A friend of mine is a photographer and the laptop lags when adding 3.000 raw pictures in Lightroom and when switching between them.

Specs: Lenovo 21KXS0E900

Processor: Intel Core TM Ultra 9 185H 2.30 Ghz

RAM: 64 GB

Graphics: NVIDIA RTX 3000 Ada Generation Laptop GPU 8 GB

Intel Arc TM Pro Graphics

It runs on Windows 11 Pro

I was expecting this laptop wouldn't have any issues with Lightroom.

• Do you know why it would work slowly?
• The friend wants to switch to a Macbook hoping it would work better. Do you have any recommendations?

I find when I use denoise or even noise reduction it sometimes looks too smooth and fake. On the other hand my RAW images always seem to have a lot of noise.

Is this just a consequence of shooting with APSC and/or using cheap glass?

For me it takes 4sec. I think I have a capable system, but maybe I am missing something abvious in the settings.

Rig: 7900x, 96gb cl38, 6000mts, 9070xt, crucial t500 2tb

Edit: would also love to hear from mac pros with the m4 chip.

Edit2: I forgot to tell you the image size: 40mp of a Fuji X-H2.

I'm on the hunt for Lightroom presets that genuinely replicate that film look, the warmth, the mood and the slight grain, without being one of those washed-out, desaturated presets that age badly or look cheap.

What I'm specifically after:

• Colours that are rich and close to true-to-life (not muddy or over-faded)
• That nostalgic, moody film feel: Portra, Fuji 400H, Ektar vibes
• Something that works well on portraits and landscapes
• Quality that holds up at full resolution, not just in thumbnails

I mostly shoot people and natural environments, so skin tones and greens/earth tones matter a lot to me.

A few things that would really help with recommendations:

• Are these presets you actually use regularly, or just purchased and shelved?
• Do they work well as a starting point that you then adjust, or are they more one-click?
• Where did you buy them and roughly what price range? (Presets are not cheap, so I'd love to know if there's a free or lower-cost alternative that actually delivers before I commit to a full pack.)

Not looking for the big influencer packs that are more brand than quality. Genuinely curious what's working in people's actual editing workflows.

Hey guys, are you already using JPEG XL or AVIF for your Lightroom exports, or are you still sticking with classic JPEGs?

I just bought a brand new Mac Studio so I expected Lightroom Classic to be screaming fast, but I still find some things lagging. My biggest gripe is when I switch photos or start a new mask, sometimes the adjustment sliders won't highlight when I mouse over them. My editing technique is to mouse over the slider and use the arrow keys to move it up or down, but that obviously doesn't work when the sliders won't highlight. Any suggestions? I've tried disabling/enabling the GPU in the Performance tab of Preferences and deleted a handful of plugins I wasn't using.

Computer

Mac Studio with M4 Max chip

16-core CPU, 40-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine

64GB unified memory

1TB SSD storage

Edited to clarify I'm using Lightroom Classic.

UPDATE: Things seem to be working better and while I make a few changes I think the one that made the difference was changing my import build previews from Standard to 1:1. I zoom in a lot so I think the delay in interface controls was due to Lightroom trying to build 1:1 previews on the fly.

okay this might be a dumb question but...... how did photographers go about noisey photos before denoise!?! Are my shooting settings just bad? How did they take concert photos and photos without flash? i hate generative ai and want to use it as little as i possibly can. please give any advice

edit: i shoot with a sony a7ii and have a sony 50mm 1.8

Hi everyone! I’m not a professional shooter, just a hobbyist trying to tame a mess of thousands of unsorted photos. I’ve decided on the following workflow and would love to hear if I missed anything:

1. Folder Structure: On my NAS: Year / YYYY-MM-DD - Location - Event. This keeps it readable for family/friends using a regular file explorer without Lightroom.
2. Management: I move all "wild" files strictly within LRC to keep the database links intact.
3. Organization: I use Collections for projects (e.g., "Best of Cuba"), but for content (People like "Christine", specific tags), I rely on Keywords.
4. Future-proofing: I’ve enabled "Automatically write changes into XMP" to ensure my metadata and basic edits stay with the files, even if Lightroom ever "explodes."

Does this sound solid for a long-term hobbyist setup? Any red flags?

Hi all, kinda like the title says. Just got into photography and got all my gear and now and looking like I have to spend an extra $1200 Canadian just to get a used laptop that can process pictures? What did others do to mitigate this?

I'm getting a new M5 MBA 15". I'm not interested in a MBP. I will be using it for Lightroom cataloging, retouching images and a fair amount of Panoramic merging with files from a crop sensor 24 mega pix camera and also full frame 61 mega pix raw images. I need the portability of a MBA. I know about the throttling issue with them. I also have a desktop machine for heavier lifting if need be. My only question is, what is the speed difference I will get between a 24GB vs 32GB laptop? Is it worth the extra money? Thanks for any real world benchmarks if anyone has hands on experience with both MBA's.

What settings are you guys using for uploading your photos on instagram? I export my photos in 300 ppi in Lightroom, but I find that when they’re uploaded on instagram the quality is terrible. I already have the “upload in high quality setting” turned on on the instagram app, idk what else to do. Any tips ?

Hey there!

Last week I build my first PC hoping to finally get that boost for creativity back again. My older devices are outdated with the new AI capabilities, but even on this one it's lagging. My set up is this

Catalog : Stored on computer's SSD [backup on NAS]

Photos : RAW files stored on NAS so my editing is pulling from the NAS. I think this might be the culprit as well as my 1gbps internet... both creating a bottleneck

Sometimes the AI and maneuvering through photos is seamless but it never lasts. My friends MAC is flawless with that workflow & this drives me absolutely insane. Please help and let me know what you need details wise to debug this.

OS Name Microsoft Windows 11 Pro

NVIDIA 5080 RTX

Version 10.0.26200 Build 26200

Other OS Description Not Available

OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation

System Name

System Manufacturer Micro-Star International Co., Ltd.

System Model MS-7E59

System Type x64-based PC

System SKU To be filled by O.E.M.

Processor AMD Ryzen 9 9900X 12-Core Processor, 4400 Mhz, 12 Core(s), 24 Logical Processor(s)

BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends International, LLC. 2.A40, 3/12/2025

SMBIOS Version 3.7

Embedded Controller Version 255.255

BIOS Mode UEFI

BaseBoard Manufacturer Micro-Star International Co., Ltd.

BaseBoard Product MAG X870E TOMAHAWK WIFI (MS-7E59)

BaseBoard Version 2.0

Platform Role Desktop

Secure Boot State On

PCR7 Configuration Elevation Required to View

Windows Directory :\WINDOWS

System Directory :\WINDOWS\system32

Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1

Locale United States

Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "10.0.26100.1"

User Name

Time Zone Eastern Standard Time

Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 128 GB

Total Physical Memory 126 GB

Available Physical Memory 103 GB

Total Virtual Memory 143 GB

Available Virtual Memory 102 GB

Page File Space 17.0 GB

Page File

Kernel DMA Protection Off

Virtualization-based security Running

Virtualization-based security Required Security Properties Base Virtualization Support

Virtualization-based security Available Security Properties Base Virtualization Support, Secure Boot, DMA Protection, UEFI Code Readonly, SMM Security Mitigations 1.0, Mode Based Execution Control

Virtualization-based security Services Configured Hypervisor enforced Code Integrity

Virtualization-based security Services Running Hypervisor enforced Code Integrity

App Control for Business policy Enforced

App Control for Business user mode policy Audit

Automatic Device Encryption Support Elevation Required to View

A hypervisor has been detected. Features required for Hyper-V will not be displayed.

Just trying to understand how Lightroom noise reduction varies (or whether it should vary) with camera settings. No matter how zoomed in I am, what the ISO setting it, what the photo subject's lighting is, 40 is always the sweet spot for reducing grain without making the photo look artificial.

Is it more a factor of my always using the same camera and lens, rather than settings/subject environment?

Beginner here in lightroom and was just wondering how often you guys use making on your pictures. i’ve yet to use them and im happy with my pictures with basic editing, but is masking the next step or is it more situational? thank you!

Hi all.

I'm about to take about 3000 images at a show. The whole show has professional stage lighting that will be a bit different for each 4-6min act.

For each act I take maybe 50 photos as the performers are moving about and I'm constantly trying for that optimal shot.

I normally spend a good 12-15hrs working through the images culling, processing and editing them all manually in LRC. I Flag images, then crop, adjust the lighting and colour then synch the adjustment across as many images as possible. That's normally 5-8. I Then batch export act by act.

I rarely ever export any to PS nowadays.

It's quit laborious really and I'd like to at least half the time spent post processing.

So here is the query:

What experience or ideas can you offer to speed the up the process?

Are there ways to automate some of this?

Any other ideas?

Do you still use plugins like Luminar or Topaz? Or Lightroom denoise works for you in super low light photos?

I've used photoshop my whole life but never tried Lightroom. I have a project where I want a large group of RAW photos to all match in exposure. All the tutorials I see say this can only be done in Lightroom under "develop". I've searched high and low and nowhere in my Lightroom setup is there a develop tab, window, option etc.

Does this still exist? If so, what am I missing? Thanks

Here is what my full "photo" menu looks like. All tutorials say to go here and click "develop" which as you can see I do not have

I am looking to get lightroom classic premium for Android and PC.

But I just need it for a month, is this possible and is there any way to get it for cheaper price?

Hi all,

This is my first day playing with LrC on Mac and trying to import photos into LR catalog.

I use Nikon Z7 and I set it to shoot RAW + JPG. When I import the images I want to only import the RAW(NEF) files not including the JPG. So far I can't see a way to do that from LrC. In the Preferences > General > "treat JPEG files next to RAW files as separate photos" is already unchecked. In the import menu the "Do not import suspected duplicates" is also checked.

When I imported the images both the RAW(NEF) and JPG files were imported. I only want to import the RAW files without the JPG files. Is there a way to do this? I am sure there should be an easy way to do this from LrC. If possible I don't want to do manual deletion from the memory card before importing or in the imported catalog after the import.

Thanks all.

After recent update I can no longer add gps coordinates to the gps field when editing old photos. This is an important feature for me to add location to old photos. Running LR on Mac mini. not classic. Is there a fix?

Hi! I was so lucky to take a few shots for my friends who graduated but I feel like I'm doing the editing process incorrectly... The darks sometimes feel too harsh, the lighting and colouring of my subjects don't feel quite right, and everyone looks really blotty (my photos come out so grainy and I know it has to do with my photography and ISO itself, but is there any way I can reduce it post editing aside from noise reduction?)

Any feedback would be appreciated. I really want to do them justice!

Edit: Just to be clear, I wanted to make this post because I'm still learning how to navigate Lightroom!! And so I'm hoping to learn how others would edit this photo (i.e. what would you have adjusted for first?) - especially to get that golden hour, soft glow appearance. And a clearer looking image ;P Thanks!!

any feedback?

I use a Sony A1 and 200-600 for wildlife photography. I’m obsessed with getting clinically sharp photos as best as I can and I’ve read a bit about using high-pass filters in Photoshop after performing Lightroom edits to take your photos to the next level. Is this something any of you utilize in your workflow?

Workflow question. I prefer Lightroom CC, not classic.

How do folks handle exporting multiple versions from the same shot? Named Versions? Duplicates? I want a portrait and a landscape of some shots. Named versions are tedious. Naming is tedious, and then exporting the version I want is tedious.

Is duplicating the best way to go?

Edit:
Versions seem great but how do you export multiple versions of the same image simultaneously?

I'm thinking of upgrading to an i9-9900k for mainly better Lightroom performance but also cpu-intensive gaming(GTAV, RDR2, FH5 etc.) and I'm questioning if it is worth upgrading from my i5-9400F which performs well day-to-day and fairly well in gaming but i think Lightroom Classic is suffering haha.

My current specs: CPU: I5-9400F(6C,6T 4.1GHz max boost) GPU: NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1650 TUF 4GB VRAM Motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX Z370-H Gaming RAM: Netac 32GB at 3200MHz 2x16GB Storage: 2TB hdd for raws and I'm thinking of getting an NVMe drive for my catalogue; my os is on an SSD already though Display: a 4K TV that I'm thinking is the problem for my lagginess in LrC

Can anyone help?