To allow you to manage your photo library, Lightroom builds a large database of your images. These two functions both require a powerful computer, and they require the movement of a lot of data to and from your computer’s hard drive, memory and processor. After all, Lightroom is a complex application that performs the dual functions of photography management and photography editing. There are a number of reasons Lightroom Classic might be running slowly. Use a Desktop or upgrade your computer for Lightroom Use Read on to find out my top tips for improving Lightroom performance! First though, let’s answer a question about performance. However, whilst these updates have certainly helped, there are still a few ways to make Lightroom faster.īased on my background as a software developer and as a regular user of Lightroom, I’ve put a lot of work into figuring out the ways to make Lightroom as fast as possible. Subsequent updates have continued to improve performance, including a major update in mid-2019 and another in late 2020. One of the major, and most exciting announcements with this release was that Adobe had finally done something about Lightroom’s performance issues, and this release would harken me back to the days of yore, when Lightroom was nimble and responsive. In 2017, Adobe released a major update to its photography toolkit, and in particular, it re-branded the desktop version of Lightroom into Lightroom Classic CC. Every release seems to exacerbate the problems, especially on larger monitors, despite having a fast desktop machine with all the bells and whistles.īecause of this, I’ve become slightly obsessed with optimizing Lightroom so it runs as well as is possible.

One thing I don’t love about Lightroom though is how slow and painful it sometimes can be to use, which seems to have gotten worse over the years. The monthly subscription is a price well worth paying, and I recommend it to all my students on my travel photography course. I love the way it handles pretty much everything I need in terms of managing my photos and editing them, and I use it for 95% of all my photography post-processing.Īs a travel photographer, I find Lightroom to be the best photo editing software, and an indispensable tool. I’ve been using the desktop version of Lightroom for many years as the centre of my photography editing workflow.

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