Does my M2 have too little memory for Lightroom?

[Moriske]

I have been using an M2 -> 16GB / 512GB ssd for a few days now and notice while using Lightroom that quite a bit of memory is used.

The Swap here is currently +6GB?!

On my old iMac 5K (late 2015) with 512GB SSD and 24GB memory. I never had any issues with swaps, does this mean I'm running out of memory?

If I want to replace this M2 for an upgrade, is increasing the memory to 24GB sufficient or should I push the setup to a higher level?


Can the experts here please give me some good advice so that I can enjoy the mac min for a few more years?

 

[AlixSPQR]

Are you a professional who really need to use Lightroom? If so, you should go to a higher level.

 

[Moriske]

I'm not a professional.

Since my old iMac never had to use the swap memory, I notice with the M2 that a swap of +6GB is strongly used. I wonder if this has a negative effect on overall performance?

According to Apple about swap click

The 'Memory Pressure' graph shows whether your computer is using memory efficiently.
- Green memory pressure: Your computer uses all the RAM in an efficient way.
- Yellow memory pressure: Your computer may eventually need more RAM.
- Red memory pressure: Your computer needs more RAM.

With my swap I am therefore in the yellow area.

 

[Samford]

Moving the "Lightroom" folder which holds the Catalogue files/Settings/Previews/Backups to a fast external SSD makes a real speed difference on Intel Macs. Lightroom writes heaps of temporary files. Worth a try. In Lightroom Preference change location of Catalogue.

 

[woolypants]

I never had any issues with swaps, does this mean I'm running out of memory?

No it just means your Mac is memory managing, like it's designed to.

Good advice: Stop looking at these figures. Close Activity Monitor. Just use your computer. If it truly runs out of memory, you'll know because a dialog box will appear and your computer will slow.

Also, update to the newest version whenever it's available in case there is a bug.

 

[Bob_DM]

I have been using an M2 -> 16GB / 512GB ssd for a few days now and notice while using Lightroom that quite a bit of memory is used.

The Swap here is currently +6GB?!

On my old iMac 5K (late 2015) with 512GB SSD and 24GB memory. I never had any issues with swaps, does this mean I'm running out of memory?

If I want to replace this M2 for an upgrade, is increasing the memory to 24GB sufficient or should I push the setup to a higher level?


Can the experts here please give me some good advice so that I can enjoy the mac min for a few more years?

I upgraded from M1/16GB mini to M2 pro 32GB, memory pressure/swap stays about the same in Lightroom (+/- 50% yellow maybe a little less swap a few GB), so it seems more memory available = more used. Feels about the same speedwise. Panotest with 33 18Mpix raws went from 1 minute to 45 seconds. So it is faster but in practice doesn’t feel much different.

 

[AlixSPQR]

I notice with the M2 that a swap of +6GB is strongly used. I wonder if this has a negative effect on overall performance?

Yes, it has, if you use a benchmark side to side and compare, but if you don't experience lack of performance, then it isn't important. The SSD may be somewhat degraded with time, but it will most likely last longer than the computer itself is relevant for daily use.

 

[StellarVixen]

I have been using an M2 -> 16GB / 512GB ssd for a few days now and notice while using Lightroom that quite a bit of memory is used.

The Swap here is currently +6GB?!

On my old iMac 5K (late 2015) with 512GB SSD and 24GB memory. I never had any issues with swaps, does this mean I'm running out of memory?

If I want to replace this M2 for an upgrade, is increasing the memory to 24GB sufficient or should I push the setup to a higher level?


Can the experts here please give me some good advice so that I can enjoy the mac min for a few more years?

Yeah, that's...not great, not terrible. If this is the heaviest workload that you usually have, you will be fine for some time I guess. You are not running out of memory, but you do not have too much to spare either. It should be ok.

 

[Moriske]

I upgraded from M1/16GB mini to M2 pro 32GB, memory pressure/swap stays about the same in Lightroom (+/- 50% yellow maybe a little less swap a few GB), so it seems more memory available = more used. Feels about the same speedwise. Panotest with 33 18Mpix raws went from 1 minute to 45 seconds. So it is faster but in practice doesn’t feel

If I understand your post correctly, upgrading the memory to eg 24GB will not make sense for Lightroom, especially since swap will still happen.

Strange that my old iMac 5K late 2015 with 24GB memory never showed any swap?

How can I prevent that there is less swap with a better performance as a result?

 

[Burai]

If I understand your post correctly, upgrading the memory to eg 24GB will not make sense for Lightroom, especially since swap will still happen.

Strange that my old iMac 5K late 2015 with 24GB memory never showed any swap?

How can I prevent that there is less swap with a better performance as a result?

Are you actually suffering from a degradation in performance?

 

[Moriske]

Are you actually suffering from a degradation in performance?

Since I upgraded from an iMac late 2015 to an M2, I unfortunately have no reference how the performance of an M2 without swap compares.

I would think it a shame not to use the full performance of the system.

 

[Burai]

Since I upgraded from an iMac late 2015 to an M2, I unfortunately have no reference how the performance of an M2 without swap compares.

I would think it a shame not to use the full performance of the system.

It'd also be a shame to unnecessarily spend hundreds of dollars to chase graphs in Activity Monitor rather than because your system is actually suffering from reduced performance during your workflow.

That you can't tell if performance is affected really tells you everything you need to know. It's obvious when a computer is being pushed beyond it's limits. If you can't confidently detect any degradation in performance, you don't have any.

 

[AlixSPQR]

You should be fine with the specs you have. Try the following:

1. Reboot in safe mode.
2. Reset the SMC.
3. Reboot in recovery and repair permissions.
4. Dump the Lightroom preferences.
5. Reinstall Lightroom
6. Try creating a new library in Lightroom. Could be a corrupt file.
7. It’s possible that your library has too many pictures for your Mac. Creating a new library with only a few thousand photos may help.
8. Clear some space in your hard drive. Use external drives for as much as possible including your Lightroom library. I would recommend a Samsung high-speed SSD for pro work. You want to keep at least 25% of your boot drive available for virtual memory. I follow this even with 256 GB of ram in my MacPro.
9. If all else fails, try booting from another drive. If that works, you may need to do an erase and reinstall or, new in Monterrey, erase content and settings.

Lightroom system requirements

Your computer must meet the minimum technical specifications outlined below to run and use Lightroom.

helpx.adobe.com

I do believe some of those actions are for an Intel mac.

Edit: The quoted post above has now been corrected by the poster.

 

[ericwn]

It'd also be a shame to unnecessarily spend hundreds of dollars to chase graphs in Activity Monitor rather than because your system is actually suffering from reduced performance during your workflow.

That you can't tell if performance is affected really tells you everything you need to know. It's obvious when a computer is being pushed beyond it's limits. If you can't confidently detect any degradation in performance, you don't have any.

Spot on!

 

[smirking]

If I understand your post correctly, upgrading the memory to eg 24GB will not make sense for Lightroom, especially since swap will still happen.

Strange that my old iMac 5K late 2015 with 24GB memory never showed any swap?

How can I prevent that there is less swap with a better performance as a result?

You are all good! Just use your computer and ignore the arcane details of Activity Monitor. I ran the crap out of an 8GB 13" M1 MBP on Capture One Pro with a ton of other stuff running in the background (including Windows 11).

In the time I had that 8GB M1 MBP, my memory pressure was lava red the entire time and it was still working mostly without any incident. Of the few performance issues I had, they were primarily software related ones that hardware upgrades would address only marginally.

Granted, Capture One Pro and Lightroom aren't the same program, but they're pretty equivalent and I'd expect that Adobe would be able to design better software than Phase One (maker of Capture One Pro).

 

[woolypants]

The only one I’m not sure about is repairing permissions. The rest work on both.

Repairing permissions went years ago.

There is no SMC on Apple Silicon Macs.

 

[saudor]

Yes, as per apple's support documents, you are running out of memory. However, if you don't do this often, it won't be an issue. I had a friend who was constantly overloading their RAM and while the computer itself ran OK even in the red, the SSD took a massive beating from all the swap usage and health dropped to 10% or so in just 2 years. Even then, it won't be an issue if a few years is all you're expecting out of the machine and SSDs can continue to work even at 0% health.

 

[Moriske]

@All
Thank you for your contribution.

On the basis of this Youtube it has become clear to me that more ram memory does not result in a higher performance gain.

Basically, this means that I will adjust my current setup to the following configuration.

Processor: M2
Memory: 16GB
SSD: 512GB upgrade to 1TB for higher performance in swap and longevity.

 

[Ethosik]

Sometimes there are bugs or bad source files. I recently used Davinci Resolve to cut up a few 1080p footage. I have a maxed out M1 Ultra Mac Studio at 128GB of RAM. I started swapping like crazy and my memory pressure was in the red. I got out of memory warning half way through the export process. I restarted, quickly reencoded the source file and tried again. It barely used more than 5GB of RAM after I did that. Could have been a partially corrupt file somehow.

 

[fisherking]

the only app i use on my mac is activity monitor; i like to open all the apps, then just watch carefully to see which ones creep up on the cpu or ram.

once i compile my findings, we can do a class-action lawsuit. anyone can use an app like safari (or lightroom), but only a genyus like myself is prepared to go after the fat cats who allow memory swaps, or any cpu usage...

 

[Darjeeling]

the only app i use on my mac is activity monitor; i like to open all the apps, then just watch carefully to see which ones creep up on the cpu or ram.

once i compile my findings, we can do a class-action lawsuit. anyone can use an app like safari (or lightroom), but only a genyus like myself is prepared to go after the fat cats who allow memory swaps, or any cpu usage...

Ha! Genyus, fisherking.

This is a computer forum, so the geeking over tech specs is expected, as are huge helpings of FOMO (sorry, do I spell that "future proofing"?), RAM and processor envy, and sometimes brittle and defensive (self) justifications for money spent on high-end hobbyist machines.

But seriously, Activity Monitor monitoring has really gotten out of hand lately.

 

[smirking]

Sometimes there are bugs or bad source files.

I think you misspelled "always."

 

[unchecked]

It'd also be a shame to unnecessarily spend hundreds of dollars to chase graphs in Activity Monitor rather than because your system is actually suffering from reduced performance during your workflow.

That you can't tell if performance is affected really tells you everything you need to know. It's obvious when a computer is being pushed beyond it's limits. If you can't confidently detect any degradation in performance, you don't have any.

Yes and no. You don’t want to wait for the “You’ve run out of app memory” pop up to appear.

Knowing when you’re near that is a good way to know you need to start closing tabs or other applications. When we start seeing something’s not quite right and feel degradation creeping in, it almost always is already too late.

Using swap is the OS’s way of a fail safe to prevent us from getting that out of app memory while we close other things. We shouldn’t rely on it on a regular basis.

 

[mr_jomo]

Data from ArtisRight:

 

[Devnul0]

You said you upgraded from a 2015 iMac … any chance you're still running the Intel/x86 version of Lightroom as opposed to the native version? Check in Activity Monitor, the CPU page, the "kind" column, and make sure Lightroom is listed as Apple, not Intel.
I just discovered I'm still running the Intel version of Webex despite the Apple Silicon native version having come out almost a year ago. Plus a few other Intel lurkers...