Desktop configuration for Lightroom 3

I am planning to upgrade my desktop computer, what kind of configuration
/hardware should I be looking for to get the best result from the Lightroom 3 and
Photoshop CS5 softwares?
I'm not into games and movie ... just for photographic images development and display ... all other times I am using it for work. Appreciate getting some advice before approaching the computer salesmen .

@clvrmnky: I think you missed the fact that HowChun also wants to run CS5, which can certainly benefit from a faster graphics card, particularly with the latest offerings from NVIDIA. (Adobe has been working with them a lot lately.) Given Photoshop's demanding system requirements, Photoshop users have always been a relatively close second to gamers in terms of always being on the lookout for ways to eek out another ounce of performance from their systems with upgrades or configuration tweaks.
@HowChun: I would point you to the Adobe TechNote, "Optimize performance of Photoshop CS5 and CS4 on Windows 7, Vista, and XP:"
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404439.html
It is chock-full of excellent advice.
You didn't provide us with a budget, the types of images you work with, or how computer savvy you are, so it's impossible to make a specific recommendation. I can say that you're lucky to be buying a new computer now, as just about every component category has a new generation of technology available: great new Core i5 and i7 CPUs, fast triple channel RAM (for i7 9x0 CPUs), amazingly fast graphics cards, 4 Gbit/sec(!) USB 3.0, Solid State Drives (SSDs), etc. Then there is the whole area of overclocking, liquid cooling, and other hyper-performance configurations, which make up the playing ground for Alienware, Origin Genesis, Falcon Northwest, and other companies. They're happy to build you an amazing rig if you're not up to building it yourself. But be forewarned... it can get expensive fast! (These rigs are almost exclusively for gamers, but you can customize many of them to be more optimized for LR3/CS5-type work.)
You should look at some of the awesome computer configurations other LR users have. It should give you an idea of what's possible. There are several in this recent thread:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2902956#2902956
There have been several other posts on this topic in the Lightroom forum, but unfortunately, a lot of people post without knowing much!
I would also encourage you to do a Google search for additional resources. You might want to check out some of the performance sites, particularly Tom's Hardware Guide (http://www.tomshardware.com/us/), as well as (obviously) the Photoshop forum.
Good luck to you!

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New Haswell-E PC for Lightroom/Photoshop

Hi,
I'm investing in a new desktop PC for Lightroom/Photoshop use that will hopefully last the next 3/4 years.
Here's my final build (courtesy of Chillblast).
Fractal Design Define R5 Low Noise Case - Black Pearl
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I prefer not to make recommendations because performance is something that simply cannot be predicted. For instance, I am using an off-the-shelf HP computer, 8 GB RAM, integrated graphics (no special graphics card), i5 processor. Performance is perfectly satisfactory for me. But you have to remember that I'm only working with 12 MP raw images. I'm working on some scanned images as well that benefit from the shake reduction filter in Photoshop CC. That filter takes quite a while to render on my machine, and I'm thinking of increasing my RAM. But other than that, Lightroom performance is very nice. So I wouldn't want to make any suggestions. It's simply the luck of the draw, I'm afraid.

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firstly i apologise for needing to rant but personally i just want to buy and own a perpetual desktop lic. for lightroom 6. I don't want CC. I know adobe would like to rip everyone off by hooking them into a long term CC membership. If i want it i'll buy it, however all im looking for is the buy page to lightroom 6 for students. Can i find it?...not in your life. just keep returning to CC membership page. PLEASE help and let me know where this page is. Thanks, David

Can CTI OS agent desktop 9 be configured for different desktop modes?

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Best Mac Pro Configuration for LR?

For various reasons I'm planning on migrating from my home desktop pc ( 4 year old core2 2.4 ghz xp pro sp 3 32bit accessing 2.93 out of 4 gb ram) to a new or (lightly used recent) Mac Pro desktop. The Mac Pro is available in a lot of different configurations and I would appreciate advice on how many cores and how much ram I actually need to comfortably run LR3x and its eventual upgrades (within reason) and PS3 for now and later probably whatever is current. I'm a reasonably advanced amateur photographer; I shoot what interests me and now use LR for 90-95% of my post processing of my raw Leica and Canon image files. I do use some add-ons (SilverEfex Pro2 and such).
I understand from reading some articles that too much muscle in the Mac Pro can actually slow down LR, so if this is true I'd like to stay svelte; also economic issues are somewhat a concern.
I have already considered a laptop or an iMac and decided the Mac Pro is what I want. The question is just 'what will work best for me'?
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--Bob
p.s. Is the Search Function disabled in this Forum? I couldn't get it to work.

thewhitedog wrote:
@ Bob: I think you may be have acquired some misinformation somewhere. There is no such thing as "too much muscle" in a Mac Pro in relationship to Lightroom - or any other program. OS X allocates resources to applications as they need them. Unused resources remain idle or are utilized by other applications.
Adobe posts the minimum system requirements for their applications, but these should just be taken as a starting point. In my opinion you should buy the best Mac Pro your budget can handle - and maybe a little bit more. The computer is an investment, after all, not a luxury. That said, what you need to run Lightroom efficiently and what Jay needs to do video editing are not necessarily the same. For video rendering more cores are better. For Lightroom the question of the number of CPU cores is less critical. Whereas, CPU speed is more relevant. For both, the amount of RAM can make a big difference.
I recommend as a starting point, at least a quad-core Mac Pro with 4GB of RAM. That would do if you were looking at an iMac as well.
I can understand, though, how looking at the current line-up of Mac Pros can be confusing. The older Nehalem powered Mac Pros look faster for less money, but this is now old technology. The new Intel Westmere CPUs offer significant improvements in performance. Unfortunately, they are also much more expensive than any previous Mac CPU upgrade. But if you want to "future proof" your new Mac, one with a Westmere CPU is the better way to go. The 8 core model Jay went with seems to be the best value, with two quad-core 2.4GHz Westmere CPUs. However, for just $200 more you can get the 6 core 3.33GHz Westmere CPU. For the purposes of Lightroom, the faster CPUs in the 6 core model will make more of a difference than the two extra cores in the 8 core version. And the 6 core version will handle just about any multi-tasking job you throw at it; that it, using Lightroom in conjunction with Adobe Photoshop, for example.
To confuse the issue a bit more, however, if using Lightroom is your primary concern, a Mac Pro may be overkill. The new iMacs, which came out since you started this thread, are excellent machines. You could get a lot more for your money with a 27" iMac, BTO with a quad-core 3.3GHz Intel Sandy Bridge CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 2TB hard drive for roughly $1,000 less than the Mac Pros you're looking at. Along with a capable computer you get a beautiful 27" screen on the iMac. I'm not sure why you think you need the Mac Pro. The iMac can now take up to 16GB of RAM. If you were to get one with 8GB factory installed by Apple - as a BTO option - there would still be two empty RAM slots available for a future upgrade. You could add an SSD to the iMac and still pay less than you would for the Mac Pro.
And the new iMacs have a Thunderbolt port; in fact, the 27" models have two Thunderbolt ports. These offer much better throughput and greater flexibility than any previous I/O connection. With an appropriate adaptor you can use almost any external device, including eSATA, FireWire 400 and 800, USB 1, 2 and 3 and even Ethernet and an external monitor. Of course the iMac still has a Firewire 800 port and four USB 2 ports, and an SDXC memory card slot. For what it may be worth, I suggest you give the iMac another look. Your budget will thank you.
TheWhiteDog,
Kinda, Sorta, Maybe... :-) The cost differential between the 8 and 6 cores is $200 when comparing new to new. I picked up the 8 Core Westmere 2.4 for under $3000 because it comes up on the Refurbished side... So now we're talking $700 difference. the difference in price can be used for memory (I got 4GB for $50 at OtherWorldCmputing's "Garage Sale), a drive.. any number of things. Since Apple treat refurbs as new for warranty purposes (including AppleCare), I didn't see any reason not to go with the refurbished model..
I agree a higher clock speed is better, but as you said, I also do video so more cores helps (amazingly helps).. Yes, for LR 6 3.33 cores may outperform 8 2.4s, but the 8 core machine flies with LR.
As for iMacs vs. Mac Pro.. the biggest difference is that you find with any desk top vs. a "fixed" machine like the iMac. The upgrade as far a internal (and external) drives on a Mac Pro is so much better as well as to upgrade video if I want to in the future as well. As for Thunderbolt, clearly a lot of potential, but it is a daisy chain design and the slowest device in the chain can slow down everything if not done right. There's also not a lot out there for Thunderbolt yet.. and I'm not 100% sure that there won't be an PCI card for Mac Pros for Thunderbolt (although it could be a system board feature only).
At under $3000 with 6GB of memory and a 1TB 7200 drive, combined with growrh potential and the Mac Pro I think has a longer shelf life vs. the iMac. Without those Thunderbolt adapters in the market place, you're stuck with FW800, which is a lot slower than even eSATA for external drives. Since most all the LR recommendations are to split the catalog away from the cache and away from the images themselves, it's a trickier and more costly venture on the iMac.. The 27" screen in nice, but I'm not a big fan of glossy screens. I don't think any of those allow you a matte finish option like on the Macbook Pro.
Bottom line Bob is there are different choices for different budgets... Heck I went with a 17" Macbook Pro for a long time, using an inexpensive Expresscard 34 to hook up external eSATA drives and a second 24" Dell monitor.. Great combo and I always had the portability aspect of the 17" for client work, being tethered, etc..
Jay

Is it possible to run TWO parellel configurations for one Object??

SAP Gurus,
We have a strange requirement from the client to have to configurations established in the system for one configuration object.
Without taking much of your time let me paraphrase the requirements.
The client is having two different types of putaway strategies in their current business process. And they toggle between these putaway strategies by reaching out to their production support group and they make configuration changes to have the other put away strategy
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Your invaluable feedback on this will be highly appreciated.
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Edited by: Dhaval Joshi on Mar 4, 2008 12:09 PM

Q1--I don't believe it is possible. An organization can have multiple licenses tied to its main email address, for example, but then they are assigned to the individual users.
Q2--Yes, you would just need to log out of your account within the CC desktop app prior to logging in on the other account.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out.

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Open Pictures folder and move the files named lrcat-journal and lrcat.lock to Desktop.
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GPU notes for Lightroom CC (2015)

Hi everyone,
I wanted to share some additional information regarding GPU support in Lr CC.
Lr can now use graphics processors (GPUs) to accelerate interactive image editing in Develop. A big reason that we started here is the recent development and increased availability of high-res displays, such as 4K and 5K monitors. To give you some numbers: a standard HD screen is 2 megapixels (MP), a MacBook Retina Pro 15" is 5 MP, a 4K display is 8 MP, and a 5K display is a whopping 15 MP. This means on a 4K display we need to render and display 4 times as many pixels as on a standard HD display. Using the GPU can provide a significant speedup (10x or more) on high-res displays. The bigger the screen, the bigger the win.
For example, on my test system with a 4K display, adjusting the White Balance and Exposure sliders in Lightroom 5.7 (without GPU support) is about 5 frames/second -- manageable, but choppy and hard to control. The same sliders in Lightroom 6.0 now run smoothly at 60 FPS.
So why doesn't everything feel faster?
Well, GPUs can be enormously helpful in speeding up many tasks. But they're complex and involve some tradeoffs, which I'd like to take a moment to explain.
First, rewriting software to take full advantage of GPUs is a lot of work and takes time. Especially for software like Lightroom, which offers a rich feature set developed over many years and release versions. So the first tradeoff is that, for this particular version of Lightroom, we weren't able to take advantage of the GPU to speed up everything. Given our limited time, we needed to pick and choose specific areas of Lightroom to optimize. The area that I started with was interactive image editing in Develop, and even then, I didn't manage to speed up everything yet (more on this later).
Second, GPUs are marvelous at high-speed computation, but there's some overhead. For example, it takes time to get data from the main processor (CPU) over to the GPU. In the case of high-res images and big screens, that can take a LOT of time. This means that some operations may actually take longer when using the GPU, such as the time to load the full-resolution image, and the time to switch from one image to another.
Third, GPUs aren't best for everything. For example, decompressing sequential bits of data from a file -- like most raw files, for instance -- sees little to no benefit from a GPU implementation.
Fourth, Lightroom has a sophisticated raw processing pipeline (such as tone mapping HDR images with Highlights and Shadows), and running this efficiently on a GPU requires a fairly powerful GPU. Cards that may work with in the Photoshop app itself may not necessarily work with Lightroom. While cards that are 4 to 5 years old may technically work, they may provide little to no benefit over the regular CPU when processing images in Lr, and in some cases may be slower. Higher-end GPUs from the last 2 to 3 years should work better.
So let's clear up what's currently GPU accelerated in Lr CC and what's not:
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Within Develop, most image editing controls have full GPU acceleration, including the basic and tone panel, panning and zooming, crop and straighten, lens corrections, gradients, and radial filter. Some controls, such as local brush adjustments and spot clone/heal, do not -- at least, not yet.
While the above description may be disappointing to some of you, let's be clear: This is the beginning of the GPU story for Lightroom, not the end. The vision here is to expand our use of the GPU and other technologies over time to improve performance. I know that many photographers have been asking us for improved performance for a long time, and we're trying to respond to that. Please understand this is a big step in that direction, but it's just the first step. The rest of it will take some time.
Summary:
1. GPU support is currently available in Develop only.
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3. Using the GPU involves some overhead (there's no free lunch). This may make some operations take longer, such as image-to-image switching or zooming to 1:1. Newer GPUs and computer systems minimize this overhead.
4. The GPU performance improvement in Develop is more noticeable on higher-resolution displays such as 4K. The bigger the display, the bigger the win.
5. Prefer newer GPUs (faster models within the last 3 years). Lightroom may technically work on older GPUs (4 to 5 years old) but likely will not benefit much. At least 1 GB of GPU memory. 2 GB is better.
6. We're currently investigating using GPUs and other technologies to improve performance in Develop and other areas of the app going forward.
The above notes also apply to Camera Raw 9.0 for Photoshop/Bridge CC.
Eric Chan
Camera Raw Engineer

I posted the following information on the Luminous Landscape forum (GPU used in Develop but not Library?) in response to comments you made there.
I am very puzzled by the extremely blurry image in the second screen capture when the GPU is enabled.
OS X (10.9.5)
Hardware configuration:
   MacPro (late 2013)
   AMD FirePro D300 2048 MB
   Apple Cinema Display 1920 x 1200
   16 GB RAM
   1 TB SSD
Test file: Nikon D800 NEF, 50 MB
(0) open the Develop module
(1) select a different NEF file and zoom to 1:1
(2) clear the ACR cache
(3) select the test file
(4) take 3 screenshots to illustrate the 3 display states (the first one is hard to capture)
(5) select another image
(6) same 3 states are present
(7) return to the test file and the same 3 display states are present
   Why isn’t the ACR cache coming into play in step 7?
If I repeat this process with the GPU disabled the image is displayed without the intermediate states.
I have attached the 3 screenshots mentioned in step (4).

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Hi ,
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99jon wrote:
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