How to Improve Lightroom Classic CC Performance: 2023 Edition

I’ve been using the desktop version of Lightroom for many years as the centre of my photography editing workflow. 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.

As a travel photographer, I find Lightroom to be the best photo editing software, and an indispensable tool. The monthly subscription is a price well worth paying, and I recommend it to all my students on my travel photography course.

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. Every release seems to exacerbate the problems, especially on larger monitors, despite having a fast desktop machine with all the bells and whistles.

Because of this, I’ve become slightly obsessed with optimizing Lightroom so it runs as well as is possible.

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.

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.

Subsequent updates have continued to improve performance, including a major update in mid-2019 and another in late 2020. However, whilst these updates have certainly helped, there are still a few ways to make Lightroom faster.

Based 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. Read on to find out my top tips for improving Lightroom performance! First though, let’s answer a question about performance.

Why is Lightroom Classic Slow?

There are a number of reasons Lightroom Classic might be running slowly. After all, Lightroom is a complex application that performs the dual functions of photography management and photography editing.

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.

To allow you to manage your photo library, Lightroom builds a large database of your images. This allows you to do all sorts of wonderful things from a workflow perspective, like finding images shot with a specific lens, or at a specific shutter speed. Plus there are all the tools like keyword management, labelling and so on. The flip side of this is that a more complicated database take more power to run.

From a photo editing perspective, Lightroom is what is known as a non-destructive editor. Every edit you make can be rolled back, and the original image file remains on disk. Unfortunately, this also means that every edit you make has to be applied and calculated against all the previous edits. So as you make more and more edits to an image, the slower this process becomes.

The good news is that you can improve performance of Lightroom Classic CC by following a number of Lightroom performance tips. Whilst there will always be limitations of what your computer can achieve based on the underlying hardware, these tips should help you get the most out of Lightroom on your computer.

 

What Hardware Does Lightroom Need?

Adobe lists the recommended requirements for Lightroom as follows:

• An Intel or AMD processor which is 2GHz or faster, or an Apple Silicon processor
• 16GB of RAM
• A 1920 x 1080 display
• A GPU with 4GB of VRAM for higher resolution displays

In my experience, the more resources your computer has, the more Lightroom will use. For example, on my Dell laptop which has 16GB of RAM, Lightroom will happily suck up 8 – 10 GB of that, basically maxing out my RAM usage.

On my desktop, which has 64GB of RAM, Lightroom is more than happy to take up more, often sitting at between 20 and 25GB of usage.

If I’m editing large photos such as panoramas, and moving images between tools like Lightroom, Photoshop and Topaz DeNoise, then my desktop will often be running at 40 – 50GB of RAM usage.

At this point I’d say 16GB is usable, and up to 64GB of RAM for Lightroom is beneficial, but more than that likely isn’t necessary unless you have very specific images you are editing that are very large.

 

How To Speed Up Lightroom Classic CC

Here are my top tips for improving Lightroom Classic performance, to help you speed up your photography workflow. If you find that your copy of Lightroom is running slowly, trying out these tips should help you speed it up!

1. Put your Catalog File on an SSD

If you have a computer with different hard drives inside, and some of those are the older spinning mechanical style hard drives, and some are the newer, faster style SSD hard drives, then you will want to put your catalog file onto the SSD hard drives.

The fast speeds of an SSD means that Lightroom can get image information much faster. In addition, Lightroom stores all its preview files in the same place as the Lightroom Catalog, and the preview file is what Lightroom renders. So you want that to be somewhere that Lightroom can access it as quickly as possible.

Personally, I have an SSD just for my Lightroom Catalog. This isn’t a must, but as I have a large catalog and I like to generate a lot of previews, it takes up a lot of space. So a dedicated SSD makes that easier to manage. I then have an SSD for my WIndows and program install files, and the rest of my hard drives are larger and slower mechanical hard drives.

Storing photos on a mechanical hard drive is perfectly fine, because you’ll mostly be working from the previews that Lightroom is pulling off the SSD.

If you need to figure out the kind of hard drive in your computer, here are instructions for Windows and Mac. Moving your catalog file is just a question of locating its current location and then moving it in either Windows Explore or Finder. Full instructions on this page.

 

2. Make your Camera RAW cache bigger

Lightroom has two places where it caches image data. One is the preview cache as mentioned above, which is stored with your catalog file and used for the library view, and the other is the Camera RAW cache.

When you switch to the Develop view, Lightroom loads the image data into its “Camera RAW cache”. This defaults to a size of 1GB, which is pitiful, and means that Lightroom is often having to swap images in and out of its cache when developing, resulting in a slower Lightroom experience.

I’d suggest setting this to a number more like 20GB. I’d also recommend putting the camera RAW cache on an SSD drive so as to get maximum performance out of it. I’ve personally found that Lightroom appears to run faster when this RAW cache is on a separate drive to my system files, but I have no hard evidence to back this claim up. Still, worth a try.

You can set your Camera RAW size and location from the Edit->Preferences menu, and then choosing the “Performance” tab.

 

3. Toggle using your System Graphics Card

A few releases ago, Adobe announced that they had optimised Lightroom to take advantage of the graphics processing chip (GPU) inside a computer. These capabilities were improved upon in the August 2019 Lightroom update and also in the 2022 11.4 update. You’ll find the settings under the Preferences -> Performance tab.

A graphics chip is a part of your computer that is responsible for handling video related functions, and the theory is that these dedicated chips are faster at specific image rendering logic.

Whilst this all sounds good in theory, the reality is that the practice is not quite so simple. First, Lightroom only uses the graphics chip for some specific tasks, so not everything is accelerated. You can see what it can use it for here.

Second, the performance benefits are only usually apparent in specific situations. There is an overhead associated with using the graphics chip, as data has to be offloaded from the CPU to the graphics chip, processed, and then sent back again.

Different computer configurations, operating systems, and different graphics cards mean that sometimes there’s a noticeable performance improvement from enabling the GPU, and sometimes it either does nothing, or even reduces performance.

In my experience, larger, higher resolution monitors tend to benefit the most from using the graphics chip, although with the trade-off that there will be a slight delay in the image appearing on screen as the data shuffles between the CPU and the graphics chip. Lower resolution monitors see less benefit, and may even be slower with the graphics chip enabled.

To be honest, there is no right answer to whether or not you should use the graphics chip.

Personally, with a large high resolution monitor and fast graphics chip, I find the performance enhancements in both the library and the develop module are noticeable with my graphics processor enabled, and I don’t mind the trade-off that images take a fraction longer to load as I switch between them.

For image export, I find that exporting using the GPU acceleration feature almost halves the time it takes to export images.

For users with smaller screens and less capable graphics chips, such as those often found in laptops, you might find that Lightroom performs noticeably worse with graphics acceleration enabled.

Adobe has more detailed information here on supported graphics chips and how to identify your graphics processor. My advice is to try the various settings, and see which works faster for you.

The easiest thing is to test to see if there is a difference with the GPU on and off are how fast the global adjustment sliders impact the image and how fast you can switch between images.

Just try it out, and see what works best for your setup.

The default setting is Auto, where Lightroom detects the capabilities of your graphics card, and then decides what to accelerate. In theory it should decide between basic acceleration and full acceleration.

In my experience on all my computers so far however, Lightroom in the Auto mode has just enabled basic acceleration, despite my computers having powerful graphics cards.

The good news is that you can use the “Custom” setting in the drop down. When you select this, you then get the option to enable the GPU for image processing and image export (new as of June 2022) as well.

If you enable this, Lightroom will use the GPU for a range of image editing tasks. I would highly recommend trying out the custom mode and enabling the “Use GPU for image processing” checkbox, as well as the “Use GPU for Export” option.

When you enable this, you should see the text “Full graphics acceleration is enabled”, as underlined in green in the image above. Again, try it out in the Develop module and move the sliders up and down quickly to see what difference having the GPU enabled or disabled makes.

It’s also worth mentioning that there is a note by the “use GPU for image processing” checkbox that this only works for images using Process Version 5 or higher.

Process Version 5 was released in the October 2018 edition of Lightroom Classic. So if you have photos from prior to that time, they will likely still be at an older process version as they do not automatically update.

You will want to migrate your images to Process Version 5 in order to take full advantage of the GPU across your whole image library.

To update to Process Version 5, first backup your catalog. Then, go to your library view, and the “all photographs” option in your catalog. From the grid, select all the photos (Ctrl+A). Once they are all selected, right click, choose develop settings, and choose “Update to Current Process Version”.

Note that changing process version can affect how your images look, so you might want to test it out on a few images individually before batch applying it to all your images. This is also why a catalog backup is essential, so you can roll the change back.

 

4. Pause XMP writing when Editing

As you make edits to your photos in the Lightroom Develop module, Lightroom keeps track of them in the Lightroom catalog, which is essentially a database that has information on all your images.

This information is only available to Lightroom, so if you lose your catalog file, or want to edit your images in another application, you’ll essentially have to start over from scratch.

Lightroom has a feature to help you get around this. It can be configured to write all the develop settings data into a small file called an “XMP” file, which basically just contains the edit information. This file is written to your computer hard drive in the same place as your original RAW file. So for example, if your RAW file is called IMG_8032.CR2, a new file called IMG_8032.xmp will appear next to it. This is just a text file containing edit information.

Whilst this sounds great in principle, the issue is that writing changes into this file can slow Lightroom down, particularly as the files are usually being written to the hard drive that your photo is on, which will in most cases be a slower, mechanical drive.

The solution is to disable “automatically write changes into XMP” from your catalog settings, and instead, if you wish to save XMP files, to do it manually from the “Metadata” menu, where you have the option to disable “save metadata to files”.

Update – as of Lightroom 11, released in October 2021, Lightroom has added a drop-down option in the top left menu under your name, where you can choose to pause XMP writing.

As such, I’d now recommend enabling “Automatically write changes into XMP” in your catalog setting, but then pausing it as required, such as when you are in an edit session.

Also, backup your Lightroom catalog regularly, and keep a copy of the backup somewhere safe! It won’t make Lightroom faster, but it will save you a lot of heartache if your catalog ever become corrupt. You can set your backup settings in the Lightroom Catalog settings in the “general” tab.

 

5. Pause address and face lookup

Lightroom has some fun/useful features, such as being able to search for faces in photos and match them to people, as well as looking up image addresses based on the GPS data your images may have.

Unfortunately, these tasks default to run in the background, and they can slow you down whilst you’re editing. So the best option is to pause them whilst you’re actively using Lightroom, and if you want to take advantage of them, just start them up again when you’re done editing.

To pause them, you’ll need to click on your name in the top left corner of lightroom, and a drop down menu will appear showing you currently active tasks. Just hit the pause button on those you want to pause.

 

6. Pause Image Syncing

Lightroom comes with the option to synchronise your images to the web, so you can access them from other devices and through your web browser, as well as share work with clients.

This is great, but the synchronisation process is a bit aggressive. In particular, when you are editing a photo, Lightroom will try to synchronise the edits you make to the photo as it goes. This will often include generating a thumbnail of the image and uploading that to the web.

Doing this every time you move a slider in the develop module is clearly suboptimal! Thankfully, you can pause the sync process, just press your name in the top left corner of the screen, and press the play/pause button next to the sync process.

I would recommend always pausing synchronisation when working in Lightroom, and re-enabling it when you are done actually editing photos so it can sync your changes in the background.

 

7. Build Standard Size Previews on Import

When you import your photos into Lightroom, you have a number of preview settings you can choose. Lightroom Classic CC has a new feature, where you can build “embedded & sidecar previews”.

My suggestion is to build standard previews on import. This will slow down the import process, but it will make the Library module far more responsive when you come to review your imported images as Lightroom will be rendering the previews from your SSD rather than building them from the RAW files.

I don’t use the new “embedded & sidecar previews”. These are the preview files that are embedded in the RAW file, but in my experience, these look quite different to the previews that Lightroom develops, simply because the RAW processor in Lightroom renders images differently to my camera RAW previews. I want to see the images the way Lightroom does, so I build standard previews.

However, you might find that Lightroom works faster for you if you use the embedded & sidecar previews, so do experiment and see what works for your setup.

If you choose to use the standard previews, it’s important to set the size of your standard previews correctly for your setup.

The size of your standard preview should be as close to your screen width as possible, but not smaller. So if you have a 1920×1080 monitor for example,. that’s 1920 pixels wide. Pick a standard size preview size of 2048 pixels. You can set the Lightroom preview size in the file handling section of the Catalog settings dialog box.

 

8. Build 1:1 Previews Before You Edit

Lightroom also has the option to create 1:1 previews, which are basically the full size version of an image. You can choose to generate these previews on import, but this slows the import process down, and uses up a lot of disk space.

My suggestion is to add an extra step into your workflow. Once you have chosen the images you are going to work with (usually possible with the standard size previews), select them, and then from the menu choose to build 1:1 previews.

This will take a few moments, depending on the number of photos, but will speed up your development process as Lightroom won’t have to create 1:1 versions of your images on the fly as you develop them.

 

9. Smart Previews – To Use or Not to Use?

Smart previews are a tool that Adobe introduced to help photographers manage large image libraries even when travelling. The theory was that rather than bring your whole image catalogue with you, you could generate “smart previews” of your images, and take those with you. Smart previews are significantly smaller than the original RAW files, and you can edit them in the Develop module without needing the original file. When you return home, the edits are then linked with the original RAW file.

Adobe realised that this could be used as a performance workaround, because editing these small files was much quicker than loading up the full RAW file in the Develop module. So in a bit of a hack, Adobe let people choose to edit the smart previews instead of the originals as a performance option.

These are definitely faster for quick edits in the Develop module, although as you are working with a lower resolution file, as soon as you zoom to 1:1, you end up back on the original file. In addition, since Lightroom Classic CC’s performance improvements, tests have shown that in the Library module, using smart previews can actually reduce the performance of tasks like scrolling through images.

So now you have a decision to make. Personally, I find that using smart previews in the Develop module was never hugely effective, because as soon as I zoom to a 1:1 size, Lightroom had to render the image anyway, as the smart preview wasn’t full size. Plus, those smart previews can take up a fair amount of space on my SSD.

So unless you see a significant performance increase in the Develop module from using smart previews, or you’re not often editing at a 1:1 zoom, my suggestion is to disable them for developing. You can set your smart previews develop preferences from the Edit->Preferences menu, and then choosing the “Performance” tab.

 

10. Edit Images Sequentially

Since Lightroom CC 2015.6 (& Lightroom 6.6), Lightroom has implemented a feature to intelligently cache images for faster performance when you are in the Develop module.

What this means is that when you are in the Develop module, Lightroom will automatically load the next and previous images in the filmstrip below your photos into memory. In the below image you can see my filmstrip below the actively edited image. The actively edited image is highlighted with a lighter grey background, and the images on either side of it will have been loaded into memory for faster access.

The tip here therefore is to adjust your workflow to be sure that you are editing images sequentially, rather than hopping around all over the place. What I do is use the library to filter the images I am going to work on using the various tools (flags, star ratings etc), and I only load them into the Develop module when I have a series of images that all require editing.

I then work through them sequentially one by one, which means the image data is loading from system memory, resulting in much more responsive Develop module performance.

 

11. Apply Develop Edits in an Optimal Order

When using the Develop module, the order in which you apply image corrections can have a significant impact on the performance of the Develop module. Every time you make a new edit, it has to apply it and calculate all the previous adjustments you make. This is why the deeper you get into editing an image in Lightroom and the more effects you apply, the slower the Develop module can seem to become.

Some filters can really slow down the Develop module from the off. Filters like noise reduction for example, can really impact the Develop module.

This approach by Lightroom keeps file sizes low, lets you easily keep track of edits, and results in higher quality export images. The downside is that it results in a slower system after you’ve applied a lot of edits to an image as Lightroom has to keep calculating the edits as you go.

According to Adobe, the best order for editing your photo to maximise performance is as follows:

1. Spot healing.
2. Geometry corrections, such as Lens Correction profiles and Manual corrections, including keystone corrections using the Vertical slider.
3. Global non-detail corrections, such as Exposure and White Balance. These corrections can also be done first if desired.
4. Local corrections, such as Gradient Filter and Adjustment Brush strokes.
5. Detail corrections, such as Noise Reduction and Sharpening.

As of recent versions of Lightroom you can reorder the develop modules, so you might find it easier to reorder these into the above order so you always edit in the most performant manner.

If you want to do a lot of really detailed edits to a particular image, you might find that Adobe Photoshop is a better option.

 

12. Optimize your Catalog

This one won’t change your world, but certainly, if you’ve not done this for a while (or ever), then you should definitely optimise your catalog file. As you use Lightroom, it is constantly updating the catalog file and over time, the structure of the data can become less optimal.

To resolve this, Lightroom has a one-click “optimise catalog” option, which you can use to improve performance. My suggestion is to set up Lightroom to backup your catalog on a regular schedule, such as weekly, and set it to optimise the catalog as part of the backup.

 

13. Use a Desktop or upgrade your computer for Lightroom Use

In an ideal world, all these performance tips would magically solve any performance issues you might have with Adobe Lightroom Classic CC. However, there is only so much you can do with the hardware you have. Lightroom is a complicated tool, and needs a relatively high specification machine to run well.

It may be that your computer isn’t up to the task, especially if you’re running an older laptop. In which case, an upgrade is likely going to be on the cards.

If possible, I’d suggest investing in a desktop, as these have much greater expansion options, including bays for additional hard drives, as well as higher powered processors and graphics cards. A laptop is of course an option, just make sure you get a relatively high specification machine like this.

Keys specs to look out for are a recent processor from Intel in the i5 or i7 lineup, at least 16GB of RAM (although you will benefit from more in my experience, up to 64GB will show benefits), at least one SSD drive, and a dedicated graphics card from either ATI or nVidia.

For more tips, see our full guide to the best laptops for photo editing.

 

14. Restart Lightroom

I appreciate that the old adage of turn it off and on again is as old as computing itself, but it’s still around for a reason. Whilst this is not a permanent fix, in my experience Lightroom can start to slow down over a prolonged editing session.

A quick fix is to just close the program down and start it up again. You don’t need to restart your whole computer, just the Lightroom software.

I have no idea why Lightroom slows down, even on a high end computer, and obviously this is not a long-term remedy. But it can help improve performance in the short term, which might be all you need.

 

15. Update Lightroom

Last but not least on my series of tips for optimising Lightroom Classic CC, is to make sure that you update Lightroom regularly!

Adobe regularly push out updates to the software, and with their recent focus on performance, it seems likely that future updates will further improve the performance.

For example, the August 2019 update made some real improvements to both library navigation and GPU acceleration. The October 2020 update had performance updates in the develop module for users with GPU acceleration, as well as further improvements to the library view. The June 2021 Lightroom update added native support for Apple’s new M1 processors, resulting in large performance gains. The October 2021 update improved how metadata is read and written, as well as improving batch editing speeds and library preview updates.

Checking for updates is easy, just press “Help –> Updates”, and if there are updates available, Lightroom will prompt you to download and install them.

 

 

Further Reading

This guide to improving Lightroom performance is just one of our photography guides. Here are some more which we think you’ll find helpful for improving your photography.

• We have a complete guide to the best photo editing software, as well as our favourite Lightroom alternatives if you’d prefer not to use Lightroom, as well as a guide to the best laptops for photo editing.
• Color accuracy is important for photography – see our guide to monitor calibration to ensure your screen is set up correctly.
• Our guide to picking the best travel camera, which features a range of cameras at various price points. We also have a dedicated guide to picking a compact camera for travel, a guide to picking a mirrorless travel camera, a guide to the best action camera, the best bridge camera, and a guide to picking a DSLR travel camera.
• If you need a new lens, we have a guide to the best travel camera lenses which covers the majority of camera types available today
• Our detailed guide to gifts for photographers, if you’re looking for something to buy for a photographer in your life (or to send to friends and family as a hint!)
• We have a guide to taking better pictures of yourself, how and why to use back button focus, how to take pictures of stars, an overview of Neutral Density filters and a guide to shooting in RAW – just some of our photography posts!
• We also have an always expanding series of Photography Location Guides, to help you get the best shot in locations around the world.
• A Beginners’ Guide to Improving your Travel Photos for those starting out in travel photography
• Our reasons why you need a travel tripod

 

Looking to Improve Your Photography?

If you found this post helpful, and you want to improve your photography overall, you might want to check out my online travel photography course.

Since launching the course in 2016, I’ve already helped over 2,000+ students learn how to take better photos. The course covers pretty much everything you need to know, from the basics of how a camera works, through to composition, light, and photo editing.

It also covers more advanced topics, including astrophotography, long exposure photography, flash photography and HDR photography.

You get feedback from me as you progress, access to webinars, interviews and videos, as well as exclusive membership of a facebook group where you can get feedback on your work and take part in regular challenges.

It’s available for an amazing one-off price for lifetime access, and I think you should check it out. Which you can do by clicking here.

 

And that’s it for my post on improving Lightroom Classic CC performance for organizing and editing your photos! Do you have any tips on improving Lightroom performance? Let me know in the comments below!