Lightroom 2 discussion & Issues

[HughofBardfield]

I'd been using the LR2 beta for a while and upgraded to LR2 once I'd checked there were no major issues being reported. That said, quite a lot of people are having serious issues with speed (lots of threads on http://www.flickr.com/groups/adobe_lightroom/ ). These seem to be particularly associated with the new Gradient and Adjustment tools.

Some speed issues are, apparently, caused by having either the LR2 beta or old LR1.x versions still installed (although why that should be escapes me). I uninstalled the LR2 beta when I loaded LR2 and have had no problems with speed myself. However, it's also quite possible my under-resourced machine (Dual Core 3.4GHz, but with only 1Gb RAM, running XP Pro) is already so slow I haven't noticed any difference...

There's also an issue with importing LR1 catalogues into LR2. In some cases, the keywords get lost. There's a semi-official fix here: http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?14@@.59b5fbd8/9 which worked for me.

There seems to be reasonable confidence that the big A will bung out a 2.1 fairly soon, but there are quite a lot of fed-up users out there! Personally, I think if they can resolve the speed issue, the new tools are incredibly useful, and cover 85% of what I used Photoshop for, making it a really excellent piece of software.

[theMusicMan]

Re: Lightroom 2 discussion & Issues

Hi Hugh - I moved your post to a new thread as I was guilty of steering the thread way off topic... hope you don't mind.

I am finding the application excruciatingly slow at times now, especially when flicking between images - in either Grid, Loup or Develop modes. However, the operation of the new features such as the gradient or brush tools seems to be fine.

I have also found a significant improvement in LR2's Sharpen tool. I never really liked nor used this pre V2, and if an image needed sharpening I would always use CS3, but I haven't used CS3 for a while as the sharpen tool seems to have been considerably improved and does an excellent job.

I am concerned about speed issues now though, and never experienced this pre V2. I hope as you say, Adobe release a 2.1 soon to remedy this.

[Ian]

Re: Lightroom 2 discussion & Issues

Hi Hugh - I moved your post to a new thread as I was guilty of steering the thread way off topic... hope you don't mind.

I am finding the application excruciatingly slow at times now, especially when flicking between images - in either Grid, Loup or Develop modes. However, the operation of the new features such as the gradient or brush tools seems to be fine.

I have also found a significant improvement in LR2's Sharpen tool. I never really liked nor used this pre V2, and if an image needed sharpening I would always use CS3, but I haven't used CS3 for a while as the sharpen tool seems to have been considerably improved and does an excellent job.

I am concerned about speed issues now though, and never experienced this pre V2. I hope as you say, Adobe release a 2.1 soon to remedy this.

Sorry if this is an obvious one, but are you pre-rendering the standard previews when you import your images? This does drastically speed up browsing of images. You can also generate 1:1 (100%) previews and although this can take up a lot of space, it does speed things up a lot and you can limit their life so that after a preset time, say, a couple of weeks, the previews can be automatically deleted to preserve disk space. Previews can be generated after you have imported images as well, of course.

Ian

[theMusicMan]

Re: Lightroom 2 discussion & Issues

Hi Ian, yep I am rendering standard sized images on import. However, on times it can take 3-5 seconds to switch images. I didn't have this issue on LR1.4, and am only now experiencing it on LR2.

[Ian]

Re: Lightroom 2 discussion & Issues

Hi Ian, yep I am rendering standard sized images on import. However, on times it can take 3-5 seconds to switch images. I didn't have this issue on LR1.4, and am only now experiencing it on LR2.

If I remember correctly, you're using a Mac? Maybe it's a Mac-specific issue.

I'm using my PC laptop (2GB RAM, 2GHz AMD Turion X2 CPU) to browse a 9,000 image LR2 catalogue here and it's not as slow as you appear to be experiencing. I'm getting near instantaneous switching from one image to the next, both in Library and Develop, though occasionally there is a lingering message saying 'loading from previews" but it doesn't seem to affect anything. In Develop, the 'loading' status lasts 3-4 seconds, but the preview is practically instantaneous and I can switch from one image to the next with practically no delay.

Ian

PS, I'm running Windows Vista SP1

[theMusicMan]

Re: Lightroom 2 discussion & Issues

Aye, am on a Mac.

I have researched this a little and it seems there are many users in the same predicament i.e. upgraded to LR2 (on both PC and Mac OSX platforms) who are experiencing speed and performance issuse with LR. There's a suggestion that Adobe are about to release a 2.1 'fix'.

[HughofBardfield]

Re: Lightroom 2 discussion & Issues

Aye, am on a Mac.

I have researched this a little and it seems there are many users in the same predicament i.e. upgraded to LR2 (on both PC and Mac OSX platforms) who are experiencing speed and performance issuse with LR. There's a suggestion that Adobe are about to release a 2.1 'fix'.

Yes, certainly the complaints we are getting on the Flickr Lightroom Group are cross-platform, and don't seem to be dependent on the OS or the capacity of the machine. It's a real shame as the new tools and other improvements are potentially a huge leap forward. Oddly, the public Beta seemed to be more stable and faster than the release version.

[emirpprime]

Re: Lightroom 2 discussion & Issues

I've been holding off on both the beta and trial as I knew I would want to upgrade but am counting pennies at the moment. Seems like wisdom in hindsight. As a Mac user also I think I'll wait for 2.1.

John - It might be worth Opening activity monitor then trying to flick through some photos and watching the cpu usage. That way you can see if Lightroom suddenly starts using resources when changing images (suggesting some issue with the preview/thumbnail iamges) or whether it is constantly doing something in the background (perhaps reindexing your whole catelog). I found that when upgrading to 1.4 it was a bit slow then I left Lightroom open for 24 hours when the machine wasn't being used for any heavy work and after it was faster (subjectively speaking). This made me thing it was doing something behind the scenes that wasn't well documented.

All the best,
Phil

[Ian]

Re: Lightroom 2 discussion & Issues

Aye, am on a Mac.

I have researched this a little and it seems there are many users in the same predicament i.e. upgraded to LR2 (on both PC and Mac OSX platforms) who are experiencing speed and performance issuse with LR. There's a suggestion that Adobe are about to release a 2.1 'fix'.

OK, that's interesting - but curious as I don't seem to be experiencing these problems.

Ian

[theMusicMan]

Re: Lightroom 2 discussion & Issues

Hey Phil

Interesting suggestion. So... I opened Activity Monitor and lo & behold, when I am in the Develop module, and then flick between images, the CPU usage for LR2 goes up to between 100-180, when idle it is at 3.0.

So... is there something desperately wrong here?

[emirpprime]

Re: Lightroom 2 discussion & Issues

So... is there something desperately wrong here?

Answering that I'm afraid is beyond me. Depending on your time/workflow etc I would do the following:

1 - Backup! Both catelog and images if possible, but its the catelog that really matters.
2 - Preferences > General > Catalog Settings > Relaunce and Optimise. Set preview size here if you want to change it, say if you have a lot of images you rarely look at you could make it standard size as opposed to 1:1.
3 - Library > Previews > Discard 1:1 Previews. This may take some time so plan on the machine being on working overnight or not doing much in Lightroom at least.

Worst case, wait for 2.1 or email adobe. They are normally pretty helpful but take a while to respond.

It might also be possible to backup, move catelogs to somewhere new and archive them (zip). Delete Lightroom using uninstaller if relevant, or Appcleaner or similar. Reinstall. Then un-zip the old catalog and Import Catalog into the fresh install of Lightroom. Hopefully that will rebuild etc everything.

Good luck!
Phil

[HughofBardfield]

Re: Lightroom 2 discussion & Issues

This discussion thread may be of interest:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/adobe_lightroom/discuss/72157607074073712/

I recall there were issues with previous editions of LR and Nvidia. Not sure if this is applicable to anyone here, but may be worth a look.

[petrovich]

Re: Lightroom 2 discussion & Issues

Sorry to show ignorance on this but I have a feeling the lovely Patsy has puchased Lightroom 2 for me at Chrimbo....

do I uninstall 1.4 beforehand, keeping a copy of the library file, or just install and leave alone?

Regards

[StephenL]

Re: Lightroom 2 discussion & Issues

My feeling is that LR, like most Adobe products, works best as a clean install, so you are right to do your first option.

[petrovich]

Re: Lightroom 2 discussion & Issues

Thanks Stephen, will go that route if hunch is correct.

Regards