Disappointed with Lightroom 3

[Kirk Gittings]

Different OSs handle memory in different ways. Your experience on your Mac, with how memory is used, in no way corresponds to what a user will have on Windows 7, since Abobe will have to write custom modules for each OS.

LR 3 64 bit also works fine on my Core 2 Quad PC with Vista and 8GB Ram.

[roteague]

LR 3 64 bit also works fine on my Core 2 Quad PC with Vista and 8GB Ram.

That's good to hear. I'm still running LR1, so I don't have much insight into how LR3 works other than what I read. Thanks for the clarification; I'm glad to hear you haven't been having any problems.

[John Bowen]

Robert,

Welcome Back!

[roteague]

Thanks John, I've been just too busy the past year or so to spend much time on Internet forums, but I'm trying to get reconnected with my love for LF, before film disappears....

[D. Bryant]

I've got LR3 on both my location laptop and studio computers (All mac with the latest OSX). They all run way faster than previous versions and I've not noticed any slowdowns at all and I use it everyday all day.

Must be a lucky one?

From reading various posts on different forums it seems that LR3 typically runs better on Macs than PCs (regardless of Windows version), but that is only an anecdotal observation.

For me LR3 has performed poorly compared to LR2, that is it runs much more slowly. The Spot Clone/Heal tool behaves bizarrely and is almost impossible to use.

I'm currently running LR 3.2 and this latest release does seem to improve performance a bit. Still I'm enthusiastic about the product and will continue to use it as much as possible.

I'm still undecided about upgrading to CS5 though I probably will soon. I've become particularly fond of using collections to organize my work and can do most editing chores in LR rather than Photoshop, but this is primarily when I'm editing digital files created with a DSLR.

For scanned film I prefer PS.

Don Bryant

[Rider]

From reading various posts on different forums it seems that LR3 typically runs better on Macs than PCs (regardless of Windows version), but that is only an anecdotal observation.

I wonder if this is at least in part a perception caused by the fact that LR 3 was the first Mac version that was 64-bit, so Mac users noticed an improvement over 32bit LR2, while LR2 for Windows was already 64-bit so there wasn't a potential improvement. Add to that a couple of bugs that were present in LR3 for Windows.

For me, LR3.2 is much better than LR3; it's still not as snappy as LR2, but it's no longer unbearable (LR 3 was unbearable on my 8 GB Quad-core Win 7 system).

[Kirk Gittings]

But aside from speed issues, I think there is much to like in LR3, image processing quality to name the most important. The new sharpening/noise reduction controls are a big step forward.

[D. Bryant]

But aside from speed issues, I think there is much to like in LR3, image processing quality to name the most important.

Again this observation maybe anecdotal but it seems that keeping the Catalog optimized helps performance. I optimize each time after I Import or exit LR.

The new sharpening/noise reduction controls are a big step forward.

Absolutely!

The first time I processed high ISO files (1600 ISO +) made with my Canon 50D was like receiving a new camera. It was instantly apparent that the old engine used for ACR/Lightroom had a very flawed NR engine.

I had already stopped using NR and sharpening for RAW processing having found Nik Define or Noise Ninja to do a much superior job immediately after rendering the file prior to any other processing. That was followed by capture sharpening with Nik Sharpener. All of which was sort of pain but necessary evil.

Hopefully Adobe will iron out some more of the performance issues.

Don