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Improve Lightroom Performance
1. Import Settings – Make sure under your File Handling Panel in the Import Dialogue Box you set Render Previews to “Minimal.” Rendering previews is important, but doing it at import will greatly slow down your import process. Also, under the Apply During Import Panel, apply as much Develop Settings, Metadata and Keywords as possible right on import. Doing so will allow you to do less batch syncing which will require Lightroom to slow down to re-process images for changes made to these settings (in particular, Develop Settings)
2. Camera Raw Cache Size - In the File Handling Tab of your Preferences, increase the Raw Cache Folder Size to at least the average size of your typical event. If you have a lot of extra storage space, then set the cache folder to a size that equals 2-3 of your average events. Increasing the Raw Cache Folder’s size will allow Lightroom to store all of the Develop Module previews for a single event within that folder. This will allow you to move from image to image throughout an entire job without having to wait for previews to be rendered.
To determine the minimum size, take the average number of photos you shoot at your particular type of event, and multiply it by the average size of the files from your camera. For example, if I shoot approximately 2,000 images at a wedding and the average file size from my camera is 10MB than I would get 2,000 x 10 = 20,000MB or 20GB in size. I would then typically add a little buffer, like 5GB extra just to be safe at 25GB of total size for my Camera Raw Cache Folder. Like I mentioned though, this is a minimum, if you are working on a 1-3TB drive, you can afford to increase the size of your Camera Raw Cache Folder greatly.
3. Working Drive Location - If you have an internal hard drive that is as fast as your OS hard drive, use that hard drive for the Camera Raw Cache Folder Location as well as for your work in process. So, the catalog with the images, and the cache folder would be located on that internal non-OS hard drive. However, never use an external hard drive (regardless of the connection type) as your Camera Raw Cache Folder Location, or your working location for your files. Doing so will greatly decrease Lightroom’s overall speed coming right out of the gate. If you don’t have a secondary internal drive, then simply use the OS drive to speed up Lightroom.
4. Set the Preview Size – Under the File Handling Tab of your Catalog Settings is the Preview Cache settings. You will want to set a Standard Preview Size and Preview Quality to a setting that is appropriate for your system and LCD screen resolution. For those running on large monitors (22″+) at high resolutions (1920×1200) you will probably want the Standard Preview Size and Quality to be set at their highest settings at 2048 pixels and High. For those of you running on less powerful machines with smaller screens, setting the standard preview size will allow Lightroom to use less resources in generating these previews when necessary to improve Lightroom performance.
5. Turn Off XMP – 99% of you should have absolutely no need for XMP files. Therefore, under the Metadata Tab of your Catalog Settings ensure that “Automatically Write Changes into XMP” is left unchecked. Writing files to XMP doubles the amount of work Lightroom has to perform with every image processed. If you are simply editing in Lightroom, and then taking files into Photoshop, then there is absolutely no reason to be using XMPs. Please see the tutorial on XMP files back in Chapter 8 of the Lightroom Guide for additional details on what XMP is meant for, and when it should be used.
6. Optimize Your Catalog – If your catalogs become extremely large, which is something that in and of itself will slow down Lightroom, then it is important to make sure you frequently Optimize the catalog from the File Menu. Lightroom will take a few minutes to optimize the catalog (depending on the size) to ensure the catalog is running at peak efficiency. However, this is typically only needed when catalogs hit the tens of thousands of images size. If you are like us, and keep each event in its own catalog, then you will typically never need to Optimize the catalog.
7. Render Previews Prior to Working - It is absolutely vital that prior to developing your photos, you Render 1:1 Previews from the Library Menu under Previews. If you have hundreds or thousands of images in your catalog, this process will take a while. So, I recommend you run the previews overnight prior to when you want to begin working on the files to improve Lightroom performance. If you are on a faster machine, you can get away with running it during your lunch hour. However, once 1:1 Previews have been rendered, you will no longer have any wait time when going from image to image in the Develop Module, or when zooming into image detail.
8. Keep Catalogs Small – The larger your catalogs get, the more they will slow down. In addition, if your catalogs get too large, you won’t be able to store all the rendered previews within your allotted Raw Cache Folder size. We recommend less than 10,000 images per catalog. Which should be pretty easy to do if you simply break off each job into it’s own catalog. If you feel it important to keep large catalogs, be sure to Optimize your catalogs frequently to improve Lightroom performance.
9. Free Up Hard Disk Space – You should always have at least 25% of your hard drive space free, and optimally over 50% free on both your operating system drive, and your working drive. Hard drives will operate less and less efficiently as more space is used.
10. Disk Defragment Regularly on Standard Hard Drives – To keep Windows and OSX running smoothly (which also will keep Lightroom running smoothly) run Disk Defragment at least once a month. It is best to run this process overnight as it can take quite a bit of time. In Windows 7, simply type Disk Defrag into the search box to bring up the utility. Note, for those running on Macs, Apple claims that disk defrag is no longer necessary as OSX has built in safeguards to prevent natural defragmentation. They mention that it could possibly help if you run with your hard drive 90% full, or have tons of large sized files such as videos. In which case, you will most likely need to look into a 3rd party application to improve Lightroom performance and speed up lightroom.
WARNING – Do not defrag SSD drives. Since SSD drives don’t use platters like traditional hard drives, there is no difference in access times regardless of where the files are located. In fact, some SSD makers even state that running disk defrag on SSD drives actually reduces the life of the drive.