10 Tips to Improve the Speed and Performance of Lightroom – Lightroom Performance Guide Part I

(The Lightroom video tutorial in this post is just under the introductory text below. The working files for this Lightroom video tutorial can be found just above the video. So that we can keep on providing free paid-quality content, please share these videos and raise awareness of SLR Lounge by Facebooking or Tweeting the site and articles, thank you!)

Lightroom is an extremely resource intensive piece of software. Once you are familiar with the program, and are editing images at a fairly quick rate (100 – 200) images per hour, then you will start to see that Lightroom can actually become the bottleneck to editing images quicker.

In Part I of the Lightroom Performance Guide tutorials, we will teach you 10 tips to improve the speed and performance of Lightroom without having to purchase any additional hardware. Part II of this tutorial series will in fact be a hardware guide taking you one step further in helping you understand which upgrades can most greatly improve Lightroom’s performance.

After recording this video, I realized with all the explanations it was quite long (nearly 16 minutes). So I have written out the 10 tips below the video as well. For those of you that are familiar with Lightroom, I would start by reading the tips, then skip to that part of the video that explains areas that you are unfamiliar with. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Lightroom, I would recommend watching the entire video.

For the complete written version of this article, please visit our partners Digital Photography School.

Enjoy!

1. Import Settings (Video location 1:20) – Make sure under your File Handling Panel in the Import Dialogue Box you set Render Previews to “Minimal.” Rendering previews is important, but doing it at import will greatly slow down your import process. Also, under the Apply During Import Panel, apply as much Develop Settings, Metadata and Keywords as possible right on import. Doing so will allow you to do less batch syncing which will require Lightroom to slow down to re-process images for changes made to these settings (in particular, Develop Settings)

2. Camera Raw Cache Size (Video location 3:40) - In the File Handling Tab of your Preferences, increase the Raw Cache Folder Size to at least the average size of your typical event. If you have a lot of extra storage space, then set the cache folder to a size that equals 2-3 of your average events. Increasing the Raw Cache Folder’s size will allow Lightroom to store all of the Develop Module previews for a single event within that folder. This will allow you to move from image to image throughout an entire job without having to wait for previews to be rendered.

To determine the minimum size, take the average number of photos you shoot at your particular type of event, and multiply it by the average size of the files from your camera. For example, if I shoot approximately 2,000 images at a wedding and the average file size from my camera is 10MB than I would get 2,000 x 10 = 20,000MB or 20GB in size. I would then typically add a little buffer, like 5GB extra just to be safe at 25GB of total size for my Camera Raw Cache Folder. Like I mentioned though, this is a minimum, if you are working on a 1-3TB drive, you can afford to increase the size of your Camera Raw Cache Folder greatly.

3. Working Drive Location (Video location 5:45) - If you have an internal hard drive that is as fast as your OS hard drive, use that hard drive for the Camera Raw Cache Folder Location as well as for your work in process. So, the catalog with the images, and the cache folder would be located on that internal non-OS hard drive. However, never use an external hard drive (regardless of the connection type) as your Camera Raw Cache Folder Location, or your working location for your files. Doing so will greatly decrease Lightroom’s overall speed coming right out of the gate. If you don’t have a secondary internal drive, then simply use the OS drive.

4. Set the Preview Size (Video location 6:59) – Under the File Handling Tab of your Catalog Settings is the Preview Cache settings. You will want to set a Standard Preview Size and Preview Quality to a setting that is appropriate for your system and LCD screen resolution. For those running on large monitors (22″+) at high resolutions (1920×1200) you will probably want the Standard Preview Size and Quality to be set at their highest settings at 2048 pixels and High. For those of you running on less powerful machines with smaller screens, setting the standard preview size will allow Lightroom to use less resources in generating these previews when necessary.

5. Turn Off XMP (Video location 8:04) – 99% of you should have absolutely no need for XMP files. Therefore, under the Metadata Tab of your Catalog Settings ensure that “Automatically Write Changes into XMP” is left unchecked. Writing files to XMP doubles the amount of work Lightroom has to perform with every image processed. If you are simply editing in Lightroom, and then taking files into Photoshop, then there is absolutely no reason to be using XMPs. Please see the tutorial on XMP files back in Chapter 8 of the Lightroom Guide for additional details on what XMP is meant for, and when it should be used.

6. Optimize Your Catalog (Video location 9:30) – If your catalogs become extremely large, which is something that in and of itself will slow down Lightroom, then it is important to make sure you frequently Optimize the catalog from the File Menu. Lightroom will take a few minutes to optimize the catalog (depending on the size) to ensure the catalog is running at peak efficiency. However, this is typically only needed when catalogs hit the tens of thousands of images size. If you are like us, and keep each event in its own catalog, then you will typically never need to Optimize the catalog.

7. Render Previews Prior to Working (Video location 10:20) - It is absolutely vital that prior to developing your photos, you Render 1:1 Previews from the Library Menu under Previews. If you have hundreds or thousands of images in your catalog, this process will take a while. So, I recommend you run the previews overnight prior to when you want to begin working on the files. If you are on a faster machine, you can get away with running it during your lunch hour. However, once 1:1 Previews have been rendered, you will no longer have any wait time when going from image to image in the Develop Module, or when zooming into image detail.

8. Keep Catalogs Small (Video location 12:40) – The larger your catalogs get, the more they will slow down. In addition, if your catalogs get too large, you won’t be able to store all the rendered previews within your allotted Raw Cache Folder size. We recommend less than 10,000 images per catalog. Which should be pretty easy to do if you simply break off each job into it’s own catalog. If you feel it important to keep large catalogs, be sure to Optimize your catalogs frequently.

9. Free Up Hard Disk Space (Video location 13:30) – You should always have at least 25% of your hard drive space free, and optimally over 50% free on both your operating system drive, and your working drive. Hard drives will operate less and less efficiently as more space is used.

10. Disk Defragment Regularly on Standard Hard Drives(Video location 14:30) – To keep Windows and OSX running smoothly (which also will keep Lightroom running smoothly) run Disk Defragment at least once a month. It is best to run this process overnight as it can take quite a bit of time. In Windows 7, simply type Disk Defrag into the search box to bring up the utility. Note, for those running on Macs, Apple claims that disk defrag is no longer necessary as OSX has built in safeguards to prevent natural defragmentation. They mention that it could possibly help if you run with your hard drive 90% full, or have tons of large sized files such as videos. In which case, you will most likely need to look into a 3rd party application.

WARNING – Do not defrag SSD drives. Since SSD drives don’t use platters like traditional hard drives, there is no difference in access times regardless of where the files are located. In fact, some SSD makers even state that running disk defrag on SSD drives actually reduces the life of the drive.

If you need any additional clarification or step by step procedures on the above topics, please watch the video. Thanks!

1) Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 – As of April 4, 2011 – Among the larger reputable dealers, the lowest price we found for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 is $236.99 (Free Shipping) through Amazon. Click any of these links to take you to the offer.

Click here to purchase Adobe Lightroom 3 from Amazon.com

2) Student and Teacher Editions of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 – For teachers and students, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 is available for $89 through the Adobe Educational Purchasing Site.

Post Production Pye
SLR Lounge Senior Editor
Partner of Lin and Jirsa Photography

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