I would recommend that anyone who is at all frustrated with Lightroom 4 running too slowly  check out this very useful new page from Adobe on steps you can take to improve performance.   Some relate to upgrading your hardware (such as 16 GB of RAM and moving your catalog to a solid state drive), but others relate to the order you make adjustments, clearing History, not making adjustments you don’t need, and more. These suggestions have come from customers, and have been shown to be effective.  (Also do check out Adobe’s page on more traditional ways to optimize Lightroom performance.)

It’s all of interest to me, and I don’t want to repeat the article here, but just as an example, Adobe recommends that to maximize performance, your editing steps be done in the following order (quoting from the article):

  1. Spot healing (performing spot healing first improves the accuracy of the spot healing, and ensures the boundaries of the healed areas match the the spot location.)
  2. Geometry corrections, such as Lens Correction profiles and Manual corrections, including keystone corrections using the Vertical slider.
  3. Global non-detail corrections, such as Exposure, White Balance, etc. These corrections can also be done first if desired.
  4. Local corrections, such as Gradient Filter and Adjustment Brush strokes.
  5. Detail corrections, such as Noise Reduction and Sharpening.


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