I always copy to my hard drive and remove cards before I import in LR, or things get really slow. I always write to XMP and don't have any issues. If you are using Photoshop at the same time, you will need more, much more…. 1 GB Video RAM (VRAM). Given that there are, in fact, plenty of users for whom it *does* work well, LR clearly *can* work well. If you want opening speed, use Photo Mechanic. According to Adobe the system requirements for Lightroom 6 is a VRAM of 1GB or higher. I use a 2015 MBP 13" running an SSD and 8GB or RAM, Capture One works as fast as i need it to and i also use various other pieces of software on there (mainly DJ software) with no issue. Unfortunately, our Lightroom Classic workstation is based around AMD's Ryzen platform which does not have certified Thunderbolt support. Switched to a Ryzen 5 3600 and 32gb 3200mhz ram which gave me a good active score but my passive score seems quite low compared to the results you get in your benchmarks with the Ryzen 5 3600. I guess I'd like to know what people having issues running LR are using b/c I run LR with no issues. He holds an M.S. Options that can help increase performance include: 64-bit, multiple-core processor (for best performance, up to six cores; the extra power is especially important if you... 12 GB of RAM (recommended); At least 4 GB of RAM, more if you use Photoshop at … I will say my new build running LR with the same catalogs and files with a Ryzen 3800X and 32GB of newer/faster RAM with nVME SSD drives has so far been performing better, but I am not holding out any hope that LR won't find a way to screw that up. I like the functions in LR though. Tell us. If only more RAM could consistently resolve all of Lightroom's various performance issues. In preferences, the name of the GPU available to Lightroom and its available video memory is displayed. Dramatically Speed up Lightroom Performance, Three Things You Shouldn't Do in Lightroom, Fstoppers Introduction to Adobe Lightroom, Cheap But Sharp: A Look at the Samyang 135mm f/2 ED UMC Lens, Edit an Aerial View Toy Town Tilt-Shift Effect in Photoshop CC, How to Create Better Compositions Using a Telephoto Lens for Landscape Photography, A Review of the Canon RF 24-70mm f/2.8L IS USM Lens, LuminarAI​ Is Out: Fstoppers Takes a Look at This New Software, Behind the Scenes of Elf: How Forced Perspective Turned a Low Budget Film Into a Christmas Classic. There are two primary factors to weigh up when selecting a new CPU: the number of cores on the single CPU (two physical CPU’s don’t help much) and it’s clock speed.Lightroom makes good use of multiple cores for image processing tasks such as building previews, working in the Develop module, and exporting photos, so it’s worth selecting a quad-core processor if possible, even though other areas of the program are … Maybe I just need more images in the catalog to see slow down performance? 32GB ram, 360,000 images. LR is a pig with memory and Mr. Cooke does not know what he is talking about. Organize Lightroom Catalogs. Additional Requirements 1 GB video memory, DVD-ROM, Internet connection Header. If you need Thunderbolt, email one of our sales representatives at sales@pugetsystems.com or call us at (425) 458-0273 and we can help you configure a system that supports Thunderbolt. I average 12 seconds per image (weddings) and edit 750 images in around 2.5 hours. Only thing that's slower in C1 is Export to JPG, for some reason. Definitely random. Memory (RAM) Image processing demands increasing amounts of memory, especially when working on many layers (say, in Photoshop) or batch processing/previewing many images at once (say, in Lightroom). This Software really needs a redesign from scratch. Please refer to the system requirements in the Help documentation for a full list of hardware and software requirements for Lightroom CC." I have 32GB of memory and a large library. This also significantly help when using multiple or high-resolution monitors. I think a combination of processor, fast SSD and RAM are key to getting best performance out of your computer, most people seem to assume that 'just put 16GB of RAM' in will solve the issue when in fact its only a small part of the process. I upgraded it to 16 and then read an article about GPU use. For now, 8GB is a comfortable amount of RAM for pretty heavy image processing. If you launch LR it will try to reconnect to any and all images that have already been catalogued. You just need to figure out why that is. I might take some photos and I need one, like of a product I'm working on or of my cat. " This computer does not meet the minimum system requirements for Lightroom CC. Even Lightroom 1 never supported such a horrid processor. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.0 for Windows requires a 64-bit Windows 10 operating system with 8GB of RAM, 2GB of GPU VRAM and an Intel or AMD processor with 64-bit support. That seems to be a big jump between 5 and 6. After doing some research online and seeing how much RAM Lightroom was using on his current setup, Ryan decided to upgrade his iMac from 8GB to 40GB of RAM, and compare performance to see just how much of a difference the extra 32GB was able to make. Lightroom 6 CC system requires a minimum 1 gig of VRAM (video RAM) unlike Lightroom 5. This might be why it feels slow. Below are the minimum and recommended system requirements to run the software on Windows as well as macOS. To get the best GPU acceleration performance, you should be running the latest version of Lightroom CC. The rule of thumb here is to get 4-5 times more memory than the size of the images you are working with in Lightroom. He is also an avid equestrian. I do all my editing in LR so i bought a single threaded cpu (i7-9700k), an m2 ssd, 16 ram and a new gpu and its lightning fast for me. How much do you really need for Lightroom, however? Many operations in the program are rather resource intensive, and this in tandem with ever-increasing file sizes can cause the program to really bog down and make working difficult, particularly when you are working with large sets of images and trying to find a workflow rhythm, even if you are technically working with enough RAM for the program to at least boot up and run. When I bought my PC, it came with 12 gigs of RAM. Adobe Photoshop 2020 is the best image editor software in the world, developed and published by Adobe. With LR, many functions can bring down your computer if you are short of memory. Ditched LR for C1 3 years ago, none of my macs has more then 16GB RAM and I can run C1, PS and Photomechanic + more at the same time no issues at all with iMac running all of them smooth :). For example if you wish to run other applications like Photoshop, that would really cut into the 8GB RAM. Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. How much RAM do you need to run Adobe Lightroom at peak performance, and where is the point of diminishing returns? Capture One just works better, I get more accurate color, better details, not to mention the speed. Those performance issues were the reason, I dropped Adobe. Once that's done (once) it's perfectly speedy. Yes, this Photoshop Lightroom trial works on both macOS and Windows. More importantly, Adobe now recommends twice more RAM when using Lightroom 5 than it did with the previous release. 16GB? A 16GB RAM computer might not have much left over for Lightroom Classic after accounting for the RAM needed for the system and other applications you always run. In the video above, Ryan starts out by covering what RAM does and doesn’t do. Many people confuse LR with a browser, which it's not. Its entirely possible thats nothing to do with RAM and could be a number of other things. How much RAM do you really need to edit photos in Adobe Lightroom? I now have an iMAC with 32 GB of RAM and no issues and with over 30K images in my catalog. Scroll through 20 or so raw photos in the Develop module for a minute and Lightroom memory usage jumps up to 3.5GB of memory. Some less tech-y types tend to think that “More RAM” always equals “Better Performance,” but that’s not always the case. I fixed that and the combination of both did help substantially. I might use RawTherapee sometimes to open one file to save time as it can open one image quickly. System type - 64 - bit operating system. Both have 21.5" screens and plenty of RAM. For many users even with a relatively new computer (2 years old) with a Macbook Pro with Intel HD 4000 384 megs built in VRAM, and NIVIDEA GeForce GT650 PCIe 512 megs of VRAM a total of 896 megs of VRAM and still it is not enough Video Ram for the new Lightroom. Why would you want to import one file? Change a few sliders on several raw images and it goes up to 4GB of memory. If you don't, no problem. At the bare minimum, Lightroom requires 4 GB of RAM … I used to have 16 GB RAM on my Windows machine and then got an iMac with 16 GB of RAM and it ran with no issues. Netbooks are no longer being sold, and the screens on those devices were horrid to say the least. Just upgraded my system since Lightroom Classic was very slow on my old system(The benchmark hadn't finished after 8 hours so had to abort it). Check out the full video up top to see the head-to-head comparisons for yourself, and then share your ideal build (PC or Mac) for photo editing below. Like most software developers, Adobe maintains a list of Adobe Products System Requirements for all products that can be used to help ensure the hardware in your computer system will work with their multimedia software. Based on the Activity Monitor readings, Lightroom topped out around 20-25GB of RAM use once it had enough to pull from, so you’ll want to have at least that amount in your computer for the best possible performance. At the bare minimum, Lightroom requires 4 GB of RAM to run, but of course, this may not be enough in practical terms when it comes to day-to-day needs. The idea is that you use LR to Import all your images as you shoot them. If you have 64gb of low-grade RAM its probably not going to help if you have 32 gb of high-grade RAM it's probably going to speed up your workflow a lot ! Just don’t go overboard—even if your processor can support it, 128GB or RAM may not run Lightroom any faster than 32GB or 64GB unless you’re really overloading your system elsewhere ( … Ryan of Signature Edits decided to find out, and he’s put together a helpful comparison video to share his results. 32GB? 6 Signs You May Have Overedited Your Landscape Photos, Fstoppers Reviews the Haida Clear Night Filter for Night Sky Photographers, How I Created This Cinematic Scene in Photoshop. My interpretation of how Lightroom (and most programs work) is to re-word what you said to: When available, Lightroom will and does use more than 8GB of ram when it is needed. The reason 12GB RAM is recommended for Lightroom Classic is that it can cache more previews and other data for faster image-to-image display if you have the RAM to cache them. Also According to Adobe, Lightroom 5 has no requirements for VRAM. Regardless, mine come in off a card at about 100MB per second - that's about 2.5 files per second from a 24MP camera. On my old system the problems came and went or at least varied in severity at times depending on the version of LR and not much else as far as i could tell. I'm wondering if it it scanning lots of files or drives and needs more RAM, as I tend to have a lot of programs open. Check out the video to see if a RAM upgrade can make a difference in your work. Even low-end RAM will outperform the best solid-state drives on the market. Catalog sizes stay about the same after the upgrade, with catalog sizes changing by 1-2% (up or down), depending on the size of the catalog. I could live with that, though it would not be ideal. Acer Aspire 5 Slim Laptop, 15.6 inches Full HD IPS Display, AMD Ryzen 3 3200U, Vega 3 Graphics, … When available, Lightroom will and does use more than 8GB of ram. While Adobe has released updates that take better advantage of multi-core CPUs and enable GPU accelerated editing, there’s still no true substitute to having the right amount of RAM. After explaining this, Ryan shifts his focus to photo editing more generally and Adobe Lightroom in particular. Photographers can almost always use more RAM, particularly when they start working with larger and more complex files. So then I try to import one image and sometimes it takes a minute before it starts. In a previous article, Anthony showed that he could achieve 555 MB/s write and 1170.2 MB/s read speeds with his SSD RAID-10 array.Compare that to 1600Mhz DDR3 RAM at 1352 MB/s write and 6407 MB/s read speeds. BTW, make sure 'Automatically write to XMP' is turned off. Forget Lightroom, wait till you try to run Google Chrome with more than one tab open! Lightroom catalog is essentially a database that contains all imported … If no information is displayed, then you may need to install a new driver for your GPU, or your hardware or operating system does not meet the minimum system requirements. Starting up Lightroom the program immediately takes 1.5GB of memory. Is This Plagiarism or Crazy Coincidence in Landscape Photography? Coming to you from Signature Edits, this great video compares the speed of Lightroom when using 8 GB of RAM versus 32 GB of RAM. Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences. LR issues are not RAM issues, this program has to be redesign from scratch. Our creative, marketing and document solutions empower everyone — from emerging artists to global brands — to bring digital creations to life and deliver them to the right person at the right moment for the best results.