Very slow workflow in loghtroom 4.1

Question

Good day to everybody,
I'm writing this especially for adobe because I'm very frustrated with the workflow in adobe Lightroom 4 and 4.1.
So the main problem is that I have a powerful computer: 3,3 GHz X 6 cores, 8 Giga of DDR 3, a 260 GTX Nvidia card and 3 speedy HHD's. When I with a couple of photos everything is OK, but when I edit a weeding of 1800 photos, it is like a nightmare; after a couple of hundreds of photos edited my images load in about second. And this is not all, when I use the "super function" because this is the only reason I don't use other raw convertors instead of Lightroom 4 is the possibility to edit multiple images simultaneously...So, when I use this function with a couple of effects selected, the workflow suddenly transforms itself in a nightmare of waiting. Please see this problem resolved as quick as possible, because out there are a lot of persons complaining about speed in Lightroom 4.
And one more thing, please repair the masking function from the sharpness panel, because if I use luminance NR in conjunction with sharpness and masking I get ugly looking artifacts. I was complaining about the sharpness in LR 4 in the beginning but actually, I discovered soon that masking was the problem, and now I use NR instead of masking, because masking is bringing back some ugly sharpening artifacts.
The price reduction on LR 4 is a good move from your part but the slow workflow experience is a major down back, and because of this I'm still using LR 3.
With best regards, Alexandru

Answer 1

I am SO with you Alexandru.
I am so dissapointed at LR4.x performance, it is annoying to death.  Like most who reported performance issues (and we know there are tons in the same boat), I have a very powerful machine, SSD drives (system AND photos I am working on), LOTS of RAM, all updates done on Win7x64, a powerful video card, and LR4 behaves terribly slow. 
The new engine is visually wonderful in editing results.  But as soon as you startch working on a batch of photos, this beast that is Lightroom becomes a total slug.  It is annoying and counter productive beyond belief.  My quad core is constantly hitting 100% on all cores, from switching to one photo to the other in develop module.  COPY/PASTING a look from one photo to the other is a nightmare of slowlyness: seconds of waiting for a simple CTRL-C, and more waiting time for a CTRL-V.  Switching from one photo to the other in Develop Module takes multiple seconds everytime, EVEN if previews have been rendered, which makes the workflow painful.  Makes me push back jobs sometime! That's how annoying working in LR4 is.  God forbid you want to start working with larger files like the Nikon D800 36MP!  It's slug fest all over as described above, and when you play with the sliders in Develop Module it takes 1 to 2 seconds everytime to show up results. CPU is working 100% constantly, from 0 to 100, up down, up down. 
I do not wish to learn a completely new software - and to be honest, I don't know if there are alternatives that will digest my D800 files in a speedy manner.  I really do wish LR4.x was at least as fast as LR3.x, and it is clearly not the case here.  I understand that LR4 boasts a new engine, and clearly this engine is power hungry.  I just don't understand how come it is so slow, and I truely wish LR4 was pleasant to use.  As it is, it's an unpleasant beast that unfortunately I need to co-exist with every day.