GrandmaG Loc: Flat Rock, MI

There is some really important information in this post that I find very useful. When I bought my new Sony, I debated between the a7iii and the a7Riii. One reason I chose the a7iii is BECAUSE the files wouldn’t be so huge and I was worried that I would have the exact problem the OP is having.

I’m using a late 2014 iMac with 16GB RAM. When mine slows down, I check the internet connection, and it has chosen my slower connection. As soon as I select the faster connection, LR and/or PS speeds back up. I’m using High Sierra; but will upgrade as soon as it becomes available.

Thanks for all the great responses.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

You have enormous potential processing power there... I'd suspect settings require tweaking.

Only an iMac Pro can be configured with 128GB of RAM. If you've somehow managed to install larger memory modules in a standard iMac than Apple certifies will work, that may lead to issues...

There are known issues with Lightroom using certain graphics adapters. You may need to experiment with the settings. Try the same processing of the same image with your graphics acceleration features enabled and disabled.

Be sure the applications you use are set to use lots of memory. If you have 128GB RAM but only 3-4 GB is dedicated to Lr, Lr is going to be swapping a lot of data on and off the SSD. SSDs are fast, but RAM is faster. Give Lr all the room it needs to breathe.

Shutting down all other applications, and even disabling network access after Lr starts up, can speed up editing a bit. I do that for Final Cut Pro video rendering, and for exporting large batches of large still image files from Lr.

nadelewitz Loc: Ithaca NY

Defragmenting an SSD is not useful and is ABSOLUTELY not recommended. All it does is do a lot of "writes" to the SSD, which is what affects SSD longevity.
Defragging is for rotating-platter hard drives only.
Besides, if I remember right from when I worked with Macs and OSX a lot, isn't OSX supposed to be keeping a drive from getting fragmented all the time?

xt2 Loc: British Columbia, Canada

Sounds a bit strange for your hardware "karno." I also use an iMac, 4 GHz Intel Core i7, 64 GB 1867 MHz DDR3, & AMD Radeon R9 M395 2048 MB on the Video Card. My machine should be slower than yours, but it is not apparently. It races through my photo management, and post duties. I would make an appointment, and take it into your Apple Store for them to take a look at it. I have had good success with this formula in the past with all things Apple. Good luck!

lesdmd Loc: Middleton Wi via N.Y.C. & Cleveland

Lots of good guesses. I have nothing to add; but would like to be able to continue watching the subject.

CaptainBobBrown

Have you checked to see what's going on while the wheel is spinning by looking at resource allocation of memory, disk, network activity, etc. using Activity Monitor? The OS is trying to get some kind of resource, be it processor cycles, disk allocation, memory for process buffers, etc. Once you know what the resource constraint is you can then start to attack the problem. Until then we're all just flailing.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

This is correct. I never defrag a Mac drive. It's ESPECIALLY unnecessary with SSDs and all flash drives.

The only caveat is to keep 20% free space on any *rotating* hard drive that is in active use for editing files. With less space than that, the drive tends to slow down a bit.

It may be a good idea to disable the network AND any anti-virus, anti-adware, anti-malware applications while running Lr, to see just what effect that may be having. Macs are not immune to attacks, but you really have to be doing something stupid to get attacked (using a public network, or a network with no firewall enabled on the router or in Mac OS, or clicking on phishing bait, or clicking "okay" to installers you didn't solicit yourself). The performance hit from some "protection" software is as much as 20%. Some of it is of dubious origin and value.

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

I did not read all the replies, but I will add my comments. What are the specs of your machine, Model number, processor and GPU. ALL of those are important to your issue. I was using an iMac I5 with 32GB of ram, 1TB Hybrid drive and the standard 2GB GPU. Worked fine for most things, but I wanted/needed more speed so I upgraded to an iMac Pro, something that will assist but at a high cost. You claim you have 128GB of memory. Sorry, but I'm not believing that. Please check and report what you have. Secondly, your GPU COULD be an issue. Are you even using it with Lr? Finally, you need to be using your internal drive ONLY for programs and not storage of your photos. I use an external Thunderbolt 3 system now; was using a Thunderbolt 2 system with my older system. Perhaps I can assist you further. If interested, please PM me. Best of luck.

Ira

You might try to turn ON or OFF your "Use Graphics Processor" in the Lightroom Preferences under the Performance tab.
This directs the computer to get processing assistance from your video card along with just the cpu on the computer. Some cards are not efficient with Lightroom. You'll have to try with works better ON or OFF.
I would keep the Camera Raw cashe setting to at least 200 GB ( it is in the performance tab also )
I would also clear your PRAM. It won't hirt anything and will help you mac run better.
To do this, hold down the OPTION- COMMAND- and the P and R keys all together at the same time as you restart your computer.
When mac restarts that initial time, it will starts slower. The next time you restart it will be normal and from then on should run faster.
Here is a link to explain it:
https://thenextweb.com/lifehacks/2017/06/14/how-when-why-to-reset-the-pram-smc-on-your-mac/

redlegfrog

[quote=karno]I bought an top of the line iMac about a your ago and ordered it with 2 tb solid state.
I wanted something fast for my photo processing in Lightroom cc and photoshop.
I do a lot of night images and stacking images and basic focus stacking with 46 mp camera.
And tiffs.
I am not sure how fast these computers are supposed to be but after doing some editing on a single file I would get the wheel, and if I try to go full screen it takes about 10-30 seconds?
So I downsampled the 5k monitor in settings and upped the ram to 128 gigs now I have this monster machine but still partial way through editing a file it slows to a crawl, my 2011 MacBook Pro never had this problem, I called Mac they did performance test said all is good,
Had adobe take over computer and do diagnostic they said it looked fine??
So I have a expensive computer that will hardly develop a 100 mb file? Is it that adobe is not compatible?
Do anyone here have this setup and what are your experiences?
Should I do system restore and start again?

Some people recommend a reboot before every photo session. They say that programs that you have closed can still hang on to memory so its not freed up for your photo use.
Do you run any kind of activity monitor to see what is using all your ram? What you find can be surprising and frustrating!

Islandgal Loc: Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Canada

Would this be helpful?
https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html

hustlerb58 Loc: Fort Worth, Texas

Hi: I'm Tom Murray from Fort Worth Texas< I have the same machine and work on files much larger then 100mg (500g and higher).
I've been into computer graphics from 1984 to now. I was a Graphics designer for Lockheed Martin for 37 years and was always
working on the cutting edge of Apple computers (3D modeling & animation) I've always used disc repair ( tech tool pro 9 and the built in Disc Utility)
to streamline the data on my hard drive. I will say early on with my new Mac the SSD had to be replaced due to it getting boged down
when rendering 3d & animation. Hope that helps, call on me any time thru UHH.

Tom Murray

Bill1453

Open up your Activity Monitor (locate on your Dock) and click on the CPU tab and see which one is using the most power. You might have something running in the background that using a lot of power that you're unaware of. I open up my Activity Monitor and Photoshop, plus a couple of files, my CPU% for Photoshop was over 50%. But after a few seconds, it drop below 10%.

karno Loc: Chico ,California

Ok I will do that
Thank you

karno Loc: Chico ,California

Many thanks, Tom