I’m Having A Serious Problem With Lightroom Classic

 

Ever since Adobe released Lightroom Classic v.13, I’ve been experiencing a very frustrating problem with the program being extremely slow.  Excruciatingly slow, in fact, when it comes to editing, masking and even going from "fit" to "100%" display and back.  I would be interested if any of you are experiencing the same issue.

To give some background, I have a

-2-year old Dell XPS 15 computer

- with an 11th Gen Intel Core i7-11800H running @ 2.30GHz

-32gb of RAM

-and 2 internal 2 terabyte M.2 NVMe SSD hard drives

-running on Windows 11 Home

Additionally, when I configured the computer so it would have plenty of graphics power for editing my images, I had Dell install an:

-Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti graphics card that has 4gb of GDDR6 RAM.  That was the only graphics card option available at the time beside the chip based internal Intel GPU which I have disabled (I did try using it instead of the Nvidia and there was no change).

The computer's software as well as all programs are up to date with the latest versions.  Also, all my drivers are up to date, including the GPU’s driver.  I regularly optimize my drives, clear cache and clean up my registry.

Lightroom Classic and the catalog and preview files on the internal C SSD drive.  That has not changed since I purchased the computer.  The C drive is only at 40% of capacity.  Lightroom Cache is set to 100gb (it was at 200gb but there was no change in speed) and Cache is on the second internal 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD drive.  That drive is only about 10% full.  These two drives are about as fast as they come.  They shouldn’t be an issue.

I have my Lightroom photograph files located on a Western Digital USB 3.0 10TB external hard drive.  Before asking how full that drive is, it is about 73% of capacity so it is not yet close to having too much data for efficiency.  That said, I ran tests with Lightroom editing images located on my super fast internal M.2 NVMe SSD drive with no increase in editing speed.  Again, they are been on this external drive for the past 18 months and speed was never an issue.

Up until v13, Lightroom Classic has run perfectly.  LR has been and still is fast to import my image files, back them up to a secondary external SSD drive and create previews.  Editing had been quick with no lag.  Masking was quick with no lag.  It seems now when I start editing the first image, speed is fine but quickly slows to a crawl when I continue editing or want to use the masking feature.  After that, it takes a good 30 seconds to create a mask or even go from the “Fit” view to “100%” view or back.  It is unusable.

The funny thing is importing and building initial previews is just as fast.  Also, you would think if the graphics card couldn't handle things that Photoshop would be slow as well.  It still runs quickly with no slowdown.  Even using masking in Photoshop's Camera Raw filter, it is fast.  No slowdown at all.  That goes for using the masking feature as well.

I even loaded the 'other' Lightroom onto the C drive to see if that was as slow as Lightroom Classic.  I wanted to edit some of my same files as a comparison.  The 'other' Lightroom runs fast as Lightroom Classic used to run.  Even the AI masking doesn't slow down.  It does not exhibit any slowness issues. 

For kicks, I brought out my old Dell desktop computer which has an old 4th generation i-7 processor and only 24gb or RAM as well as an old ‘spinning’ hard drive and it is just as fast as my new computer when trying to edit Lightroom.  No slower, no faster.  Same experience.

I've done quite a bit of internet research and have read where others are experiencing the same issue.  However, I have not seen a viable solution given. 

At this point, I must be overlooking something obvious or LR is the issue.  I have to assume the GPU and my computer’s configuration is sufficient as the ‘other’ Lightroom and Photoshop run at full speed well or b) there is something fundamentally wrong the current versions of Lightroom Classic.

UPDATE 08/23/2024:  I've done some additional testing.  I'm a user of Photoshop Beta and Topaz Photo AI.  Also, I use DXO PhotoLab 7.  Each of these programs run at the same speed as they have been in the past.  No slowdowns.  This is another indication that the extreme slowness issue I am experiencing with Lightroom Classic is the program itself, not my computer.

Please let me know if you have experienced the same issues, have additional things to try or if you have a possible solution to this issue.  I would appreciate it.  I don’t want to unnecessarily purchase another computer (desktop most likely) if I don’t have to but I must find a solution to this problem.  I’m at my wit’s end.  Thank you in advance.

UPDATE #2 (09 06 2024):  Issue solved.  See this post, here, to find out what was slowing LR and how I solved it.

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Thanks for looking. Enjoy!  

Dennis A. Mook  

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