Dynamics5

My Lightroom has become painfully slow after my 2017 imac with 2TB fusion drive with 64GB of memory. Any suggestions on how to remedy this? Operating system: Big Sur. Lightroom 7.

cahale Loc: San Angelo, TX

After your 2017 imac with 2TB fusion drive with 64GB of memory did what?

Dynamics5

Nothing notable. Perhaps change to Big Sur did it?

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

Try theses tips from Adobe: https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/quick-tips-optimize-lrc-preferences-for-better-performance/td-p/12549186

Dynamics5

Thank you! I will try it.

happy sailor Loc: Ontario, Canada

I have a late 2015 iMac with 32gb memory that had a 2tb fusion drive that I replaced as the drive was my problem. I had a shop put in a 1tb ssd but sadly that one was still intermittent so I suspect the controller. I got another 1 tb ssd and copied everything onto it and made it a boot drive, it is connected by the USB port on the back of the iMac. Certainly not the fastest as a thunderbolt connection would be quicker but couldn't find the dock with the right thunderbolt connector.

I have upgraded my system to Monterey, my Lightroom is running with no slowdowns. I just bought the 14 inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro processor and 16gb of memory and 1tb ssd and yes side by side tests it is much faster than the my iMac but the iMac really isn't that much slower handling anything in Lightroom.

All that to say, you might want to upgrade to Monterey, some packages seem to run quicker with it.

My Lightroom is set to 5gb in the performance, I have not turned on use smart previews and I didn't optimize my catalog.

Hopefully those things help with yours but I still suspect your fusion drive is the culprit.

DWU2 Loc: Phoenix Arizona area

Perhaps this will help: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom-performance-preferences-catalog-settings/

traderjohn Loc: New York City

Thanks for posting.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

I don't understand why Apple folks are reporting issues with OS upgrades and older computers not being compatible, or requiring work-arounds to get them with current software . . . I thought they were perfect in every way? I just retired an Windows computer I built in 2010, upgraded cpu, from i5 to i7, graphics card from 512kb to 2 gb, and memory from 16gb to 32gb in 2016, upgraded OS from Win7 to Win 10 in 2019, and finally had a power supply failure this past May. Until the power supply went, the computer ran everything I ran on it. I will likely buy a new P/S and give it to my wife for web surfing and general office tasks - Word, Excel and Access. Best $1200 (plus the extra $600 to upgrade) I've spent.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

It is because they drink the Apple Kool Aid. I have always owned PCs, and found Windows 3.11, XP, 7, 10 all to work fine on their current computer models. Some of the other versions of Windows were much less stable. But obsolescence with Windows PCs and Software is much slower, ancient stuff can still work fine. And be easily upgraded by the consumer.

happy sailor Loc: Ontario, Canada

LOL Gene, to be fair, there are always many reports from both windows and Mac OS' problems when people are upgrading. Myself, I have had no problems with any of my computers upgrades either.

I have had both PC's and Mac's that would no longer upgrade due to their hardware limitations. Sounds like you had a great motherboard to start off and were wise enough in your original build not to solder in the CPU and the I7 had the same pin configuration. My old PC didn't pass the windows 10 specs and would not upgrade so I replaced it(in my case the cheapest and most prudent option at the time) my 2010 MacBook Pro does not take upgrades to the new Mac OS but it still works and still runs LR and PS just not all their new features. I am now retiring it and have replaced it with a new MacBook Pro that I expect will do me another ten years. Not sure if I will sell or just strip the ssd out of it and send it to the junk pile.

Some people have more problems with upgrades than others, I just hope I continue to have the same experience that I have had in past years and that the only time an upgrade doesn't work is because my old hardware is just not compatible.

And no my Macs are not perfect in every way, just better than PC's.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I'm a PC guy, but Windows users are not immune to problems caused by OS updates. It's just that they occur less frequently.

My wife is getting me a new M1 Pro machine so I will be a dual platform guy (when I learn how to use it) and I can hopefully get a better idea of how to compare them. (Delivery late January or early February). I expect it will take me a couple months to get used to it (but I'll have my Windows machines to fall back on).

I expect her objective is twofold: I can eventually be her IT guy to tell her how to do things on her Mac and I can generate software that will run on the Apple platform.

All things considered I would probably not be getting one if it were purely up to me but keeping the wife happy is important.

Machinedoc Loc: Yorktown Heights, NY

Suggest you open Activity Monitor and see if anything is hogging CPU time. My 2012 Mac Mini running Catalina with 16 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD boot/applications drive does just fine. (Photos are all on a conventional USB hard drive and no real slowdown.)

minniev Loc: MIssissippi

This sounds like you need some Apple help. I use a 2011 mac with fusion drive and 16 g ram and Catalina. it runs the current Lightroom and Photoshop plus other stuff and it is not particularly slow about it. Yours is much newer and better equipped so it doesn’t seem like it should be that slow. Have you optimized LR? Did you change anything just before the slowdown began? Do you have LR set to make large previews or do some other automatic task that’s consuming too much memory? Have you run the system utility software to look for problems? Have you checked to see which programs are using how much memory to see if you can spot anomalies?

If I were you I’d post on the Apple community forum and ask for help. (They will probably ask you to download and run the free version of Etrecheck and post the results.)I’ve had good luck chasing down weirdness with the help of those folks. Once I had a dying but not yet dead external drive that was creating a lot of gremlins and they helped me find it before it went out and created even worse problems.

And you can always take it in to the Apple store and let them run their deep diagnostics on it. There usually isn’t a charge for the diagnostics if they don’t have to fix something, but your machine may have to spend a few days with them.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Toss the Fusion drive (or keep it as a second drive for image storage) and replace it with an appropriately sized SSD for the OS and Aps. Check OWC for upgrade kits. A screaming 1TB SSD kit is $200. Best performance upgrade/$ you can find.