Is Lightroom Classic Slow on Your PC? Try These 4 Tricks

Published Feb 19, 2025

Patrick Campanale has been in the tech space for well over a decade, specializing in PC/gaming news and reviews, as well as maker-focused products to build small businesses.

With a start in technology back in 2010 surrounding the Palm/webOS ecosystem, Patrick spent his formative years developing mobile applications as well as blogging for various publications, eventually leading to starting his own website in 2014. After running a technology blog for a few years, he stepped out of that role and into the world of high-end custom PC manufacturing and building, with a focus on YouTube video production and overclocking. Then, six years ago, Patrick joined the9to5Toysteam as an editor/writer/reviewer with over 14,000 articles being published there there, ranging from deals and roundups to in-depth reviews on the latest technology, video games, 3D printers, and more.

In his free time, Patrick loves tocreate projects from wood using various robots and methods, including leveraging the technologies of CNCs and lasers. If Patrick isn't working on a computer or playing video games, he's likely in his 2-car garage workshop creating something unique. In addition to all this, Patrick is also a youth pastor at his local church where he feels God has called him to serve, and he loves every minute of it.

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I've used Lightroom Classic for over a decade now, and recently it's become unbearably slow. Here's how I fixed my Lightroom to go from crawling to nice and speedy.

Ensure Your Library and RAW Photos Are on Fast Storage

If Lightroom Classic is slow on your computer, the first thing you'll want to do ismake sure it's on the fastest storage possible for you. A USB 2.0 external hard drive, for instance, won't cut it with large RAW files.

WD Black M.2 NVMe SSD mounted to a motherboard — Western Digital Black SSD

Try moving your RAW files into internal storage for starters. If that doesn't work, then you might want to look into upgrading that internal storage to a SATA SSD, or, better yet, a NVMe SSD likethe Samsung 980 PRO.

Samsung 980 PRO SSD with Heatsink

Balancing overall solid performance relative to competitors, the 980 Pro is a great SSD for PCIe 4.0 builds.

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Increase CameraRAW Cache Size

Personally, this is what fixed Lightroom for me. I already had all my files on fast storage (my system has an i9-13900K, RTX 3080 12GB, 48GB of DDR4 RAM, and all NVMe storage.) So, I wasn't sure what my problem was with why Lightroom was so sluggish on my desktop.

Adobe Lightroom Classic settings showing to increase the CameraRAW cache size to improve performance.

However, when I dug into it, I found that my CameraRAW cache was just 5GB (this is Lightroom's default cache size). This leaves room for just about 200 pictures from my Sony a6500 DSLR. This means that Lightroom had to try, in the background, to move things around in cache to free up space and do other gymnastics when I had more than 200 pictures in a library.

So, since I have plenty of space on my computer, I simply upped the cache size to 150GB. You don't have to go that extreme, you can start out bumping to 10GB, 20GB, 50GB, whatever you're comfortable with. But, the more you can give Lightroom, the better.

Ensure Your Graphics Card Is Fully Enabled

If you have an adequate cache size and your files on the fastest storage possible already, then be sure your graphics card is fully enabled. I assumed mine was, but when digging around in the settings of Lightroom, I found that my RTX 3080 12GB was basically not being utilized at all, and it was set to "custom" in Lightroom.

Adobe Lightroom Classic showing to ensure your GPU settings are on auto for the best performance.

Flipping from "custom" to "auto" fixed this for me. When in doubt, set your graphics card to "auto" in Lightroom because the software knows best what it can utilize the card for.

Increase Your System RAM If All Else Fails

Maybe you've already done everything else I've mentioned, but Lightroomstill is sluggish. Well, make sure you have adequate RAM. My photo library for How-To Geek only has about 220 pictures in it right now (all from either my a6500 or my a6000), which is a relatively small library. Yet, Lightroom was taking up around 7GB of RAM just while browsing the pictures and doing some light editing.

All that to say, Lightroom rivals Chrome for being RAM-hungry. So, if you only have 8GB or 16GB of RAM on your system, it might be time tostep that up a bit and upgrade your computer's memory. The more RAM you have, the more responsive your system will be overall, too.

G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB Series

The G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB Series isn't just fast, but it's compatible with both Intel XMP 3.0 and AMD Expo. It may not be plug-and-play in every system, but the sheer performance is worth the extra setup.

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Do you have an iPhone capable of ProRAW, but you avoid using it? Here are some reasonswhy you should (or shouldn't) be taking your pictures in ProRAW.