[Class A]

LR is workable on a modern CPU but it has not the responsiveness I'd like it to have. It's because the software is not smart enough, it has a lot of potential for improvements IMHO.

+1E99

Don't get me started on the LR code quality...

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Last edited by Class A; 09-25-2011 at 01:17 PM.

[jsherman999]

+1E99

Don't get me started on the LR code quality.


<rant snip>

Tell us what you really think

I have only used it for about 6 months casually and have not hung out in any forums where the code or design was discussed in detail (or know anyone who's worked on it,) but I'd have to say it seems to be pretty good design, overall.

I guess I'm curious - what are you comparing it to? Is there another image/photography workflow tool with similar functionality that you prefer, or that you think is designed better? Also, how do you know the particulars about the code quality, especially the catalog integrity check, is there a place where this is discussed or have you cracked part of it yourself?


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[Anvh]

When I built my latest system I was told not to use a SSD drive for my OS or for Gaming yet since they and not very reliable yet.

First time hearing that, although there might be some bad models out there but the current generation is now the fourth i believe and they have gone quite a long way with the controlles.
As for the memory on them, they are almost the same you find in your memory stick or SD card for example, they have been proven to be reliable over a long time.

One of the other beneifits that if one of the memory modules does get damaged they're most of the time still readable.

[jsherman999]

...

However, if you tell LR to create an 1:1 preview, it will do it only once and whatever scale you view the image at, it will always be made available immediately from the preview cache which is 10x faster. LR will use the cached preview as long as it doesn't expire (which is user-controlled) or the development settings didn't change.

My method (which could be improved, I don't know, not a LR expert) is to generate the 1:1 preview only on images I'm interested in working on, and then only at the moment I decide to work on them, with a simple double-click in the develop module. This generates the 1:1 preview after only about 2 - 4 seconds, and then that preview is cached and used/retrieved immediately from cache each time I preview, for as long as I want it to be or until I change something.

Sort of: 'cache in pieces, on demand' vs. 'cache everything, in batch, even if you don't need it.'

This works for me because on import or shortly after import I'm never sure which images I'm going to be interested in, I only figure that out while browsing, so a 1:1 preview generation on all or a bunch of images just in case would be a waste of time... plus I really don't 'notice' that 2-4 seconds of preview generation after a double click, I guess. At least it doesn't seem like an excessive, annoying wait period for what I'm expecting it to do there.




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[RonHendriks1966]

This works for me because on import or shortly after import I'm never sure which images I'm going to be interested in, I only figure that out while browsing, so a 1:1 preview generation on all or a bunch of images just in case would be a waste of time... plus I really don't 'notice' that 2-4 seconds of preview generation after a double click, I guess. At least it doesn't seem like an excessive, annoying wait period for what I'm expecting it to do there.

Where is the delay coming from? Is it from datatransfer from the storagedisk or is it from the speed of the disk where LR is on (so a SSD could improve on this) or is it RAM memory? And how to improve on this?

I have no idea on how to adjust LR in it's base settings, since I'm new to this program.

[jsherman999]

Where is the delay coming from? Is it from datatransfer from the storagedisk or is it from the speed of the disk where LR is on (so a SSD could improve on this) or is it RAM memory? And how to improve on this?

I have no idea on how to adjust LR in it's base settings, since I'm new to this program.

I'd assume the bulk of the time for 1:1 preview generation is probably in pure CPU cycles during the raw conversion. Falk thinks the raw converter there is suboptimal and not up to par with some others, he may be right.

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[falconeye]

My method (which could be improved, I don't know, not a LR expert) is to generate the 1:1 preview only on images I'm interested in working on, and then only at the moment I decide to work on them, with a simple double-click in the develop module. This generates the 1:1 preview after only about 2 - 4 seconds, and then that preview is cached and used/retrieved immediately from cache each time I preview, for as long as I want it to be or until I change something.

Sort of: 'cache in pieces, on demand' vs. 'cache everything, in batch, even if you don't need it.'

This works for me because on import or shortly after import I'm never sure which images I'm going to be interested in, I only figure that out while browsing

I'm not sure this is what 1:1 preview does ...

1:1 preview creates a full resolution JPG image, with all development settings (like demosaicing, lens profile, sharpening, denoising, clarity etc.) applied. It is like RAW+JPG out of cam, except that LR keeps the JPG in sync.

The JPGs reside in a local directory (sibling to the catalog's "NAME.lrcat" file) named "NAME Previews.lrdata".

The .lrdata directory (which on the Mac is made to look like a file) contains a previews.db file which is a SQLite 3.x database file and can be opened with SQLite which is an open source database (much like the Lightroom .lrcat catalog itself).

Otherwise, the preview directory contains many .lrprev files with cryptic names. They are a stack of JPGs (of varying size) plus a scripting header, all within one binary file. If you ever loose an image, here would be a place to recover it.

In all operations except DEVELOP and PRINT, it then starts from the preview-JPG rather than the RAW. Which is actually pretty fast and browsing through images to select / discard / categorize etc. is real-time basically.

LR will not create a 1:1 preview image upon double click on an image. It then only creates a normal preview (at smaller size) which is faster. But can also be done ahead of time via the menu. A 1:1 preview is created if:

• you import an image and told LR to auto-create 1:1 previews upon import
• you view an image at 1:1 (view a 100% crop)
• you mandate 1:1 previews from the menu.
• MISSING LR function: recreate preview after develop touched an image or develop settings changed.

It discards 1:1 previews if:

• they expire after a while (configurable)
• you touch images or open and process them in DEVELOP (which doesn't use the preview at all!)
• you mandate is from the menu.

Therefore, I think, you use the 1:1 preview feature (and ahead of time before you work with your images actually) in order to find the set of images which are worth a special treatment in DEVELOP. Once you selected images to work with, 1:1 previews aren't really that helpful anymore...

Where is the delay coming from?

The delay is processing. On a machine with 2.66 GHz Core i7 (SSD), creating 100 1:1 previews for K-5 RAWs takes 500 seconds (if using all of lens profile, sharpening, denoising, clarity) and a bit less than 2GB of memory. A single preview (or load into DEVELOP) is the same 5 seconds because Adobe actually did a pretty good job using all four cores for a single image even. With fewer corrections, in can be faster like 3 seconds.

I guess the LR render time is a good benchmark for a machine's DRAM-to-CPU memory bandwidth. Most people do not optimize their machine with respect to this parameter. A good chipset and fast DRAM modules are important here. Macs have a decent chipset but many cheapo notebooks have not despite high advertized clockspeeds.

As I said, this could probably be accelerated by using pipeline parallelization programming skills only very few programmers have. Note however that lens profile application, denoising, fill-light and clarity are non-local operations most programs are pretty slow at.

After all, 5 seconds on 4 2.66 GHz cores are 3000 cycles per pixel.

I'd assume the bulk of the time for 1:1 preview generation is probably in pure CPU cycles during the raw conversion. Falk thinks the raw converter there is suboptimal and not up to par with some others, he may be right.

I did not say others are faster. Bibble 5 "is said" to be faster but that remains to be seen. Bibble could try to approximate pixels for view on screen. DxO for instance only renders all final pixels upon export which is even slower than LR. But DxO's lens softness correction module is more ambitious on the other hand. LR still does a lot to the pixels and e.g., it's denoising is class-leading (i.e., good for a raw converter and faster than dedicated denoisers).

So, there is a balance between speed and quality and I didn't say LR is not up to par with peers in this regard. I actually don't know.

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Last edited by falconeye; 09-22-2011 at 03:38 AM.

[ManuH]

LR can be criticized a lot but it does almost all I need for a raw processor. The NR has been much improved at which point I rarely need any other NR software. Sharpening is OK, etc. The only thing that I really miss (and most 3rd parties) are real plug-ins. But I can understand why Adobe is holding back on that: it could get messy really fast. The LR 4 release shouldn't be too far away BTW.

[RonHendriks1966]

LR will not create a 1:1 preview image upon double click on an image. It then only creates a normal preview (at smaller size) which is faster. But can also be done ahead of time via the menu. A 1:1 preview is created if:

• you import an image and told LR to auto-create 1:1 previews upon import
• you view an image at 1:1 (view a 100% crop)
• you mandate 1:1 previews from the menu.
• MISSING LR function: recreate preview after develop touched an image or develop settings changed.

The delay is processing. On a machine with 2.66 GHz Core i7 (SSD), creating 100 1:1 previews for K-5 RAWs takes 500 seconds (if using all of lens profile, sharpening, denoising, clarity) and a bit less than 2GB of memory. A single preview (or load into DEVELOP) is the same 5 seconds because Adobe actually did a pretty good job using all four cores for a single image even. With fewer corrections, in can be faster like 3 seconds.

I guess the LR render time is a good benchmark for a machine's DRAM-to-CPU memory bandwidth. Most people do not optimize their machine with respect to this parameter. A good chipset and fast DRAM modules are important here. Macs have a decent chipset but many cheapo notebooks have not despite high advertized clockspeeds.

Where to tell LR not to use 1:1 imageviewing on import? My system does fill up all my (current) 8 GB of DDR3 RAM memorie when I'm browsing true the big stack of pictures to import (when I'm selecting). When it is full then the delay gets great since it is starting to put things away and picking up something new (like an old Pentium I machine did).

LR can be criticized a lot but it does almost all I need for a raw processor. The NR has been much improved at which point I rarely need any other NR software.

It is the NR performance that made me to purchase it. That really looks good compared to my older Noise Ninja.

I'd assume the bulk of the time for 1:1 preview generation is probably in pure CPU cycles during the raw conversion. Falk thinks the raw converter there is suboptimal and not up to par with some others, he may be right.

Thanks for the input. My CPU doesn't show 100 % occupancy when browsing true the stack when I'm getting those pictures in. It does when in reviewing and I click on an image to look at 100 %, but that is pretty quick.

Next week I probably have all my things new in house and can see if any of my problems got solved. I'll see if LR also uses all six cores.

[jsherman999]

I'm not sure this is what 1:1 preview does ...

1:1 preview creates a full resolution JPG image, with all development settings (like demosaicing, lens profile, sharpening, denoising, clarity etc.) applied. It is like RAW+JPG out of cam, except that LR keeps the JPG in sync.

The JPGs reside in a local directory (sibling to the catalog's "NAME.lrcat" file) named "NAME Previews.lrdata".

The .lrdata directory (which on the Mac is made to look like a file) contains a previews.db file which is a SQLite 3.x database file and can be opened with SQLite which is an open source database (much like the Lightroom .lrcat catalog itself).

Otherwise, the preview directory contains many .lrprev files with cryptic names. They are a stack of JPGs (of varying size) plus a scripting header, all within one binary file. If you ever loose an image, here would be a place to recover it.

In all operations except DEVELOP and PRINT, it then starts from the preview-JPG rather than the RAW. Which is actually pretty fast and browsing through images to select / discard / categorize etc. is real-time basically.

LR will not create a 1:1 preview image upon double click on an image. It then only creates a normal preview (at smaller size) which is faster. But can also be done ahead of time via the menu. A 1:1 preview is created if:

• you import an image and told LR to auto-create 1:1 previews upon import
• you view an image at 1:1 (view a 100% crop)
• you mandate 1:1 previews from the menu.
• MISSING LR function: recreate preview after develop touched an image or develop settings changed.

It discards 1:1 previews if:

• they expire after a while (configurable)
• you touch images or open and process them in DEVELOP (which doesn't use the preview at all!)
• you mandate is from the menu.

Therefore, I think, you use the 1:1 preview feature (and ahead of time before you work with your images actually) in order to find the set of images which are worth a special treatment in DEVELOP. Once you selected images to work with, 1:1 previews aren't really that helpful anymore...

Interesting. So am I correct in assuming you do a lot of stuff in the LIBRARY module, and this is where you realize the 1:1 preview advantage?

Generally after import, I'm immediately out of library and into DEVELOP, and I will determine what images I want to see 1:1 while browsing in there. At that point, a double-click does generate a 1:1 view that is cached and quickly accessed with each subsequent click after that. I can't immediately see how it's different than the 1:1 view generated in library mode, I viewed one image each way last night and there was no difference I could notice....

Also, are you guys generating 1:1 previews on import, or just selecting a group of files in LIBRARY after import and doing it on that subset?


.

[falconeye]

Where to tell LR not to use 1:1 image viewing on import? My system does fill up all my (current) 8 GB of DDR3 RAM memory when I'm browsing through the big stack of pictures to import (when I'm selecting).

The settings are in:

• File->Import_Photos (upper right corner)->Render_Previews
• File->Auto_Import->Auto_Import_Settings->Initial_previews
• Lightroom->Catalog_Settings->File_Handling->Automatically_Discard_1:1_previews

Moreover, LR has a cache for raw files on disk, which is configured at

• Lightroom->Preferences->File_Handling

However, 1:1 previews are not stored in memory, they are stored on disk where the catalog is stored. As I already wrote. Did you read it?

So, there is no way LR will run into memory problems on a 8GB machine. It won't ever need more than about 2GB of memory. Except if your images are much larger than 16MP or if you started many background tasks. If LR slows down when browing through a big stack of pictures, then it is because it must do all the rendering first. That's exactly what creating 1:1 previews before browing is meant to solve...

Or do you mean memory consumption while in the Import dialogue? That I don't know. I always import everything and then flag as rejected (X) what I don't want to keep. And then delete rejected photos. However, it appears to me that photos in the import dialogue are never rendered bigger than ~800x600 anyway, right?

Interesting. So am I correct in assuming you do a lot of stuff in the LIBRARY module, and this is where you realize the 1:1 preview advantage?

Generally after import, I'm immediately out of library and into DEVELOP, and I will determine what images I want to see 1:1 while browsing in there. At that point, a double-click does generate a 1:1 view that is cached and quickly accessed with each subsequent click after that. I can't immediately see how it's different than the 1:1 view generated in library mode, I viewed one image each way last night and there was no difference I could notice....

Also, are you guys generating 1:1 previews on import, or just selecting a group of files in LIBRARY after import and doing it on that subset?

I do the 1:1 previews before I have a look at my images. LR does it in the background while I do something else. So, I do 1:1 previewing on entire branches of my catalog, typically the last imported ones.

I don't jump into DEVELOP immediately. Because only very few of my photos are actually worth it.

[RonHendriks1966]

Or do you mean memory consumption while in the Import dialogue? That I don't know. I always import everything and then flag as rejected (X) what I don't want to keep. And then delete rejected photos.

It's with import dialogue that is slowing down and consuming RAM memory. I will look into the other settings. Maybe change the way of working by loading them and then deleting files.

[falconeye]

It's with import dialogue that is slowing down and consuming RAM memory.

Sounds like poor programming, like LR keeps all import thumbnails in memory which then starts to swap; rather than discard thumbnails for invisible thumbs.

If you skip the import dialogue (just import everything) it is not a problem though.

[rawr]

I do the 1:1 previews before I have a look at my images. LR does it in the background while I do something else. So, I do 1:1 previewing on entire branches of my catalog, typically the last imported ones.
I don't jump into DEVELOP immediately. Because only very few of my photos are actually worth it.

Same here.

I copy to disk from the SD card, then import or sync from the disk folder, then go and make a cup of tea. When I come back all the newly imported images are ready with 1:1 previews rendered. Then I delete what I don't want, apply some tags etc in Library, then use Develop only on images that are worth it or need some help. Then I export any modified good keepers as needed as JPG or TIFF.

[jsherman999]

...
I don't jump into DEVELOP immediately. Because only very few of my photos are actually worth it.

That was kinda my point and why I was asking, with that method you're generating 1:1 previews on a whole bunch of images you have no intention of working with.

When I browse in 'develop', a double click on an interesting image generates a 1:1 view only for that image, and then I always have that 1:1 preview (unless it's discarded.) I'm continually deleting images that I can see in a glance I have no use for, a 1:1 preview would have been a waste.

For example what's the advantage to generating 1:1 previews on say a 400 image import if I'm probably only interested in working with 50 or less files? (usually less). I can easily determine with a glance at the 'minimal' import preview what those files will be.

I'm not saying 1:1 on everything is wrong, I'm saying I'm missing what the advantage is, especially if this import/generation time seems to be a main cause of annoyance. Maybe I should just try it your way for a week and see if I get why it's preferable.

(This is pretty far off topic and perhaps should be taken up in the appropriate subforum, but I'd like to know)


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