Upgrade ram or system?

[trevolly]

Hi all.

I’ve been learning more and more about photography and am finding myself taking and editing photos regularly on my iMac. I flit between the latest versions of Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, using it for general editing through to focus stacking.

I’m finding that when editing in Lightroom (using the brush tool) 90% of the time I start to use the brush tool on the areas of the picture I want to edit and then after 2/3 strokes the iMac locks up and beachballs. Then it’ll catch up after 5-10 seconds and then a lot of the time I find that the brush has locked on and I don’t have to hold down the mouse button to apply any brush changes. The brush application becomes jerky, with the iMac locking up. I am also finding that it is taking absolutely ages to go from a low resolution preview of a photo to the raw version.

I immediately know that my iMac needs more memory - it only has 8gb. My question is, is it worth it or is a new system a better option?

My iMac is a 27” late 2013. 3.5ghz i7, 8gb ram, GeForce GTX 780 4gb, 3tb fusion drive.

Many thanks all

 

[stillcrazyman]

You would do well to upgrade the memory. On the 27" it's as easy as opening a door on the back and popping in the new sticks. It will certainly help.

I did that on my Late 2012. 32GB is plenty.

 

[Cheese&Apple]

Some of it depends on the size of the images your editing but I agree with stillcrazyman - add more RAM. 32GB should do it unless your stacking a lot of images when focus stacking in Ps. Other than RAM, your current set-up is a good one that will last for a few more years.

Make sure you get the RAM from a 3rd party and don't pay the over inflated prices that Apple charges.

Also, be sure to look at: Lightroom>Preferences>Performance. Is the box checked/unchecked for "Use Graphics Processor"? Try it (in the develop module) both ways. Some graphics processor don't play nicely with Lr.

~ Peter

 

[MCAsan]

I ordered our iMacs with 8GB. As soon as they were unboxed I put in 16GB additional memory for a total of 24GB. Lr Classic, Ps, and Topaz Studio run smooth as silk.

 

[kenoh]

24GB here too, no stuttering. The spec of your iMac should be fine. Is it fitted with an SSD?

Sorry can't remember when they stopped the hard drives being a user upgrade part.

 

[trevolly]

24GB here too, no stuttering. The spec of your iMac should be fine. Is it fitted with an SSD?

Sorry can't remember when they stopped the hard drives being a user upgrade part.

No it’s not got an SSD Drive, it has a Fusion drive.

Thanks for the advice all. I knew it needed more ram, just didn’t wanna pop in more and find that the processor was holding it back and it didn’t make much of a difference. Thanks again

 

[Alexander.Of.Oz]

No it’s not got an SSD Drive, it has a fusion drive.

Isn’t a fusion drive where you load all the apps and operating system on a small Flash drive?

Do you have Lightroom and the operating system installed there?

 

[DeltaMac]

The OPs 3TB fusion drive consists of a 128 GB SSD, and a 3 TB HDD. The fusion drive is a form of virtual drive using both devices, combined by software into one volume. The system and software installs are on the SSD, with excess going to the HDD. You don't get to control what goes where between the two drives. The system takes care of all that automatically, with the booting system, and most apps running from the much faster SSD portion.

 

[Alexander.Of.Oz]

The OPs 3TB fusion drive consists of a 128 GB SSD, and a 3 TB HDD. The fusion drive is a form of virtual drive using both devices, combined by software into one volume. The system and software installs are on the SSD, with excess going to the HDD. You don't get to control what goes where between the two drives. The system takes care of all that automatically, with the booting system, and most apps running from the much faster SSD portion.

That's what I was hoping would be the default case. I understand you can force/override this though and remember reading threads about folks who had installed programmes on the platters because they had somehow split the drives into two recognisable sections and then they were wondering why they were so slow to react.

 

[DeltaMac]

Yes, you can certainly revert the fusion drive, which allows you to use the two devices independently.
The OPs 3TB would be OK, but smaller fusion drives, such as 1TB size have a ridiculously small 24 GB SSD, which is useless by itself.
There are good reasons for some to revert the fusion drive, but you do have to understand the limitations, and do the process to get that reversion to properly complete.
You can read all kinds of situations where users screw up their system.

I am fairly confident that the OP in this thread would be best helped by adding more RAM, mostly for the Adobe software to use.

 

[Alexander.Of.Oz]

Yes, you can certainly revert the fusion drive, which allows you to use the two devices independently.
The OPs 3TB would be OK, but smaller fusion drives, such as 1TB size have a ridiculously small 24 GB SSD, which is useless by itself.
There are good reasons for some to revert the fusion drive, but you do have to understand the limitations, and do the process to get that reversion to properly complete.
You can read all kinds of situations where users screw up their system.

I am fairly confident that the OP in this thread would be best helped by adding more RAM, mostly for the Adobe software to use.

I've read some horror stories of folks stuffing up that process in a grand scale and not being able to come back from it.

Hopefully, the OP has left everything in default and the addition of more RAM will get things ticking along nicely again for them. That's a relatively cheap and easy fix.

I only have 8GB of RAM in my 2012 27" iMac and I have no delays in Lightroom Classic or Photoshops latest version, and I don't have a very good graphics card either, but, I do keep a very tight ship with this machine, and she continues to chug along nicely for me.

 

[MCAsan]

Memory matters. I started using Topaz Studio as a plugin set for Lr. In Studio there are over 20 adjustments you can add to a given image. You can add a pile of them to one image. One way to keep things easier to use is to flatten the image with all the current adjustments. Then you can put in another series of adjustments and flatten again. The limit is video memory, not main memory. So when setting up a new Mac for serious photo editing, not only consider the ability to bring up main memory into the 16GB-32GB range, but also have a GPU that at least 4GB if not 8GB of memory to get max performance from the machine with a variety of applications. We should see apps take more and more advantage of discrete GPUs and their memory over time.

 

[Ray2]

Makes no sense. Machine is more than adequate to handle brush edits without stuttering let alone beach balling.

 

[maflynn]

Makes no sense. Machine is more than adequate to handle brush edits without stuttering let alone beach balling.

Agreed, that's nor normal behavior and I 'd look into finding the cause of that beach balling

 

[kenoh]

Makes no sense. Machine is more than adequate to handle brush edits without stuttering let alone beach balling.

Good point... I was thinking on the focus stacking but yes on reading it properly... a simple brush stroke shouldnt have that machine on its knees.

 

[trevolly]

Thanks for the info guys. I agree it is strange that it does this and tbh I’m surprised it is, but it definitely is. Fusion Drive is in its “original” state and I am running the latest OS. The Fusion Drive isn’t even full, still having about 2TB of space available. I’ve also run disk utility regular. I’ll see if I can get a video of it happening and upload it. Tbh I’d love to clean reinstall the OS and programs but the Fusion Drive is a bit of a git and when I did this before it had to go in to Apple.

 

[dwig]

Thanks for the info guys. I agree it is strange that it does this and tbh I’m surprised it is, but it definitely is. ...

Are you running any other software while running Lr?? There could be a conflict.

I've not encountered this with Lr, but I have found that the new "2018" version of Ps runs into extreme grief with large files (~<400mb) when any Webkit based browser is running (e.g. current versions of Safari, Firefox, Chrome, ...). This happens on my Late2015 iMac 27" retina (fully "blown": i7, 32gb RAM, 1tb SSD, optional GPU, ...) running Sierra. Since encountering this in Ps and experimenting to confirm the conflict I've stopped leaving browsers running when editing images. I've not tested Lr. I always run it when running Ps so never have browsers open at that time.

 

[mollyc]

I will say that I had a 2012 i7 with an upgraded graphics card and 32gb ram on a 1tb fusion and had the same issue with a LR brush. That machine has since been given to my daughter and I have the 2017 i7 and no longer have this issue. I now also have a 1tb SSD rather than the fusion.

For me the newer CPU made a big difference. The fan spins up now but there is no lag.

 

[trevolly]

Hi guys.

Back again! No I’ve not got any other apps or programs open. If anything is open it’s Photoshop and that is opened by Lightroom when I choose edit with.....photoshop.

Both Lightroom and Photoshop are the monthly payment versions and are all up to date. Ninety nine percent of the photos I am editing are raw images and are anything from 20mb to 80mb in size. Photoshop is used a lot for removing items / blemishes as I find the Photoshop tool better. I have recently started playing with focus stacking in Photoshop.

I have recorded a video of Lightroom’s performance tonight. I am editing a raw photo and I have selected the brush tool (no alterations have been chosen to be applied to the area I am brushing, in theory I am just “selecting”) and have a colour mask on to show me where I’ve used the brush. In the video I’ve already used the brush a bit and the video starts by showing that I am applying the edit brush without even holding the mouse button down, it’s locked on. It also shows the cursor beachballing regularly. During this time no other programs are open. I hope YouTube links are allowed.

 

[DeltaMac]

You might like to have one other app open -- Activity Monitor.
Launch that, then watch the CPU and Memory screens while the beachballing happens. You may be able to tell which processes ramp up at the time you see beachballing. You can sort the Activity Monitor window so CPU, or Memory, or whatever you like is sorted with high usage at the top.

 

[trevolly]

Thanks for the advice @DeltaMac, I did the same as before, editing the same picture the same way as I did in the video and had the Activity Monitor up. When it started locking up and beachballing I quickly got a screenshot for the CPU and Memory menus. The CPU hit 168.8% and the memory hit 1.60gb.

 

[DeltaMac]

That doesn't really show much of anything.
Go to the View menu, and change "My Processes" to "All Processes"

With the memory pressure graph that you show, I don't expect that Activity Monitor will do much for your situation, as that looks very low (as it should... )

Do you keep part of your image edits on a scratch drive (external drive) - or is everything done on your internal drive?

 

[Cheese&Apple]

Hi guys.

Back again! No I’ve not got any other apps or programs open. If anything is open it’s Photoshop and that is opened by Lightroom when I choose edit with.....photoshop.

Both Lightroom and Photoshop are the monthly payment versions and are all up to date. Ninety nine percent of the photos I am editing are raw images and are anything from 20mb to 80mb in size. Photoshop is used a lot for removing items / blemishes as I find the Photoshop tool better. I have recently started playing with focus stacking in Photoshop.

I have recorded a video of Lightroom’s performance tonight. I am editing a raw photo and I have selected the brush tool (no alterations have been chosen to be applied to the area I am brushing, in theory I am just “selecting”) and have a colour mask on to show me where I’ve used the brush. In the video I’ve already used the brush a bit and the video starts by showing that I am applying the edit brush without even holding the mouse button down, it’s locked on. It also shows the cursor beachballing regularly. During this time no other programs are open. I hope YouTube links are allowed.

I experience this type of behaviour on my 2011 iMac when using a brush adjustment and turning on "Auto Mask". So I use Auto Mask only when necessary. In your video, it looks like you may have it switched on. If so, try turning it off.

FYI, Fstoppers is reporting a Lr 7.2 update pending that may address some of these performance issues.

 

[trevolly]

That doesn't really show much of anything.
Go to the View menu, and change "My Processes" to "All Processes"

With the memory pressure graph that you show, I don't expect that Activity Monitor will do much for your situation, as that looks very low (as it should... )

Do you keep part of your image edits on a scratch drive (external drive) - or is everything done on your internal drive?

Sorry for the delay in reply - been at work.

Did the above and it showed the same kind of results as before, Lightroom spiking when used and at the top of the activity monitor, this is with the auto masking option off. It gave the same issues as before, even when moving the photo around in the navigator it locked up.

As before its a Fusion drive and it is in a default setup - I've not played with it or split it. Lightroom installed as default and the photos are on the internal drive, with the photos being imported straight from the sd cards to lightroom. i only use an external drive for backup.

Think I'm gonna do fresh install of the OS and see where that takes me before I order the ram. does anyone have any preference changes for Lightroom for once the fresh install is complete?

Cheers all.

 

[DeltaMac]

How much space is available on the internal drive?