare time .

 

[Victoria Bampton]

There's a few myths in there. Don't believe everything you read.

 

[tspear]

There's a few myths in there. Don't believe everything you read.

In yours or in Photography Life?

Tim (I could not resist, so rare that you are not specific!)

 

[Victoria Bampton]

ROFL Tim! Er, well...

 

[Ian.B]

rof lol Tim -- great one liner