Adobe Lightroom for M1 available--using more than 8GB RAM

[deeddawg]

@blaraka thanks for checking LRCC.

Just for grins, I'll give it a try on my rMB12 sometime -- hadn't planned on loading Adobe or any photo libraries onto it but am curious if there's a different behavior.

In my case I'm not going to worry about it -- I'm not a working photog, and I'm not on LR all the time. I have AC+ on my MBP, so I'm good for three years - and my typical upgrade cycle is 3-5 years. So I'll monitor what Adobe does (if anything), and will check SSD condition as I near the end of AC+.

 

[blaraka]

Ok.. so I've tried Capture One Pro 21. I've imported my 2020 photos Lightroom catalogue and made some edits randomly. Very orderly behaviour, no crazy writes from kernel_task.

And then seeing that I've tried solutions for Lightroom Classic memory leaks (because I think this is what is this): preferences reset (I've actually dumped all of them from Application Support and let them be recreated) and rebuilding catalogue from scratch... to avail. It still eats memory and subsequently disk LIKE crazy.
But I think this is what it is... memory leak. Maybe there will be a fix for that. In a case I think I might just spend my Christmas break learning Capture One

 

[blaraka]

Ok guys, I think I've narrowed it down.

The obvious culprit is GPU acceleration. For me, with the following setup:

- MBP M1 16GB RAM
- No external display (I don't have access to mine at the moment and I'm afraid it's going to have an impact)

the situation is following with different GPU acceleration settings:

- Full acceleration on:
- Lightroom reserves around 23-25GB Virtual Memory at least;
- ABSOLUTELY CRAZY SWAP WRITES
... and awesome performance.
- Basic acceleration:
- Lightroom reserved around 16GB Virtual Memory;
- OK behaviour, kernel_task is not writing swaps as crazy.
... performance still fine (as in very, very decent upgrade from 2016MBP13)
- No acceleration:
- Lightroom reserved around 12GB Virtual Memory;
- OK behaviour, kernel_task is not writing swaps as crazy.
... performance oh well, if that I'd have to live with, I'd be pissed because this is not what I've expected from this machine. Still better than the old one but a lot of stuttering going on.


All in all, I think the reason for this madness with GPU acceleration on is here:

When full acceleration is on Lightroom claims 10.5GB out of 16GB of unified RAM and writes some stuff to it like crazy. And that results in crazy swapping.

1. Out of curiosity, what's the recognized M1 GPU memory according to Lightroom for 8GB models? (@h4ck1nt0$h3r)

2. For now I can live with basic acceleration and keeps fingers crossed that it'll still solve problem for me even with 4k display connected :x

I think this is that can be solved by Adobe. At the very least allowing to set memory value to let's say 2GB would still probably give us some performance improvement without crazy disk writes (at least on 16GB models).

 

[armoured]

- Lightroom reserves around 23-25GB Virtual Memory at least;

Seems you've tracked down or at least narrowed down to something with the graphics acceleration. Quite possible something in LR's graphic acceleration is not set up properly for M1. (I can see why some addl memory might be used for that but not so much). I took a quick look at fiddling with these settings on my intel and they don't have that much impact on actual ram usage.

But I don't think the virtual memory is the issue, or at least directly.

Virtual memory is basically just memory address space - not actual memory in use, hypothetical in some senses. Kernel task virtual memory on my machine is over 140gb right now, kernel ram is only 1.3gb; if you look at other processes' virtual memory allocations, will also be quite large compared to what they actually use.

But since it's 'virtual memory', it's really nothing more than digital addresses that a program could use (in some circumstances). No direct bearing on how much it will use or is using at any given time. Obviously there is some connection - i.e. a program requests more virtual memory or gives it up from/to the kernel when it thinks it may need, or possibly only through actual memory requests.

After that, past my knowledge level. But I think the insight of importance from that number is less important to you than memory in the memory panel, "real" memory in use. Virtual memory itself not worth worrying about (I'm not sure how the limit is set).

 

[blaraka]

@armoured I understand why you might have thought otherwise from my post but I actually know that virtual memory itself is not a problem. (BTW. my kernel_task reserves 256G at all times). I've used that number as a concrete indicator of what Lightroom think it needs at different settings. The relationship is preserved with actual RAM usage though so perhaps I should have used those not to create confusion

In any case, yeah, GPU acceleration seems to be a definite culprit and it actually resonates with other reports you can find on the web in regards to Lightroom's GPU memory usage problems. There are quite a lot of people complaining out there that Lightroom seems to take all the GPU memory there is leaving none for other apps to access.

Entering "possible ******** territory" (since I'm not sure if any of it makes sense, not that good at architectural details):
Since with M1 there's the "unified memory", the GPU memory behaves exactly the same way as RAM being swapped etc but Lightroom uses it the same way as it uses discrete GPUs memory not taking into consideration possible consequences of that?
The whole "theory" rests on an assumption (that I'm making) that with the other integrated GPUs RAM used by GPU is "statically" reserved for it and data in that RAM section is handled separately (unlike the M1 where all memory is equal).

 

[armoured]

@armouredIn any case, yeah, GPU acceleration seems to be a definite culprit and it actually resonates with other reports you can find on the web in regards to Lightroom's GPU memory usage problems. There are quite a lot of people complaining out there that Lightroom seems to take all the GPU memory there is leaving none for other apps to access.

Entering "possible ******** territory" (since I'm not sure if any of it makes sense, not that good at architectural details):
Since with M1 there's the "unified memory", the GPU memory behaves exactly the same way as RAM being swapped etc but Lightroom uses it the same way as it uses discrete GPUs memory not taking into consideration possible consequences of that?
The whole "theory" rests on an assumption (that I'm making) that with the other integrated GPUs RAM used by GPU is "statically" reserved for it and data in that RAM section is handled separately (unlike the M1 where all memory is equal).

Simple answer is that I'd suggest setting the GPU acceleration on auto since that seems to be better.

I don't have the technical chops to comment more on your speculation, apart from saying it makes some sense to me. But I think it could perhaps be simplified to say "it seems possible/likely that LR graphic acceleration doesn't understand the unified memory architecture and causes problems when used on custom settings it wasn't designed for."

Assuming it was 'designed for' systems with dedicated GPUs with their own discrete memory - or at least dGPU/iGPUs on mac systems prior to M1 architecture. (Or possibly that option is there for those that have huge amounts of RAM and are happy to throw it all at lightroom)

At any rate, seems to set up some sort of collision that results in lots of swapping.

[and apologies if I was techsplaining]

 

[blaraka]

Simple answer is that I'd suggest setting the GPU acceleration on auto since that seems to be better.

I don't have the technical chops to comment more on your speculation, apart from saying it makes some sense to me. But I think it could perhaps be simplified to say "it seems possible/likely that LR graphic acceleration doesn't understand the unified memory architecture and causes problems when used on custom settings it wasn't designed for."

Assuming it was 'designed for' systems with dedicated GPUs with their own discrete memory - or at least dGPU/iGPUs on mac systems prior to M1 architecture. (Or possibly that option is there for those that have huge amounts of RAM and are happy to throw it all at lightroom)

At any rate, seems to set up some sort of collision that results in lots of swapping.

[and apologies if I was techsplaining]

For me, and by extension for M1s with 16GB of RAM, auto setting turns on full GPU acceleration ("Your system automatically supports full acceleration").
Regarding all the rest: I agree.

[Np, all good ]

 

[armoured]

For me, and by extension for M1s with 16GB of RAM, auto setting turns on full GPU acceleration ("Your system automatically supports full acceleration").
Regarding all the rest: I agree.

[Np, all good ]

Ah, now I see! Good to know, the auto settings are basically not correct for m1 macs.

 

[h4ck1nt0$h3r]

Ok guys, I think I've narrowed it down.

The obvious culprit is GPU acceleration. For me, with the following setup:

- MBP M1 16GB RAM
- No external display (I don't have access to mine at the moment and I'm afraid it's going to have an impact)

the situation is following with different GPU acceleration settings:

- Full acceleration on:
- Lightroom reserves around 23-25GB Virtual Memory at least;
- ABSOLUTELY CRAZY SWAP WRITES
... and awesome performance.
- Basic acceleration:
- Lightroom reserved around 16GB Virtual Memory;
- OK behaviour, kernel_task is not writing swaps as crazy.
... performance still fine (as in very, very decent upgrade from 2016MBP13)
- No acceleration:
- Lightroom reserved around 12GB Virtual Memory;
- OK behaviour, kernel_task is not writing swaps as crazy.
... performance oh well, if that I'd have to live with, I'd be pissed because this is not what I've expected from this machine. Still better than the old one but a lot of stuttering going on.


All in all, I think the reason for this madness with GPU acceleration on is here: View attachment 1695736


When full acceleration is on Lightroom claims 10.5GB out of 16GB of unified RAM and writes some stuff to it like crazy. And that results in crazy swapping.

1. Out of curiosity, what's the recognized M1 GPU memory according to Lightroom for 8GB models? (@h4ck1nt0$h3r)

2. For now I can live with basic acceleration and keeps fingers crossed that it'll still solve problem for me even with 4k display connected :x

I think this is that can be solved by Adobe. At the very least allowing to set memory value to let's say 2GB would still probably give us some performance improvement without crazy disk writes (at least on 16GB models).

It's 5.5GB, that's why I'v disabled in the first place, and noticed less writes to disk... They share the same memory and video memory is been allocated with swap. They need to avoid this. I don't know if adobe has this control, or if it's apple and Rosetta.

 

[Mistercharlie]

I tried switching the GPU acceleration off too. In LR Classic it makes zero difference to the responsiveness of the app (Which is terrible on the M1 btw).

 

[blaraka]

I tried switching the GPU acceleration off too. In LR Classic it makes zero difference to the responsiveness of the app (Which is terrible on the M1 btw).

Really? Terrible? What setup are you coming from? For me, it's completely flawless with basic acceleration but it's choppy and stuttery with no acceleration at all.
Also, it behaves exactly the same with Lightroom CC which is native already.

 

[blaraka]

It's 5.5GB, that's why I'v disabled in the first place, and noticed less writes to disk... They share the same memory and video memory is been allocated with swap. They need to avoid this. I don't know if adobe has this control, or if it's apple and Rosetta.

I don't think it's Rosetta (anymore). Lightroom CC does exact same things! I think it's a bug resulting out of the connection between M1 memory management and how Adobe handles GPU memory (people would complain about it already before).

Opened a discussion for Lightroom CC: https://feedback.photoshop.com/conv...acceleration-is-used/5fdc93413a4b973cd0edd0a5

Maybe somebody will react given there is no "rosetta excuse".

 

[Mistercharlie]

Really? Terrible? What setup are you coming from? For me, it's completely flawless with basic acceleration but it's choppy and stuttery with no acceleration at all.
Also, it behaves exactly the same with Lightroom CC which is native already.

I used to use LR Classic on a 2010 iMac with SSDs. On the M1 mini there's a long lag when you flip between full-screen images, and also whenever you try to pan around a zoomed image. LR CC is fine.

 

[blaraka]

Weird. Both operations work butter smooth for me with Lightroom Classic.

It is indeed sluggish in full-screen mode (as in: image in full-screen, not the app in the full screen mode) and only in full-screen mode. This looks like something that will be resolved I never use it anyway so I don't really care.

 

[Mistercharlie]

Today's LR Classic 10.2 update makes browsing images way faster. It's still Rosetta, but on the M1 mini it flies. I'd been researching alternatives, but now I'm back to LR. Lovely.