Is it normal for memory usage in Lightroom 3 to exceed 1.5GB, and what can I do about it?

Question

I'm currently running a 2008 unibody 15" MacBook Pro 2.53 with 320GB 5400 RPM hard drive and 4GB of system memory. I've upgraded to Snow Leopard and I'm running Lightroom 3 (64-bit).

I have two problems with my setup currently and I'm seeking recommendations on improving the situation:

• memory usage during processing exceeds 1.5GB
• time to move between images in Develop module is painfully slow

I've noticed that system memory usage typically goes up drastically during export to JPEG. Is this normal and how much memory is normal? It seems the larger the set of photos being exported, the greater the amount of memory is needed. I often find myself staring at Activity Monitor and shutting down all other applications to free up as much RAM as possible.

Then switching photos in the Develop module takes ages for me. I think this is a disk related issue so I'm thinking new larger 7200 RPM hard drive should sort that out. The current hard drive is a Hitachi 320GB 5400 RPM drive and it often seems to be the bottleneck when installing applications and writing data.

Any recommendations?

Answer

yes, that memory usage is normal converting to jpeg.

I"m finding 4Gig works fine. A few suggestions.

upgrade your drive to a 7200 drive. you're probably seeing I/O delays and a faster drive will help.

preferences->file handling, set the cache to a larger value. I use 25 gig.

optimize your catalog (under the file menu) every so often.

system performance will lag as your memory set grows. You can check /var/vm (using terminal):

[chuq-laptop:~] chuqui% cd /var/vm [chuq-laptop:/var/vm] chuqui% ls -l total 8912896 -rw------T 1 root wheel 4294967296 Aug 6 12:14 sleepimage -rw------- 1 root wheel 67108864 Aug 4 21:57 swapfile0 -rw------- 1 root wheel 67108864 Aug 7 16:57 swapfile1 -rw------- 1 root wheel 134217728 Aug 8 13:53 swapfile2 [chuq-laptop:/var/vm] chuqui%

if you see more than 3-4 swapfiles, you'll speed things up by rebooting and re-initalizing VM. If you haven't rebooted for a while, you may see 6-7 files especially if oyu've done a lot of image work, and that slows down the paging system (again, a 7200 RPM drive as your boot drive helps this as well...)

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Mac hardware recommendations for Lightroom 3

Question

I'm currently running a 2008 unibody 15" MacBook Pro 2.53 with 320GB 5400 RPM hard drive and 4GB of system memory. I've upgraded to Snow Leopard and I'm running Lightroom 3 (64-bit).

I have two problems with my setup currently and I'm seeking recommendations on improving the situation:

• memory usage during processing exceeds 1.5GB
• time to move between images in Develop module is painfully slow

I've noticed that system memory usage typically goes up drastically during export to JPEG. Is this normal and how much memory is normal? It seems the larger the set of photos being exported, the greater the amount of memory is needed. I often find myself staring at Activity Monitor and shutting down all other applications to free up as much RAM as possible.

Then switching photos in the Develop module takes ages for me. I think this is a disk related issue so I'm thinking new larger 7200 RPM hard drive should sort that out. The current hard drive is a Hitachi 320GB 5400 RPM drive and it often seems to be the bottleneck when installing applications and writing data.

Any recommendations?

Answer

yes, that memory usage is normal converting to jpeg.

I"m finding 4Gig works fine. A few suggestions.

upgrade your drive to a 7200 drive. you're probably seeing I/O delays and a faster drive will help.

preferences->file handling, set the cache to a larger value. I use 25 gig.

optimize your catalog (under the file menu) every so often.

system performance will lag as your memory set grows. You can check /var/vm (using terminal):

[chuq-laptop:~] chuqui% cd /var/vm [chuq-laptop:/var/vm] chuqui% ls -l total 8912896 -rw------T 1 root wheel 4294967296 Aug 6 12:14 sleepimage -rw------- 1 root wheel 67108864 Aug 4 21:57 swapfile0 -rw------- 1 root wheel 67108864 Aug 7 16:57 swapfile1 -rw------- 1 root wheel 134217728 Aug 8 13:53 swapfile2 [chuq-laptop:/var/vm] chuqui%

if you see more than 3-4 swapfiles, you'll speed things up by rebooting and re-initalizing VM. If you haven't rebooted for a while, you may see 6-7 files especially if oyu've done a lot of image work, and that slows down the paging system (again, a 7200 RPM drive as your boot drive helps this as well...)

Check more discussion of this question.

How can I use Canon Photo Print Pro with 64-bit Photoshop CS5?

Question

I have a Canon Pixma Pro 9000, I use the photoshop plugin "Canon Easy Photo Print Pro" on a Mac with Snow Leopard with Photoshop CS4.

I have now changed to a New Mac running Lion and upgraded to Photoshop CS5.5. Installing Canon Easy Photo Print Pro does not add the plugin to photoshop.

I have researched this on the Canon website, both USA and UK and Europe and found that there is no support for CS5 due to it being 64bit rather than 32 bit (not sure why that would make a difference)

I have also seen on the Australia support site there is a new windows update however there is nothing available for the Mac.

Is there another plugin or piece of software that I can use to set the printing up to match the profile of this printer, as printing directly from Photoshop is not nearly as good as using Easy Photo Print Pro.

Answer

I suspect if you use Finder to "Get Info" and tick the "Open in 32-bit mode" box in the General section you'll be able to use your plug-in again. You might have to manually copy it into the PS5 plugins directory. I don't have the Canon software to try out so I don't know for sure.

Running in 32 bit mode might result in a slight performance reduction, and newer plugins might not work. I'd recommend enabling it only when you're about to print.

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How do I merge bracketed files together into an HDR image on a Mac?

Question

I'm looking for software in order to put files from bracketing together under Lion and create HDR image.

Answer

The software I like best currently for HDR merging on the Mac is Nik HDR EFX Pro. It has a number of different ways you can vary the merge and so far has some of the more realistic tone adjustment I have seen.

http://www.niksoftware.com/hdrefexpro/usa/entry.php

They have an Aperture/Lightroom and Photoshop plugin.

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I need some free panorama stitching software

Question

I have iPad and a Mac. The software could be for either, but I really need it to be free or very cheap. Trial versions are acceptable, as long as they leave no watermark. Any recommendations?

Answer

Hugin is the standard answer here.
I've used it very successfully on Windows, but there is a Mac download available on the download page on the website.
As I understand it, Hugin's not as easy to use as some of the paid-for competition (none of which I've tried), but it's worth persevering with.

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How do I software-calibrate my IPS monitor under Mac OS X?

Question

I just purchased a HP ZR24W after reading several reviews for IPS monitors. I am a novice photographer and have never done any monitor calibration or owned an IPS panel before. I have a 2009 13 inch Macbook Pro with OSX Snow Leopard running on it.

I hooked the monitor up to the Macbook and thankfully even though the HP CD did not have any OSX drivers the monitor was set up correctly with the correct resolution. I have to say the default setting was pretty good for image viewing. But I guess to get the best out of the monitor I need to make some changes.

Hardware calibration seems the obvious option but I have spent all of my budget on this monitor and can't get one in the near future. So, I'm stuck with software and manual calibration.

Can anyone help me as to how to do this via software or changing the various controls manually in the monitor? Any tutorial or best practices would help me immensely.

Answer

First I want to make sure that the importance of proper hardware calibration is understood. Your eyes are not perfect(mine especially) and you can certainly give it a shot to determine the best brightness, tint, gamma, etc. but you are not going to be nearly as spot on as a dedicated piece of hardware. In reading you will find that as the display gets older, it becomes more out of sync with the correct values, and hardware calibration becomes more important. So even if you can't afford it now, down the road it is still a good investment.

So onwards to how to actually do a visual calibration. You are in luck, because OS X actually has a utility built in to do exactly what you want - Display Calibrator Assistant. To find this utility all you have to do is open up System Preferences, then the Displays app, click on the Colors Tab, and you will see an option for Calibrate. From that option, make sure you are in expert mode, follow the instructions, and you are on your way to visual monitor calibration bliss.

Other options exist that are not included with OS X. You may even receive one with your monitor as part of its software package. A popular option is a shareware program SuperCal.

If you are looking for a tutorial on how to use the built in Calibrate tool from Apple you can find that here.

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Please suggest a workflow on Mac using only free/open source software

Question

I own a D90 with a Nikon 50mm f/1.8 prime lens. However ever since buying my camera I am struggling to find a proper workflow to process RAW images on my Mac which does at least the following

1. Adjust shadows and highlights.
2. Adjust an image via its histogram.
3. Adjust white balance.
4. Adjust exposure.
5. Crop a photo.
6. Present a preview of how the photo may look like after printing.
7. Apply EXIF tags.
8. Apply watermarks.

So my question is what kind of workflow should I follow, if I were constrained to use only free software on my Mac?

Edit: Please also suggest a software or a set of software applications to use.

Edit: Flagged as a wiki question since there can't be correct or perfect answer.

Edit: Given the fact that a freeware will probably not be able to cut it, I have come to the conclusion that I will need to buy a low cost software for this. I am keen on using Lightroom but may have to settle with iPhoto.

Answer

Given that the reason for the question is price, I encourage you to rethink this constraint. How much is your time worth? You can get excellent post-processing software for little money compared to a lens. For example, Bibble can do everything above in the same application (might need a plugin for the watermark) and it costs only $100 for the lite version.

I tried to go the same route (on Linux) and got tired of screwing around with freeware. The commercial software is way better and your time is worth more than you think it is - particularly since the smoother post-processing is, the more fun photography will be. :)

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Why am I having trouble reading photos on my Canon 550D via USB with standard Mac software?

Question

I have a Canon 550D that I want to connect via USB to my Mac, but I'd rather not install all this Canon software. However when I connect it nothing happens on the Mac, and iPhoto and Finder see nothing.

Is there a way to see my photos without installing Canon stuff?

Answer

1. Get a SD-Card reader (or use the one in your MacBook pro if you have one)
2. Have you tried "Image Capture" – there's some settings that will set default behavior of what happens when you connect the camera.
3. Have you tried iPhoto?

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Suggestions for shared cross-platform photo management?

Question

I have a Mac, my wife has a Win7 machine. Currently I take all of our photos and put them into iPhoto. There's about 35K images in there now. The problem is that they are all accessible only from my Mac and she has to wait for me to put the images on there, etc.

I'm willing to switch away from iPhoto. I know there are some tools that are cross platform (Lightroom, Picasa), but are there any that support a shared library? I can share a volume out via NFS or CIFS that we could both mount, but I want to avoid problems of (potentially) both of us hitting the image database at the same time.

Answer

The issue you are going to face is similar to any database-based solution: the issue is ownership over a file and if two systems are trying to change a file at the same time. This can often corrupt a database for systems that are not designed with this concurrency in mind, and most systems are not designed with this in mind. As mentioned above, there are some higher end solutions that are designed with this in mind, but they are expensive and typically designed with an agency in mind.

Assuming you do not wish to purchase an agency solution, Lightroom would do fine, if you did not wish to share the database and each others edits. In this case, you would simply share an external drive with the photos themselves, but each keep your own catalog of edits local to your system. I am not sure if Aperture works this way or not, others can perhaps chime in.

The only alternative to get something close to this function with Lightroom, is for you to share the hard drive of photos as above, but then, use the export/import catalog function of Lightroom to "share' the catalog between machines. So, have your wife export a catalog of images she has edited, and then you import them into your catalog...and so on. Not especially simple, but it will work, as long as you can put up with it.

Of course, if you can get by without sharing edits, then simply put all your images on a network accessible drive, point each copy of Lightroom at this shared drive and edit away. One note: when your wife adds images, they will not automatically be added to your catalog, but you can easily solve this by right clicking on the shared drive link in the Library view, and select 'Synchronize Folder" which will add any new images to your local catalog.

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