iMac and Lightroom, together again?

[carlgo]

When researching the best iMac configuration for LR use (thanks again for the responses I got here) I came across numerous threads and hundreds of posts from unhappy people who had purchased a full load iMac only to find that LR ran very slowly on it. The cures offered were to check out the 3rd party RAM that people added and to cut down the resolution of the screen, an unhappy fix indeed.

So, now well into 2017 has this problem been solved? I suspect it has since most of the posts regarding this seem to have petered out in 2016, but it would be good to get some definitive information before I make a purchase. Thanks

 

[monokakata]

When researching the best iMac configuration for LR use (thanks again for the responses I got here) I came across numerous threads and hundreds of posts from unhappy people who had purchased a full load iMac only to find that LR ran very slowly on it. The cures offered were to check out the 3rd party RAM that people added and to cut down the resolution of the screen, an unhappy fix indeed.

So, now well into 2017 has this problem been solved? I suspect it has since most of the posts regarding this seem to have petered out in 2016, but it would be good to get some definitive information before I make a purchase. Thanks

I can tell you that my late 2014 5k (4 GHz i7, R295X, 24 gb (8 Apple, 16 Crucial, 1 TB flash) is definitely not slow with LR CC. It would be great if it were a little faster, but it's quick enough. Sure, importing a couple of hundred D810 14 bit RAW images and making 1:1 previews takes a while, but I can still work in the develop module with no issues while that's happening. The only ongoing small annoyance is that presenting a new image means a 2-4 second wait while the image sharpens up, and this is true even when the 1:1 previews have been made. I'm not crazy about it, but I can live with it.

I use LR every day. So I'm completely used to how it acts.

 

[thekev]

The cures offered were to check out the 3rd party RAM that people added and to cut down the resolution of the screen, an unhappy fix indeed.

Third party ram is something you check in the event of crashes, not slow performance. Lightroom uses a lot of ram, so you might notice existing ram problems when you run it. Sometimes cheap ram undergoes inadequate testing. This can be remedied with memtest, but it has nothing to do with Lightroom under any circumstance. Your sscreen resolution might have some minor impact, but it is also fairly trivial. It should not have a significant impact on your load times.

Problems with Lightroom typically come down to processing a very large number of files with some jumbled up demosaic and mipmap process with a few rounds of matrix multiplication thrown in for good measure. It's always slow. I don't know if any bugs existed that made it slower than necessary.

 

[maflynn]

I'm happy with LR's performance on my 2015 iMac.

 

[carlgo]

The RAM and resolution issues were brought up quite often, and it seemed the retina models were the ones that were having a problem. Again, there were claims that lowering the resolution worked and that in other cases aftermarket RAM was swapped out and that cured the problem. Those who contacted Apple or Adobe support generally reported getting the widely coached "I never heard of that problem before" reply or they would blame each other.

Interesting in that @thekev says that resolution and RAM should not be the issue. I have no idea at all.

Anyway, anyone else here using a Retina iMac and LR? It would be useful to get more responses to see if there is a pattern or if it is not even a problem anymore with the latest and greatest versions.