Context: Part-time hobbyist wedding photographer, down/upgrading from a 2018 6-core 16GB RAM R560X 15" MBP
I was quite excited to get my hands on the new M1 MBP- but the 16GB version I ordered was taking ages to ship and upon watching MaxTech's comparison video, I figured an 8GB version would be enough for me.
I shot an engagement session yesterday and imported 950 RAW pictures from an EOS R (30MP files) with smart previews generated and used in Develop and to my horror, LR Classic was unusable. It would take 1-3 full seconds to move from picture to picture and applying a preset would take a few seconds to show- moving the sliders were laggy and I'd get beachballs every now and then. It was a nightmare.
At first I thought I was mislead by the comparison video, and posting a thread on r/Lightroom resulted in most people saying that the problem was with my decision to go with 8GB instead of 16GB of RAM. I was quite disheartened, as I cancelled my order for the 16 and cannot return the 8.
BUT, upon inspecting activity monitor, I realised that there was a process by the name of "windowserver" consuming 1GB of RAM- I didn't think much of it at first, but then I realised that it was still consuming that amount of RAM even when I quit all my apps and tabs. See, all this while I've been using a "one-cable" solution with the MacBook connected to an LG 27 inch 4K monitor with a scaled resolution- when I tried using LR on the MacBook display itself OR with the "default for display" option ticked, LR runs like butter (maybe not quite, but equally as fast as my previous workhorse).
I've read that this might be an old problem even pre-M1 Macs. But I've had no such issues with my 15" MBP with a scaled resolution.
While I'm relieved, I'm a little perplexed: the default display settings on my 4K monitor makes everything a little too large (reminds me of my mom's iPhone text size settings). Is this a bug, or is this simply caused by a RAM limitation (meaning that you would need 16GB of RAM to run LR smoothly AND have a custom scaled setting for your external display)?
P.S. bugs and compatibility issues aside (can't use LG's on screen app to change my monitor's brightness anymore), this thing is really quite fast. It runs WoW better than on my 15" running WoW on bootcamp!
I was quite excited to get my hands on the new M1 MBP- but the 16GB version I ordered was taking ages to ship and upon watching MaxTech's comparison video, I figured an 8GB version would be enough for me.
I shot an engagement session yesterday and imported 950 RAW pictures from an EOS R (30MP files) with smart previews generated and used in Develop and to my horror, LR Classic was unusable. It would take 1-3 full seconds to move from picture to picture and applying a preset would take a few seconds to show- moving the sliders were laggy and I'd get beachballs every now and then. It was a nightmare.
At first I thought I was mislead by the comparison video, and posting a thread on r/Lightroom resulted in most people saying that the problem was with my decision to go with 8GB instead of 16GB of RAM. I was quite disheartened, as I cancelled my order for the 16 and cannot return the 8.
BUT, upon inspecting activity monitor, I realised that there was a process by the name of "windowserver" consuming 1GB of RAM- I didn't think much of it at first, but then I realised that it was still consuming that amount of RAM even when I quit all my apps and tabs. See, all this while I've been using a "one-cable" solution with the MacBook connected to an LG 27 inch 4K monitor with a scaled resolution- when I tried using LR on the MacBook display itself OR with the "default for display" option ticked, LR runs like butter (maybe not quite, but equally as fast as my previous workhorse).
I've read that this might be an old problem even pre-M1 Macs. But I've had no such issues with my 15" MBP with a scaled resolution.
While I'm relieved, I'm a little perplexed: the default display settings on my 4K monitor makes everything a little too large (reminds me of my mom's iPhone text size settings). Is this a bug, or is this simply caused by a RAM limitation (meaning that you would need 16GB of RAM to run LR smoothly AND have a custom scaled setting for your external display)?
P.S. bugs and compatibility issues aside (can't use LG's on screen app to change my monitor's brightness anymore), this thing is really quite fast. It runs WoW better than on my 15" running WoW on bootcamp!
It works well otherwise (especially in general use)