AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

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agorabasta
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by agorabasta »

Barry,

Your machines are not 'beefy', especially the 32bit one. Lr4 can't work well enough on 32b no matter what speed is your proc as there's simply too much memory traffic (and hence swap thrashing) happening. That's actually why they cancelled WinXP support, and also announced the same future for 32Bit Apple OS's.
Even the 64bit Windows machines may stilll be limited to 2GB per process mem usage, and Lr duly sticks to that stupid limit for the sake of compatibility. But they may still leave the data on the currently unused physical mem pages, so it's faster than swapping with HDD.

It all comes from the memory needed to store a demosaiced raw file both with sufficient bit-resolution and subpixel accuracy. Do simple calculations, and you readily find that 2GB limit is simply not enough for sufficient precision even for some measly 12Mp raw files.

That said, the Lr definitely suffers from hybrid graphics in its bastardly Nvidia form, so if there's anything Nvidia in your machine - you have to turn it off. And it also suffers from Nvidia chipsets because of their huge latencies at switching internal dataflows.

All in all - it's not the Lr, it's the hardware plus bad OS's plus even worse HW drivers.
Mike-Photos
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by Mike-Photos »

agorabasta wrote:Henry,

As long as you have your catalog/cache/previews on internal drive, the slow external drive does not slow down Lr operation.

And storing adjustments in the .xmp sidecars is really much better, just as Mike advises. This way you can copy raw's together with xmp's onto another machine and have all adjustments recognised by Lr on that other machine.
And recognised by Camera Raw as well.
Mike
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bfitzgerald
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by bfitzgerald »

agorabasta wrote:Barry,

Your machines are not 'beefy', especially the 32bit one. Lr4 can't work well enough on 32b no matter what speed is your proc as there's simply too much memory traffic (and hence swap thrashing) happening. That's actually why they cancelled WinXP support, and also announced the same future for 32Bit Apple OS's.
Even the 64bit Windows machines may stilll be limited to 2GB per process mem usage, and Lr duly sticks to that stupid limit for the sake of compatibility. But they may still leave the data on the currently unused physical mem pages, so it's faster than swapping with HDD.

It all comes from the memory needed to store a demosaiced raw file both with sufficient bit-resolution and subpixel accuracy. Do simple calculations, and you readily find that 2GB limit is simply not enough for sufficient precision even for some measly 12Mp raw files.

That said, the Lr definitely suffers from hybrid graphics in its bastardly Nvidia form, so if there's anything Nvidia in your machine - you have to turn it off. And it also suffers from Nvidia chipsets because of their huge latencies at switching internal dataflows.

All in all - it's not the Lr, it's the hardware plus bad OS's plus even worse HW drivers.
Have to disagree again.
There is no reason why LR3 should run better on an i-3 laptop v a quad core desktop which is easily twice as powerful just in processor terms if not more using LR4
One man's beefy is another's weedy. The desktop is very decent performance wise, not cutting edge by any means but still very respectable. Point being though as said if folks with meaty workstations are having problems with LR4 then as far as I'm concerned it's an Adobe issue..not hardware

AMD for the GPU so that's not an issue
agorabasta
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by agorabasta »

bfitzgerald wrote:Have to disagree again.
The problem is that you disagree with the facts. And the fact is that Lr4 does much more processing than the Lr3 used to do. There are now two new adaptive processes - the automatic CA correction that bends the red/blue channels geometry after analysing their distortions wrt the green, and then there's the adaptive highlight/shadow compression. Both processes are quite resource-consuming, and they both cannot be switched off, you can only switch off the effect of CA correction while the calculations are done anyway every time you open an image in develop pane.
The only adaptive process in Lr3 was the NR, and that's the only good reason why Lr3 is faster.

The sad fact is that virtually no modern machine is really adequately fast for Lr4, so no diff if that is your machine or mine. Leaving the OS imperfections aside, there are two HW aspects that greatly affect the usability - those are the proc speed and the memory speed/latency. And often a system with a slower proc may turn out more responsive if the mem latency is lower, so some lowest integrated GPU/CPU models from AMD are much faster than the equivalent speed-rated Intel models. And Intel machines with dual channel memory are much faster than the single-channel ones.

I now think it's worth checking out the speed of Lr4 with the newer AMD procs like the A10 - it may turn out being faster overall than the most expensive Intel are.
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bakubo
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by bakubo »

Barry, if it is all the additional processing being done in LR 4 process 2012 that is causing the slowdown then try using process 2010. That would presumably fix it.
agorabasta
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by agorabasta »

bakubo wrote:Barry, if it is all the additional processing being done in LR 4 process 2012 that is causing the slowdown then try using process 2010. That would presumably fix it.
The 2010 process only kills the adaptive auto compression in the highlights/shadows. It doesn't kill the auto CA. And that auto CA removal is the main culprit.
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bfitzgerald
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by bfitzgerald »

agorabasta wrote:
bfitzgerald wrote:Have to disagree again.
The problem is that you disagree with the facts. And the fact is that Lr4 does much more processing than the Lr3 used to do. There are now two new adaptive processes - the automatic CA correction that bends the red/blue channels geometry after analysing their distortions wrt the green, and then there's the adaptive highlight/shadow compression. Both processes are quite resource-consuming, and they both cannot be switched off, you can only switch off the effect of CA correction while the calculations are done anyway every time you open an image in develop pane.
The only adaptive process in Lr3 was the NR, and that's the only good reason why Lr3 is faster.

The sad fact is that virtually no modern machine is really adequately fast for Lr4, so no diff if that is your machine or mine. Leaving the OS imperfections aside, there are two HW aspects that greatly affect the usability - those are the proc speed and the memory speed/latency. And often a system with a slower proc may turn out more responsive if the mem latency is lower, so some lowest integrated GPU/CPU models from AMD are much faster than the equivalent speed-rated Intel models. And Intel machines with dual channel memory are much faster than the single-channel ones.

I now think it's worth checking out the speed of Lr4 with the newer AMD procs like the A10 - it may turn out being faster overall than the most expensive Intel are.

What facts? If people with hugely powerful workstations are reporting issues, then I would have to suggest that hardware isn't the problem
I've used LR4 on machines 2-4 times as powerful as my own and none were fast, all showed the same sloppy software coding that Adobe are well known for of late.

The quad core AMD isn't slow either it zips nicely through video encoding which should be much more demanding than a single raw image processing. I'm pointing the finger at Adobe on this one. If I were using some beaten up P4 processor from years ago you might have a point (yes not up to it) but we've come a long way since then..even with budget processors. They run rings around yesterdays top end ones.

What next 16Gb isn't cutting it? Latency well the laptop uses the same speed ram (ram speed differences are usually tiny at the best of times if we're using DDR3)
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bakubo
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by bakubo »

Mike-Photos wrote:I can't remember your views on the catalog, but another option is just not to use it, which is the way I work. I import photos, work on them, export them, and then remove them from the catalog. This keeps LR very lean and mean.
For quickie things that would be okay, but one of the main reasons I wanted to use LR or ASP was to make use of the catalog, keywording, star ratings, etc. so that I can quickly find photos using the filter abilities that not only allow searching using keywords and star ratings, but also by camera, lens, ISO, date, etc.
Mike-Photos wrote: If you do this, you set LR to store the image adjustments in a sidecar file, which it stores in the same folder as the image. It's only a few k in size.

If you don't do this, and don't store sidecars, you have the additional obligation of backing up the catalog, because this is where your settings are stored.
Saving an XMP sidecar file can be very useful, but so far I haven't been doing it. I backup my catalog regularly so all the info is in it.
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bakubo
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by bakubo »

agorabasta wrote:As long as you have your catalog/cache/previews on internal drive, the slow external drive does not slow down Lr operation.
My catalog/cache/previews are on the ihd and I back them up regularly. All the photos are on the USB 2.0 ehd so importing takes a bit more time than if they were on the ihd. Also, when I go into the develop module the photo must be loaded, or partially loaded, from the ehd. The speed is adequate, just not as speedy as I would like. Later with a new computer that has USB 3.0 I expect it to be a bit faster. Of course, when I get the new computer (whenever that turns out to be) it will have a newer/faster cpu too. The one I have now is okay though so until a problem develops I will hold off a bit on getting a new one, I think.
agorabasta
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by agorabasta »

agorabasta wrote:And the fact is that Lr4 does much more processing than the Lr3 used to do
bfitzgerald wrote:What facts?
:lol:
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bfitzgerald
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by bfitzgerald »

Facts are things that are beyond debate, unless an Adobe software engineer comes onto the forum and gives a no holds barred run down on how much more processing is being done..I'm chalking it down to what I said..sub optimal code.

A lot of forum hounds take the "boy racer" approach to not only photography, but computers too. Just throwing $$/££ at a pc in the vague hope they've spend their money well. The DPR PC forum is particularly comical in nature as everyone builds the same pc pouring money into high end boards/components that become dated quickly and ultimately are a waste of money. Real world works for me, if your PC is fast working in other ways and chewing through everything else very nicely bar LR4..then it doesn't take a genius to work out that maybe, just maybe the software isn't that good!
agorabasta
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by agorabasta »

bfitzgerald wrote:I'm chalking it down to what I said..sub optimal code.
You show absolutely no logic here. Had there been any other proggie out there that could do the same kind of processing faster, you could speculate the way you do here. Your problem is that there's none.
So you may point as much of your 'finger' at Adobe as at anybody else; after all, everybody is as guilty as Adobe for not delivering you the speed you want.
agorabasta
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by agorabasta »

BTW, just checked the performance of Lr4.1 on a budget notebook Toshiba L850D with a 4/4 cores AMD A10 proc and mere 6GB mem shared with its integrated graphics.
The speed is very adequate, about the same as I get on another machine with 4/8 cores i7 2630QM, 16GB dual-channel mem and external 6850m video chip. Another machine with a 2/4 cores i7 2620M and 8GB single-channel mem and integrated Intel graphics was incomparably slower.
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bakubo
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by bakubo »

agorabasta wrote:BTW, just checked the performance of Lr4.1 on a budget notebook Toshiba L850D with a 4/4 cores AMD A10 proc and mere 6GB mem shared with its integrated graphics.
The speed is very adequate, about the same as I get on another machine with 4/8 cores i7 2630QM, 16GB dual-channel mem and external 6850m video chip. Another machine with a 2/4 cores i7 2620M and 8GB single-channel mem and integrated Intel graphics was incomparably slower.
I have been giving some thought to buying a new computer, mostly to improve the LR experience, but this info and all the things I have seen on the LR forum indicate that I am about as likely to get a new, higher end PC that performs worse than my current one. :( Something is wrong with LR that needs to be resolved, I think.
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Re: AfterShot Pro and Lightroom

Unread post by mvanrheenen »

I agree with you. I upgraded my computer too to an 8 core system at 4 Ghz, 16Gb RAM and 2 SSD discs in RAID0 on a Sata 600 bus. This configuration performs like no other, but LR still performs average.
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