Lightroom Loading Time?

Just wanted to get some opinions on Lightroom image load times, and general sluggish performance.

I have LR 3 and when i'm trying to cull thru images after a shoot, sometimes I'll have to wait 3-5 seconds before the image properly loads and comes into focus. I guess it's rendering the raw file, correct? Anyway, is it my system or is there some setting that I can change that would speed this up, as it drives me crazy to have to wait that long to judge an image. All i want to do is quickly preview an image and give it a star rating, then move on to the next one.

My system is a 4-5 yr old iMac w/2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 3GB of Ram (maxed out). My catalog is kept on an external 7200 RPM hard drive via Firewire 800.

I shoot with a Canon 5D II in raw so the files are big, but I still expect better performance than this. Would it work better if I shot in Raw and jpg, so that it would just load the jpgs faster?

Or is it just time for a computer upgrade? Thanks.

If you are culling at 1:1 then the delay is because Lightroom must render the large preview. However, if you are generating the 1:1 previews before culling then I don't know what is causing the delay.

I don't think i'm culling at 1:1 unless i'm missing something. I'm using the screen that shows just one image at a time, and the whole image fits within that window.

It seems a little slow, but your computer only has 3GB RAM, which is puny these days for those large files. Also having an external drive as the host adds to some perceived slowness. Consider a utility to create a RAM disk. There are free ones out there.

Change your import preview settings to minimum and test the response. How many images are in your current catalog? I tend to optimize my LR catalog after each 1000 image upload, especially if a few days has passed since LR performed an internal backup (which optimizes the catalog).

SmertZ

It might certainly be faster to have a catalog with fewer images, but I was using a MBP 2.3 with 3gb of RAM, and I hated the time it was taking. That has certainly changed with an imac core i7, 2.93ghz with 12 gb of RAM.
Sarah

The other thing to check is whether or not the three white dots have disappeared from the Grid view images. If they are still present, then Lightroom is still computing the Standard previews.

I'm assuming you are in the Library module when culling. If you are in the Develop module each image must be rendered every time you view it.

Have you optimized the catalog? Have you cleaned out the preview cache in Lightroom? Both of these may increase your performance.

Suggesting a RAM disk when there isn't enough RAM...seriously?

A RAM disk isn't the solution to anything here, not even with enough RAM. The RAM disk will always be to small and you will also have to copy the files there and have an extra admin step in your workflow. Pointless.

I would say that it's time for a new iMac. Wait a little though, new ones are due out shortly...they will be screaming fast.

smertz said:

It seems a little slow, but your computer only has 3GB RAM, which is puny these days for those large files. Also having an external drive as the host adds to some perceived slowness. Consider a utility to create a RAM disk. There are free ones out there.

Change your import preview settings to minimum and test the response. How many images are in your current catalog? I tend to optimize my LR catalog after each 1000 image upload, especially if a few days has passed since LR performed an internal backup (which optimizes the catalog).

SmertZ

Click to expand...

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Mikael

Yes, I optimize just about everytime that i quit. Not sure about the cache thing, i'll look into that tonite.