Lightroom: Exceed the Minimum System Requirements

Adobe has recently updated their help/web pages for Lightroom performance.

Adobe’s minimum system requirements to run Lightroom are just that: the minimum you need for Lightroom to operate.

The faster processor, the more significant performance benefits. The requirements vary depending on the following:

• The types of files you work with. JPEG images are much smaller and the catalog can run faster when using JPEGs instead of RAW.
• Their sizes. Canon 5Ds files that are around 60Mb each and are slower to process.
• The total number of images in the catalog
• The extent of spot healing or local (brushed) adjustments applied to images. Everything has to be processed before updating the previews and displaying them.

Here are some the options that can help increase performance include:

• CPU: 64-bit, multiple-core processor. For best performance, Lightroom can use up to six cores (December-2016). This also significantly help when using multiple or high-resolution monitors.
• RAM: At least 4 GB of RAM and that’s for Lightroom only. If you are using Photoshop at the same time, you will need more, much more…
  The full catalog must fit with the amount of memory available to Lightroom. Then Lightroom will also load the images and the previews for the current screen, plus the previous and the next few screens in the Grid view.
• Fast hard drives (or SSD) for the catalog, the previews, and the Lightroom cache.