Lightroom V3.2 import question

Hi,

Having installed a trial copy of Lightroom, my first question. Does it always take ages to find and import the pictures into the catalogue and is it normal that the import almost locks up the computer whilst doing so? I've never seen lightroom in action, so have no idea whether or not I have a problem.

I need it for the enhanced Camera RAW function over my Elements 6.

Greg

I can't answer your questions Greg but did you see the Elements 9 is now out?

Yes, I see so from the posts today. I wonder if it now has the equivalent Camera RAW to Lightroom and PS or CS, I'll do some reading.

Greg

Greg, it's probably searching your whole pc for images. I'm sure you can instruct it to import from one folder only. In future you then can add shots to that folder, and synchronise it after adding new shots.

Never had such problem and I ain't running a fast PC either.
What are you precisely doing and what kind of processor and RAM do you have?
Adobe products like RAM you know and at least a dual core should make things quite fluid although importing can take a while, certainly if you also convert.

Hi Stefan,

Once I've selected the files to be imported and click "Import" then the hourglass pointer appears and the wait starts, say five min, if I perchance then click on any area of the workspace whilst waiting the screen fades and I get a message from Windows "The program is not responding "Wait or stop"" program" If I select wait then after some time the files appear in my catalogue and film strip.

I'm using an

Intel, Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q8300 @2.5GHZ
4GB (3.25 GB usable
Windows 7 Professional 32bit

Thanks,
Greg

If you have a single processor PC, yes it is likely that the program will overrun the processor and the hard drive and your machine will seem unresponsive at times. Any program that scans through your hard disk, storing info about various files can be quite intensive, and that is really just the nature of a single processor machine.

If you have 2-4GB of RAM and at least a dual core processor, it should not have a devastating impact on your machine. If you have a lot of files, and/or you have a lot of images then YES; Lightroom as with any other program is going to take a while to run - expect several hours to over night to run.

To speed things up even more get a second hard drive. That is going to make a *huge* difference!
Reading and writing to the same hard drive will likely nearly double your processing time.
If you can keep your images separate from the catalog and even better, keep both of those separate from your system drive, you'll get maximum throughput for reading, writing and for your system's virtual memory processing.


Now, if you have a dual processor machine and more than 2G of memory, it sounds like a different problem.
Possibly storing everything on a USB or NAS drive? Throughput from either *can* be quite a bottleneck. (Some NAS drives feel slower than floppies, regardless of being stated as 1Gb throughput on the connection).


(edit)
I guess I type too slow...
With a QuadCore and 4G of RAM, you should NOT be seeing this behavior.
If you had Vista I would argue that, but Windows 7 Professional is a perfectly good OS now.
I'm at a loss a the moment.

One question... does the whole computer actually lock up, or just Lightroom?
LightRoom3 is much better than LightRoom 2 but it is still pretty hokey with regards to processing files. It gets into sates where it imports maybe 5 to 15 photos before updating the filmstrip or grid. Meanwhile it can be unresponsive.

If your whole computer is locking up, I would look at drivers, perhaps video drivers?
What sort of disk drives are the images and catalog located? Perhaps the driver for whatever device to which it is connected needs updating?

*Generally*, user level software does not cause the whole system to freeze on a multi-processor machine.

That's very strange and you've twice the PC that I've so that can't be it!
I only get an hourglass at the very beginning of the import for a second to start things up and then it goes to the back ground and I can do most things on the PC without any real slow downs.

Maybe a reinstate might help?

I've done a test run on six picture ans it took about a minute. Do I understand you correctly in that LR is creating a full duplicate of my picture in the catalogue, if so I'm going to have to get another drive.

It becomes unresponsive, the one drive is a SATA Seagate ITB.

Thanks for the feedback.
Greg

It depends on how you have LightRoom configured. Generally it will only make a link in its database to the original file, but a thumbnail is created (bad word, as the "thumbnail" may be a full sized representation of the original). Usually the thumbnail is a reasonably sized scaled down version.

OK, thanks to all, I need to play and I'll get a second 1TB drive tomorrow so that I can work over two drives.

At seventy years of age I really did not think I would still be have to going through learning curves

Greg

Um - no need to copy the files : when you are at the Import Screen, up the top centre it says :

"Copy as DNG / Copy / Move / Add"

Make sure "Add" is highlighted in white.

Thanks Flossie, will check.

Greg

Finally after 9 years of a dinosaur I have a fast computer.. Core i7 930 clocked at 3.8GHz, a solid state system and drive and two 2TB data drives.

I find LR3 ( and LR2 ) takes ages to open up the directory while inside the file selector. but once the directory has been selected it's very quick at importing the pics