# Browsing through albums is extremely slow



## bibendum (May 25, 2021)

A four-day long migration from Lightroom Classic to Lightroom (cloud) has finally completed after minor issues (Virtual copies and migrating to Lightroom (cloud-based)). Over 110k pictures in 900+ albums are now in sync and are ready to be worked with in the new Lightroom. Looking forward!

One thing is bugging me, though. It is almost impossible to browse through some (most?) albums. When I open a random album, containing maybe just a dozen pics, some albums take minutes (!) to open, some only take seconds. No comparison to Lightroom Classic, where everything was blazing fast.

My settings within Lightroom are:

Default of 25 % cache
Keep smart previews on my local hard drive (default)
Keep a copy of the originals on my NAS
I’m running Windows 10 on a Surface Laptop i7 with 16 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD. Nothing high-profile, but nothing to have to wait for minutes for some folder to open, either.

I’ve checked the local “previews” folder. It seems to contain all smart previews already (> 110k files).

So, what am I missing? Will Lightroom speed up after some use? Are there still some other caches that have to be filled?


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## Jim Wilde (May 26, 2021)

bibendum said:


> Will Lightroom speed up after some use? Are there still some other caches that have to be filled?


Possibly (to both questions). Migrating that number of images (and downloading smart previews and a full local image copy) might take some time to get everything squared away locally. However, if it doesn't eventually get working smoothly, I'd begin to suspect the issue might be with the local originals being stored on a NAS, as that certainly has caused some performance issues in the past. Do you need a full local copy, and if so does it have to be on a NAS?


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## bibendum (May 26, 2021)

Hi Jim,

Thanks for getting back. I thought the local (or in my case NAS-stored) copies of originals are purely used for backup purposes, while the locally stored smart previews would speed up the application for not having to download from the cloud.

With Lightroom Classic I had my originals stored on a NAS as well, without any issues.

While I love cloud solutions, how else would I backup my pictures with Lightroom?


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## Jim Wilde (May 26, 2021)

I'm sure many people do use the local copy as a "backup", but that's not the real purpose. It's mainly to facilitate offline working (though smart previews only could also be used if the originals aren't available when offline), and it theoretically gives a performance gain instead of waiting for the original to download from the cloud. But it's a poor "backup"....delete an image from the cloud and it's immediately deleted from the "backup" as well, which tends to suggest you should also be backing up the "backup". However, if you don't trust Adobe to be ensuring your cloud-based images are being safely backed-up in the cloud, then I guess you don't have much alternative. It's either do what you're doing or don't use the cloud for originals.

I'm not saying the NAS is definitely responsible for the performance issues, but that's the first thing I'd personally be  looking at if I was having similar performance problems. One thing to ask, if you select All Photos in Lightroom and select the square grid, can you smoothly and quickly scroll through the images? Do you see many blank thumbnails? If you stop on some of those blank thumbnails are they quickly populated or not? If you are seeing a lot, that might suggest the local cache isn't fully populated yet.


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## clee01l (May 26, 2021)

Were you the  poster in an earlier thread that said that you delayed the migration because of a slow connection?  Internet speed and band width will certainly factor in Lightroom (cloudy) ability to speedily produces the image  views that you need locally.


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## bibendum (May 26, 2021)

clee01l said:


> Were you the  poster in an earlier thread that said that you delayed the migration because of a slow connection?  Internet speed and band width will certainly factor in Lightroom (cloudy) ability to speedily produces the image  views that you need locally.


Nope, that wasn't me. My internet speed is very fast.

That said I still haven't figured out how this whole thing will eventually "behave". I have not used LR much since after the migration (I am not a pro, this is all private stuff) and will certainly come across more questions. I must admit I am still a bit "nervous" regarding a missing "backup" feature for the whole thing, even though I am very much pro  cloud solutions. I think I will try to keep my NAS solution and do a daily backup of that into another cloud. I have read the other lengthy thread about the whole topic, though.

Why would the NAS slow anything down in the first place? Does LR always try to access the originals, even when only browsing through albums?


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## Jim Wilde (May 26, 2021)

bibendum said:


> Why would the NAS slow anything down in the first place? Does LR always try to access the originals, even when only browsing through albums?


I don't know. All I can say is that use of a NAS for storing the local copy has been known to cause issues in the past. Perhaps the easiest way to check would be to close Lightroom, disconnect the NAS, restart Lightroom. You should receive a warning to the effect that the local drive is not available so images will be downloaded from the cloud as needed. Then see what the performance is like....if it's no better you'll have discounted the NAS but will still be left trying to figure out the problem. It, OTOH, performance improves you'll at least have a firm starting point for a trying to find the solution.


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## bibendum (May 26, 2021)

Alright. Somehow it's gotten faster already without me doing anything. Maybe the whole thing needs to settle somehow. Nonetheless, if I do the "rapid scroll test" through all my (114k+) pictures, some remain black and just won't appear. Maybe I need to wait longer ...

What I still don't get are a few things:

What exactly are the storage options for?  The Adobe tutorials and help documents are extremely vague. Specifically:

Is the percentage value that defaults to 25% one of three settings (among storing previews and originals locally), or is that a setting _for_  the two options?
Why would someone not want to store Smart Previews on the local drive? The option is deactivated by default.
What exactly is the advantage of storing the originals locally (or, like me, on a NAS) if this is not considered a backup?
And last but not least: How does "working offline" work? Let's say I want to edit pictures of some album on a plane (with my NAS not with me). What would I do?
Thanks!


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## bibendum (May 26, 2021)

Sorry, I'm not sure if I better open a new thread for every question. But regarding offline workflow and the storage options mentioned above: If I put my computer into airplane mode and launch Lightroom, the app is just completely empty. Not even my folder structure shows. How is this supposed to work?


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## Jim Wilde (May 27, 2021)

bibendum said:


> What exactly are the storage options for?  The Adobe tutorials and help documents are extremely vague. Specifically:
> 
> Is the percentage value that defaults to 25% one of three settings (among storing previews and originals locally), or is that a setting _for_  the two options?
> Why would someone not want to store Smart Previews on the local drive? The option is deactivated by default.
> ...


1. It depends on where the originals are stored....if they are in the default location alongside the local catalog, smart previews and other previews, then that setting limits the amount of space that can be used for all of those items. If, OTOH, the originals are located on a different drive then they are not included in that setting.
 2. I would think it's a space consideration. Many users appear to be limping along with a small system drive (e.g. 256GB) so they probably wouldn't have sufficient free space on that drive for the smart previews (in your case, the smart previews cache could take anywhere between 100-200GB). So making that option deactivated by default makes sense to me.
3. As I've already said, it's both an offline working  function and possible performance enhancer, although many users DO regard it as a backup. I'm just not one of the latter. 
4. Offline working is possible using just the smart previews, i.e. you can edit images. The edits are stored in the local catalog and synced to the cloud when the device is next online. The only advantage of having the originals instead of the smart previews available would be the ability to zoom to 1:1 for critical editing work such as sharpening, and also should you want to export full resolution images.


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## Jim Wilde (May 27, 2021)

bibendum said:


> Sorry, I'm not sure if I better open a new thread for every question. But regarding offline workflow and the storage options mentioned above: If I put my computer into airplane mode and launch Lightroom, the app is just completely empty. Not even my folder structure shows. How is this supposed to work?


I don't know exactly what "airplane mode" does on a laptop. My testing of this function on my Mac and Windows systems has usually just involved dropping the network connection, and offline working always then works. I also don't have the "Store a local copy..." option enabled (though don't see why that would make a difference). All I can suggest is to turn off airplane mode, get Lightroom working again, then sign out and back in again, then try it again.


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## bibendum (May 27, 2021)

I will try a completely different approach. I will discard the idea with the NAS and just disable the local copy of originals, just as the Lightroom defaults suggest.

It was flawed logic that I thought I'd need a "backup" to be made by Lightroom itself. I can simply copy my original photos to my NAS manually, completely independent of the Lightroom universe. I can even import new pictures from there into Lightroom. For my private workflow, this is completely sufficient. I don't even rely much on editing.

Will get back with results.


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## bibendum (May 28, 2021)

So, I have a solution now. I ditched everything, got a new blazing-fast laptop (Razer Book 13), installed everything from scratch with the option "Keep copies of smart previews on my local drive", and everything is fine. I assume, the NAS option was not a good idea, and upgrading my hardware was not a bad idea either.


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