Six Ways to Speed Up Lightroom
- #1: Check for Hard Drive and Scratch Disk Space
- #2: Increase RAM and 64-bit Processing
- #3: Render 1:1 Previews on Import
- #4: Set Your Preferences
- #5: Optimize the Lightroom Catalog and Connection Speeds
- #6: Embed Metadata and Keywords on Import
- Review
It seems many people are finding Lightroom to be a bit slow, which I find rather curious. I have had the opposite experience, especially when I compare my current Lightroom workflow to my older Adobe Camera Raw workflow, which seemed glacially slow by comparison.
In Lightroom 4, Adobe engineers have really worked hard to make the software run faster than ever before, and I can see it. Even so, in this article I’ll offer up a few insider tricks, tips, and techniques that will enable Lightroom to run as smoothly as possible.
#1: Check for Hard Drive and Scratch Disk Space
First off, check to see that you have at least 50 percent of your hard drive space on your computer available. If you are working with a hard drive that is more than 75 percent full (i.e., you only have 25 percent or less of your hard drive memory left), that can slow down all applications and especially Lightroom. And of course, a fast computer is a major factor, but Lightroom will work on any computer with Mac OS X 10.4 or later.