MP 7,1 2019 Mac Pro 7,1 Lightroom and Photoshop configuration and Test [UPDATE: Radeon VII, 2013 MAC PRO TEST]

[gazwas]

@now i see it That may be the case for some complex operations but simple UI slowness is something I’ve only ever experienced in LR. I uses another piece of image editing software that shows no such slowness so when I do occasionally use LR its very noticeable.

 

[Adult80HD]

Since whenever multi-core CPUs have been available, countless people have slammed Adobe for not coding Photoshop to use all those cores all the time.
Well I'll let the whiners in on a secret: there's lots and lots of computational tasks that can NEVER be solved by parallel processing. It's impossible. I won't get into the nitty gritty of of it here (because granted, I don't claim to fully understand it) but in a nut shell, many image editing tasks require a serial approach to get the desired effect accomplished. Calculations have to be done sequentially to reach the final result. That means nothing more (like another core) can work on the problem until the first one finishes. But when the first CPU is done, there's no point in delegating the rest of the problem to another core when the first one is ready to go. So all the other cores just sit around doing nothing.
Granted, some things,like rendering certain effects and exporting can use gobs of cores to good advantage, a lot of the functions inside of Photoshop will never be able to... because it's not possible.

Very true, of course...but the oddball UI lag issues are not related to core count, but rather some decisions made in the coding and architecture of the application.

 

[Adult80HD]

This quote from Adobe's own page on optimizing Lightroom performance is VERY telling:

High-resolution displays
Drawing to the screen can be slow when Lightroom is using the entire screen of a high-resolution display. A high-resolution display has a native resolution near 2560 x 1600, and is found on 30-inch monitors and Retina MacBooks. To increase performance on such displays, reduce the size of the Lightroom window, or use the 1:2 or 1:3 views in the Navigator panel.

Taken from here: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html

I can see this being an issue in say...2012, but come on, higher resolution displays have been around for ages and these days 4K or greater is very common, especially in the target market for the Adobe apps.

 

[chfilm]

Here are three examples of how the interface behaves:

http://chfilm.de/download/lr/01.mov

http://chfilm.de/download/lr/03.mov

http://chfilm.de/download/lr/02.mov

here you can see how the actual image editing goes very quickly, just the image browser is soooo sluggish.

 

[Adult80HD]

Here are three examples of how the interface behaves:

http://chfilm.de/download/lr/01.mov

http://chfilm.de/download/lr/03.mov

http://chfilm.de/download/lr/02.mov

here you can see how the actual image editing goes very quickly, just the image browser is soooo sluggish.

Yes! Exactly the same here. TBH, I'm very happy with the speed of the editing now, very fast. The browsing of the library though....they really need to fix that.

 

[chfilm]

Yes! Exactly the same here. TBH, I'm very happy with the speed of the editing now, very fast. The browsing of the library though....they really need to fix that.

I'm wondering if there's any way to speed browsing up by creating the previews at another resolution maybe?
In general though I think it's really a matter of how they coded the software, it's so obvious when you use a modern piece of software like the native photos app.

Or I just tried out FCPX vs Premiere, and the exact same thing happens. The UI in FCP is so buuuutttttery smooth at every angle, while premiere is stuttering when scrolling through the timeline. I was really hoping that in Premiere it would be a thousand times better, but ....-_-

 

[Average Pro]

Here are three examples of how the interface behaves:

http://chfilm.de/download/lr/01.mov

http://chfilm.de/download/lr/03.mov

http://chfilm.de/download/lr/02.mov

here you can see how the actual image editing goes very quickly, just the image browser is soooo sluggish.

CH,

Thank you so much for sharing. Could you post the full configuration of your new Mac Pro (including monitor). If you already did, my apologies. I'd like to see all the info in one place so I/we can begin making comparisons.

 

[chfilm]

CH,

Thank you so much for sharing. Could you post the full configuration of your new Mac Pro (including monitor). If you already did, my apologies. I'd like to see all the info in one place so I/we can begin making comparisons.

You’re welcome!

16core
192gb Ram
1TB
Vega II

LR catalogue on the internal SSD,while the pictures reside on a promise Pegasu2 R6.

I have 2x5k Dell 2715K Displays attached.

 

[libertyranger10]

You’re welcome!

16core
192gb Ram
1TB
Vega II

LR catalogue on the internal SSD,while the pictures reside on a promise Pegasu2 R6.

I have 2x5k Dell 2715K Displays attached.

thanks for uploading those videos! Is the speed of the machine when you’re in develop module zooming in and out with one to one previews in switching photos? aside from II lag that you talk about, is the loading of the photos pretty quick with your new machine?

 

[chfilm]

thanks for uploading those videos! Is the speed of the machine when you’re in develop module zooming in and out with one to one previews in switching photos? aside from II lag that you talk about, is the loading of the photos pretty quick with your new machine?

I’ll have to check again tomorrow.
But I tested a bit more today and it’s definitely a much better experience in Lightroom than it was before on the trashcan, I can say that.
Especially if I make the previews a bit bigger, like bigger thumbnail size, scrolling gets much better.
i would say the app feels usable again as opposed to before. Still not how I’d want it to be but usable.

 

[libertyranger10]

I’ll have to check again tomorrow.
But I tested a bit more today and it’s definitely a much better experience in Lightroom than it was before on the trashcan, I can say that.
Especially if I make the previews a bit bigger, like bigger thumbnail size, scrolling gets much better.
i would say the app feels usable again as opposed to before. Still not how I’d want it to be but usable.

Nice! What camera are you using?

 

[chfilm]

Nice! What camera are you using?

Sony RX1MkII and Fuji XT2. The Sony raws are massive, like 64mb per file...

 

[zhpenn]

I'm wondering if I replace my 580X to VII, how much improvement I can get in Lightroom. especially switching photos in DEV modual

 

[gazwas]

I'm wondering if I replace my 580X to VII, how much improvement I can get in Lightroom. especially switching photos in DEV modual

Do you have your Mac Pro with the 580 GPU and operations are slow?

Switching modules and loading previews have always been slow in LR, so does it take a minimum of a £2000 GPU to solve?

 

[libertyranger10]

Do you have your Mac Pro with the 580 GPU and operations are slow?

Switching modules and loading previews have always been slow in LR, so does it take a minimum of a £2000 GPU to solve?

What sort of improvement would you expect from the GPU? Does the GPU just handle editing speed on the sliders or does it play a role in loading the images or exports?

 

[FredT2]

Here are three examples of how the interface behaves:

http://chfilm.de/download/lr/01.mov

http://chfilm.de/download/lr/03.mov

http://chfilm.de/download/lr/02.mov

here you can see how the actual image editing goes very quickly, just the image browser is soooo sluggish.

I still use LR 6 (I refuse to buy in to the subscription model) on a 10-core iMac Pro. Your second example of scrolling in browser mode is really a problem that LR has had from the very first beta and I don't think is affected by hi-res displays. Compared with Photos or ON1 Photo Raw it's very bad. But I still think it's better than Capture 1. I did a trial of LR 9 recently, and it may be a little better, but not much. Your third example is where Adobe has really improved since the first 5K iMacs were released in 2014. It was so bad then that I put my iMac screen into low resolution mode. It's just fine now, even in LR 6. Using brushes in develop mode, however is still very laggy, while ON1 is buttery smooth. All of the photo editors seem to have problems in one area or another.

 

[gazwas]

What sort of improvement would you expect from the GPU? Does the GPU just handle editing speed on the sliders or does it play a role in loading the images or exports?

Not a massive LR user but I do know it is very slow for numerous mundane and on the surface simple tasks.

I know Adode is using GPU’s now and was interested if you need to spend all the way to a Vega II before improvements are seen?

 

[zhpenn]

I have done a new tests.

Switching Between Images in Lightroom Develop Module

Here is the quick cellphone video shows that I test side by side compare Switching Between Images in Lightroom Develop Module

Dropbox - File Deleted - Simplify your life

bit.ly

Sorry about the video quality and "Cartoon Filter Style" for clients' privacy

LEFT SCREEN 2019 Mac Pro, RIGHT SCREEN 2013 Mac Pro

I was using the same catalog, same monitor, smart preview ON
Two keyboard press arrow key at the same time and see the reaction of 2 Macs

As can be seen on the VIDEO, the Old Mac Pro 2013 is a bit laggier than the Mac Pro 2019, with more photo go though will become laggier
While the Mac Pro 2019 always quicker, but not as quick as I expect.


Possible improvement for the later hardware upgrade?

about PCIe SSD
If I add a RAID-0 PCIe adaptor + NVME SSD to get an 8000MB/s + Speed
And use it for LR catalog and Camera RAW cache
(I'm not a LARGE catalog person, I always use the new catalog for every project just for speed)

about GPU
I would like to upgrade to Radon VII 16GB later

I can see in iStat Menu, the Video RAM fills up to full very quickly, for just a few images editing.
is the 16GB V-RAM will help a lot?

Will these upgrades improve the editing speed? Especially Switching Between Images in Lightroom Develop Module.

Thank you guys very much in advance

 

[Average Pro]

Z,
Thank you for sharing. As for your comment "a bit laggier" you're being quite generous. I can see the difference, but it is insignificant. Now I realize this is not the end all as I'm more interested in what happens once you get into editing in both LR and PS, but I really hope someone at Adobe sees this and then proceeds to fix it.

On a side note, Adobe sent me a survey. Where ever possible I selected "increase speed" as the highest priority.

 

[chfilm]

What’s driving me nuts is how super fast LR mobile can perform these tasks on an iPad. Or how smooth the photos app on OSX is. LR is just poorly written, that’s all.
About VRAM yea it’s filling up quickly even on the Vega II, but I assume that of course the more you have, the better!

 

[zhpenn]

What’s driving me nuts is how super fast LR mobile can perform these tasks on an iPad. Or how smooth the photos app on OSX is. LR is just poorly written, that’s all.
About VRAM yea it’s filling up quickly even on the Vega II, but I assume that of course the more you have, the better!

Nice, I already bought an ASUS VII, will try it in Fab after holiday

 

[tommy chen]

photos is really fast - here 5 years in five minutes
fullscreen sceenrecording at 27" apple LED resolution
while holding the arrow-key

at my main cMP with radeon VII


almost all pictures are from my iphone



or photographers canon




at full resolution

 

[zhpenn]

What’s driving me nuts is how super fast LR mobile can perform these tasks on an iPad. Or how smooth the photos app on OSX is. LR is just poorly written, that’s all.
About VRAM yea it’s filling up quickly even on the Vega II, but I assume that of course the more you have, the better!

Because I have 192GB of RAM, I can see in iStat menu, it does not make full use of it, always have more than half free ram space

Should I use RAM Disk for LR Camera RAW cache, because the ram is faster than SSD.

But one concern, because RAM disk will empty after power off, which means will empty the LR Camera RAW cache very often.

I worry about it may take more time to create new raw caches if I empty the LR Camera RAW cache every edit too often?

How does the camera Raw cache work? Is it create raw cache when I edit photos or it creates cache when I import it into the catalog?

 

[Adult80HD]

Just an interesting observation to add here: While running Lightroom and editing photos I've noticed that it eventually totally pegs out the memory on my Pro Vega II. It doesn't free it up as I switch between tasks, either--it appears that once it's grabbed video memory it doesn't let it go. Once that memory is full is when I notice things getting a bit more sluggish.

 

[chfilm]

Just an interesting observation to add here: While running Lightroom and editing photos I've noticed that it eventually totally pegs out the memory on my Pro Vega II. It doesn't free it up as I switch between tasks, either--it appears that once it's grabbed video memory it doesn't let it go. Once that memory is full is when I notice things getting a bit more sluggish.

I mentioned this before as it does absolutely the same on my system. I think it can’t have enough VRAM. But strange that it doesn’t give up the ram anymore. What’s going on there? Expected behavior?