Adobe owns up: Lightroom is too slow.

 

In a recent post by Adobe Photo Product Manager, Tom Hogarty, the company finally confronts an issue that has plagued Lightroom users for quite some time – the performance issues, and why the program is so slow, even when being used on high-end machines, PC and Mac, with plenty to RAM, processing power, and hard drive space to spare.

In a move that will no doubt please the vast majority of users, Adobe is seeking feedback to ascertain the key concerns so that they can go about addressing them and improve the Lightroom experience. And Hogarty has indicated that addressing performance issue is a “top priority”.

I would like to address concerns recently voiced by our community of customers around Lightroom performance, as improving performance is our current top priority. We have a history, starting with our first public beta, of working with our customers to address workflow and feature needs, and we’d like to take that same approach regarding your performance concerns. We already understand many of the current pain points around GPU, import performance, certain editing tasks and review workflows and are investing heavily in improving those areas. Tom Hogarty, Adobe.

But has the ship already sailed? A number of comments on social media from frustrated photographer indicated that they had already moved on to an alternative offering, mostly to Capture One.

If you’d like to share any feedback of your experiences of Lightroom with Adobe, you can do so by completing the following survey. Amongst other things, the survey seeks feedback on three specific performance issues you may be experiencing.

So far, users have not been backwards in coming forwards with their gripes, and currently there are 138 responses to Hogarty’s message, and counting. What’s your experience with Lightroom been like?