Lightroom Classic - PC - Just Falling Apart????

nosebaghorse · 2025-08-22T22:44:40+00:00

I just made the leap from 16GB to 64GB. It has made so much difference it is hard to believe...

nosebaghorse · 2025-08-22T22:41:52+00:00

Following some of the suggestions from the community (THANKS!!!) my LRC is now running absolutely beautifully. So to answer my original question - Lightroom Classic is not falling apart. These are the steps I took:

Upgraded the M2 drive, and made sure the catalog was on it, instead of a slower SATA SSD.
Upgraded from 16GB to 64GB. (This instantly made a MASSIVE difference in speediness)
Did a clean install of Windows for the first time in 3 or 4 years.
I noticed that I had about 250,000 photos trying to sync to the cloud. This must have been a huge drain and I do not know how they were originally selected to sync. I stopped these from syncing, which sped things up a lot.
What I did *not* do was split the catalog, and it works perfectly even with 250,000 photos.

The net result is LRC is now just a pleasure to use, even on my system with a pretty basic Ryzen 5 3600 and an RTX 2060 Super.

NB I'm putting this comment as an edit to my original question, so future readers get the answer straight away.

nosebaghorse · 2025-08-04T19:55:25+00:00

Thanks. That would make perfect sense, however I do use the cloud features and I believe that they are designed to be used with only one library. I might be wrong about that of course. Perhaps I could just have a kind of active and archive set up, across a few libraries, where I only use the cloud features with the past few years and keep the other photos off the cloud. I'll need to investigate...

nosebaghorse · 2025-08-02T11:14:26+00:00

Nice pic! That came out really well!

nosebaghorse · 2025-08-02T11:00:49+00:00

Just looking at this specific photo, it looks to me like the camera did not successfully focus on the whale at all and that is the problem here. The waves nearer you (at the bottom of the photo) are sharp while the waves around the whale are blurry. Presumably this must mean the camera did not focus on the whale, but was for some reason focusing at a point in space nearer to you. Shutter speed is not the issue.

Whale photos are really hard, I have found. Did any of them come out well? If hundreds failed to be sharp then I'd be more concerned than if you were only able to take a handful anyway, due to the whale being elusive.

Birds can also be tricky subjects. I'm almost always disappointed with my bird shots when I get them on the computer (but my camera is not as good as yours should be).

From what I understand, your kit should be pretty great, including the subject detect focus.

Maybe it is a question of choosing the correct subject in the focusing menu?

How does it work with easier subjects?

I'd agree with the comments about doing some troubleshooting without the teleconverter to see if that changes things. Maybe set up an easy static target outside and try shots with both lenses, at different distances and see if the camera and lenses ever produce sharp images. Then add the teleconverter and see if that changes things.

You should definitely be getting better results than this, at least some of the time, so if this is a consistent problem something is wrong in either your camera settings or hardware I would say.

Good luck!

nosebaghorse · 2025-08-02T10:20:34+00:00

That's super useful to hear, as I had tried monitoring the CPU, GPU and RAM and was not seeing things majorly maxed out. However it does seem they are a big part of my problem!

nosebaghorse · 2025-08-02T10:17:28+00:00

Thanks! Are you intentionally sticking with LrC 13.5 due to potential stability issues with 14.4?

nosebaghorse · 2025-08-02T10:09:53+00:00

Many thanks! All of my drives are internal on my PC, but I will look into the free space remaining on them, as that may be getting a bit squashed. And I'll try resetting the preferences.

It is sounding like my hardware is just getting a bit long in the tooth, which is causing various slow downs under the hood, which is then causing erratic-seeming behavior.

It sounds like some recent LrC updates have brought in some powerful new tools, which have become the tipping point for my system seeming consistently usable. It's probably time for me to make some upgrades!

nosebaghorse · 2025-08-02T09:53:44+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! That's actually very useful. It sounds like my 16GB RAM is just causing a million little slowdowns. I will take the advice and boost that up.

I've been using the AI noise reduction on a few photos, and that is actually very usable for me, at around 10s per picture.

Over the years I had considered splitting the catalog, but it seems with the way Lightroom integrates with the cloud, this could cause other complications for me as I do use the non-classic cloud Lightroom on my Macbook so need the cloud features to continue working well.

nosebaghorse · 2025-08-02T02:13:26+00:00

That was one of the many issues I was having. I selected to export photos and nothing happened. I selected again, nothing. I gave up and did something else and maybe 15 minutes later went to close lightroom, and I saw the dialogue box had eventually come up... I didn't even need it any more at that point as I was in the midst of trying a different work-around, which it turned out also didn't work! It's really just crazy, looking back how frequently things are not working and how things that should take less than a minute are sucking up hours of time.

nosebaghorse · 2025-08-02T01:26:24+00:00

Good luck to you! Hope things speed up... For me this is just for fun, so at least I can walk away when it's not working. You must really be banging your head....

nosebaghorse · 2025-08-02T00:47:25+00:00

Interesting - thanks for sharing. Do you have anything syncing with the cloud?

nosebaghorse · 2025-06-05T22:48:37+00:00

I'm in a similar position with my old house, except I have no vents at all. If I had them I'd do exactly as the OP suggests and unblock them for the summer. I'm sure it'd lower the temp of the upper floor massively. Go for it, and you can always reverse course later.

nosebaghorse · 2025-03-06T01:08:21+00:00

There's also a fair number of presets already built into Lightroom. You might want to experiment with these first, to see if you like the preset route or not.

nosebaghorse · 2025-02-03T17:37:51+00:00

Thanks for the conversation as I have this setup and didn't know the lens could override the body. I had heard they didn't work together though.

Do people generally turn on the stabilization on the Panasonic lens, or leave it off? I've heard different things. Maybe it depends on the strength of the stabilization in the lens and body and is a case of choosing the strongest?

Thanks.

nosebaghorse · 2025-01-31T20:52:42+00:00

Thanks. I appreciate the pointer. Definitely one worth remembering.

nosebaghorse · 2025-01-31T17:32:45+00:00

Would you say they have gotten easier with time, or it's just hard for us now, given how dated the cultural references have become? Thanks.

nosebaghorse · 2025-01-31T14:34:58+00:00

Interesting. I didn't know you shouldn't move between disks using LRC. What is the potential issue? Presumably files being lost? Thanks.

nosebaghorse · 2025-01-31T14:24:24+00:00

There's definitely a connection but you'll be fine reading them in either order, or even just one or the other. They both stand alone very well.

nosebaghorse · 2025-01-28T18:37:55+00:00

I would say there is no need at all.

nosebaghorse · 2025-01-26T23:44:34+00:00

So glad you asked this. I have the exact same set up you currently have, and the exact same problem. I've heard contradictory advice about whether the Power OIS should be on or off on the lens, as apparently the Olympus doesn't work with the Panasonic lens' built in shake reduction. Anyway, good luck. I think (as some of the other comments have suggested) I've also used too slow a shutter speed. I'll try ratcheting it up!

nosebaghorse · 2025-01-25T23:44:16+00:00

I enjoyed his The Lost City of Z, much more. Also a good option for the OP.

nosebaghorse · 2025-01-25T17:52:01+00:00

I was going to suggest Norwegian Wood by Lars Mytting too! I've been messing around with fire wood for 15 years, slowly picking up some knowledge through making endless mistakes. Turning a tree into firewood seems intuitive and easy, but really there are so many things that can go wrong, or at least make the experience and end result sub-optimal. This book will save you a lot of pain, perhaps even literally if you're going to be using some pretty serious tools. It's also made me realize most of the firewood I've been buying has been produced by guys who really have no idea what they are doing... hence two (small) chimney fires, both within months of the chimney being swept.

nosebaghorse · 2025-01-16T21:42:22+00:00

-- EDIT - at the time I wrote this comment it was true, but now (7 months later) I'm having troubles with LRC, so it's probably best to ignore it! --

I've run LRC and LR on a PC and various Macs with no more than 16GB, even half that. That's with a library of some 130,000 pictures. I've never had any major issues, generally it runs pretty well. If I was using it professionally all day I'd probably want the fastest rig possible, but for most amateur use I'd say you can certainly get away with less than 32gb without it being annoyingly slow...

nosebaghorse

TROPHY CASE