Software Lightroom CC Slow and buggy.What alternative?

[kyteflyer]

I have a Mac. I have no idea how to clean out the cache or do a defrag. I usually don't have to worry about such things

Thats even better. You don't usually need to defrag on a Mac, but it would not hurt to clean caches. I use CleanMyMac2 for cache cleaning and getting rid of junk. I don't trust it or any other cleaner tool to leave files I want, so I do everything else very carefully. Its safe to dump the system cache though, and theres often gigabytes of useless cruft in there. My thinking was, if the system is gettin clogged, then LR will be slow. My mac Mini 2012 model, is not struggling at all.

 

[kyteflyer]

I had them reset my iMac with Yosemite when it was returned but unfortunately my daughter set it up to restore from the back up drive and it merrily restored El Capitan for me I know I could go backwards again but it seems too fiddly to do. In any case the earlier version of LR seems to work with it for now. The latest version just didn't work at all, didn't show the previews, wouldn't let me click on anything..... it was totally unusable. Looking at my storage space, I still only have 43 gb of storage left..... something's going to give at some point!

only 43GB left? OMG. No wonder its misbehaving. There must be a lot of stuff there that could be stored on an external drive. *faint*

 

[kyteflyer]

I need to do a TM backup of El Cap. I already have a Yosemite clone from before I upgraded. Its not so long ago that I couldnt downgrade, and TBH, I hate El Cap with a passion. I just havent bonded with it at all. I need to make the time.

 

[BillN]

LR is so easy to use .......... and that is very tempting ....... it is also a good Library and filing system, etc.

I use a combination of LR and PS13, (the stand alone version) ...... and pp is quick for me with these Adobe apps

I looked at a few apps from the point of view of which produced the best RAW, (in my case Nikon .NEF files), files ....... I found that Capture One was the best for me

I may just get Capture One, even at £200 for those "special images" that I want to process alongside Adobe, as I find that Capture One has the edge but it does take time to process the image especially if you have been an Adobe user for some time

 

[Lawrence A.]

In 2022 Lightroom CC is still slow and buggy.. I have an i7-9700 system with 48 gigs of ram. Everything else I run is fine. Even Photoshop is fine, and I love Photoshop. But I am beginning to hate Lightroom, which always takes several minutes to load - if it does. I've jus tried 5 times to open it and it locks every time. I restarted the computer but cannot change settings in the program,, since you have to be able to get into it to do that. I'm about to throw the whole thing over, get capture one and use and old Adobe 7 to tweak images. I rarely need the newer magic. When LR works I like it, but it has been doing this nonsense for over a year now. and I'm sick of it.

 

[Glevum Owl]

In 2022 Lightroom CC is still slow and buggy.. I have an i7-9700 system with 48 gigs of ram. Everything else I run is fine. Even Photoshop is fine, and I love Photoshop. But I am beginning to hate Lightroom, which always takes several minutes to load - if it does. I've jus tried 5 times to open it and it locks every time. I restarted the computer but cannot change settings in the program,, since you have to be able to get into it to do that. I'm about to throw the whole thing over, get capture one and use and old Adobe 7 to tweak images. I rarely need the newer magic. When LR works I like it, but it has been doing this nonsense for over a year now. and I'm sick of it.

I'm puzzled and not a little curious. Although I'm all Apple now, I did have an older i7 with 32GB RAM which worked fine with LR and over 35,000 files in many formats from lowly .3gp up to large .PSD. At the risk of telling granny how to suck eggs, have you uninstalled / reinstalled LR (obviously after backing up the LR Catalogs)?

I'm assuming you've done the obvious like optimised the Catalog and checked the drive space / performance. The latter was always the bottleneck on my Wintel box until I upgraded to an SSD as the boot drive and moved the Catalogs there but kept the images on the internal SATA HDD. The increase in speed was enormous (subjectively).

Also I read somewhere (once, long ago) that LR requires the drive from which it's booting to have 20% of its capacity free.

 

[rayvonn]

I'm puzzled and not a little curious. Although I'm all Apple now, I did have an older i7 with 32GB RAM which worked fine with LR and over 35,000 files in many formats from lowly .3gp up to large .PSD. At the risk of telling granny how to suck eggs, have you uninstalled / reinstalled LR (obviously after backing up the LR Catalogs)?

I'm assuming you've done the obvious like optimised the Catalog and checked the drive space / performance. The latter was always the bottleneck on my Wintel box until I upgraded to an SSD as the boot drive and moved the Catalogs there but kept the images on the internal SATA HDD.

I read somewhere (once, long ago) that LR requires the drive from which it's booting to have 20% of its capacity free. Not sure if that's still true.

I’m obviously well behind the times here, 32GB of ram to me is shockingly huge. Even more amazing though is that level of ram still not being sufficient to get LR to work.

 

[Glevum Owl]

I’m obviously well behind the times here, 32GB of ram to me is shockingly huge. Even more amazing though is that level of ram still not being sufficient to get LR to work.

No, 32GB of RAM did work, and work well, which is why I'm puzzled that Lawrence A. is struggling with 50% more RAM and a later CPU.

 

[Lawrence A.]

I was frustrated and perhaps did not explain the situation clearly. Once I get into Lightroom everything works fine; my imports and exports are fast and trouble free and running the Topaz plug-in works without issue. My problem, which has been going on intermittently for over a year now, is that trying to get into Lightroom is either very slow or, just as often, the programs locks completely. I do use a SSD for my boot drive, though my files are stored on a n external 7200 rpm HDD with a full backup to a second internal 7200 HDD. When I posted the above I had tried five times to get into the program and had it lock up. I've now uninstalled the creative cloud app and its programs and reinstalled and updated everything, and since then have been able to get into Lightroom, but I've used this fix before and the problem has eventually come back. Once I was in the program I did indeed optimize the catalog, but I could not do that from outside. I have 65,000 images in my catalog, which needs a good weeding out, so I don't worry so much if the startup is slow, but being repeatedly locked out of the program altogether makes me want to start pulling my hair out. I've set the Creative Cloud desktop app to now update everything automatically in the hopes that solves the problem. If not, I'll be sure to report back. I repeat: Once I'm in the the program, my workflow, a habit of many years, runs smoothly. I really don't want to give up on Lightroom, as I have used it for years and developed a workflow which, while not the most efficient, works well for me. Thanks for the comments from all.

 

[Bart J D]

I was frustrated and perhaps did not explain the situation clearly. Once I get into Lightroom everything works fine; my imports and exports are fast and trouble free and running the Topaz plug-in works without issue. My problem, which has been going on intermittently for over a year now, is that trying to get into Lightroom is either very slow or, just as often, the programs locks completely. I do use a SSD for my boot drive, though my files are stored on a n external 7200 rpm HDD with a full backup to a second internal 7200 HDD. When I posted the above I had tried five times to get into the program and had it lock up. I've now uninstalled the creative cloud app and its programs and reinstalled and updated everything, and since then have been able to get into Lightroom, but I've used this fix before and the problem has eventually come back. Once I was in the program I did indeed optimize the catalog, but I could not do that from outside. I have 65,000 images in my catalog, which needs a good weeding out, so I don't worry so much if the startup is slow, but being repeatedly locked out of the program altogether makes me want to start pulling my hair out. I've set the Creative Cloud desktop app to now update everything automatically in the hopes that solves the problem. If not, I'll be sure to report back. I repeat: Once I'm in the the program, my workflow, a habit of many years, runs smoothly. I really don't want to give up on Lightroom, as I have used it for years and developed a workflow which, while not the most efficient, works well for me. Thanks for the comments from all.

I have the same happening.
Sometimes after some of updates, it seems to respond as before but after a few times of opening, I'm back at the very slow opening.
Other software runs fine.

 

[Lawrence A.]

I have the same happening.
Sometimes after some of updates, it seems to respond as before but after a few times of opening, I'm back at the very slow opening.
Other software runs fine.

I wish I could figure out the problem. Once in, as I said, it runs fine, and I like the program, just not the bug. Since the last update it has been running fine and I'm hoping that letting CC handle auto updates will solve the problem. We'll see.

 

[Bart J D]

I wish I could figure out the problem. Once in, as I said, it runs fine, and I like the program, just not the bug. Since the last update it has been running fine and I'm hoping that letting CC handle auto updates will solve the problem. We'll see.

I notice the same situation: once loaded, performance is as before.
I have always followed the updates from Adobe CC but up to now, without a solution.