I know Lightroom's import was slow, but not THAT slow

One of the things I've lived with since making Lightroom a critical part of my workflow over 3 years ago was the abysmally long import times. If I shoot 100 IR images on my D800, I can essentially stick the card in, start the process (which adds copyright metadata, a custom camera profile to correct the WB, applies lens correction and generates 1:1 previews) and go do something else for about 10 minutes. I've learned to live with it, but now I'm wondering if I should have to.

Lightroom's Import is 600% Slower Than Competition

I'm just a guy taking pictures, but if I was a pro on a deadline this would make me nuts. Time for Adobe to do something.

That article refers to the latest update, not Lightroom being that much slower all along.
LR is the only software I've had experience with personally. I do know that LR performance is improved with the use of SS drives vs more traditional drives. Other factors are what you are telling LR to do with each image as it imports.

How, if at all, does the cloud based LR solution differ from the more traditional installation impact import times? If you are on the CC, do you need an internet connection to import or edit files in LR?

Someone who knows lot more about coding than me said that Lightroom is programed to do tasks sequentially, and that it would be much faster if tasks were performed in parallel. It's time for a big rewrite, I agree.

carguy said:

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How, if at all, does the cloud based LR solution differ from the more traditional installation impact import times? If you are on the CC, do you need an internet connection to import or edit files in LR?

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No, you do not. Everything is installed on your computer, you only need a connection to download the software in the first place.

Thanks Woody.

Some performance has been improved in later releases, but it's the Import process is what they're specifically concerned with and it has always been slow as heck. I thought it was getting worse, but I've also been doing more things as a part of the import so I couldn't be sure.

The article points to the time required to import photos already on the disk. I import directly from a card reader and understand that this can add time. That said, the LR import process is done in two stages, first copying the files to the new location (which is skipped in this case) and then generating the previews for the catalog. It's that last step that can be interminable and needs improving on.

They made a big deal at launch about how LR 6 was the first real "rewrite" of Lightroom since it was introduced, but I would question just now much of that is pure smoke.

Woodyg3 said:

No, you do not. Everything is installed on your computer, you only need a connection to download the software in the first place.

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And also the software checks in every so often to make sure it is up to date and also if you are on monthly it checks in to make sure you have paid this month. Less often if you pay yearly.

I don't notice it being so much slower than Apple photos on my MacBook Pro (i5, 16gb ram, SSD) but it does make me consider trying photos more seriously

Marko said:

I don't notice it being so much slower than Apple photos on my MacBook Pro (i5, 16gb ram, SSD) but it does make me consider trying photos more seriously

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With the same configuration I brought in about 120 D750 images this morning. Copy from card, then produce 1:1 previews, apply lens profile and CA correction and camera profile. Took about 10 minutes. Nuts. 5 seconds per image is just a little too long.

What version are we talking about?

I would think out of all that, it will be the 1:1 previews that are slowing the process down - Have you tried an import without the preview?

SteveH said:

I would think out of all that, it will be the 1:1 previews that are slowing the process down - Have you tried an import without the preview?

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The numbers linked in the article are without previews. I know 1:1's add a lot of time, but I'd rather eat it all at once rather than having to build them one at a time while I wait during each zoom, figuring if I'm already planning on walking away then I might as well get as much done as possible. I suspect a lot of the time has to do with the way LR manages the previews in its catalog. There are other RAW viewers that folks are using to cull images that will give you 1:1 previews at lightning quick speeds, so there's got to be a ton of overhead on the LR side.

I have to be honest Jake, I have never used the 1:1 previews but I'd heard they add quite a bit of time to imports. I import from the local PC's SSD, and do all my editing from there, then move the folder over to my NAS once I'm done and importing 500 shots with camera & lens profiles, meta tags etc only takes about a minute. Next time I have a heafty number of shots I'll try the 1:1 preview and see how much difference it makes.