September 2, 2008
nVidia settings to speed the Brush tool on XP
It seems that nVidia users seem to draw the short straw with Lightroom. When Version 1 was released, it took a while to find out that certain performance issues were due to the use of nView. Now with Version 2 it seems there are different performance issues with nVidia.
However Flickr user MarkW Photo has found settings that greatly aid in the speed of the brush tool for Lightroom 2 nVidia users.
“I have finally fixed my slow performance issues with LR2! Today I did a bit of playing around with different performance settings. I’m using LR2 on a HP Pavillion 6258se Laptop. It has an 80GB Hard Drive, 2GB of Ram and the processor is a 1.8 GHz AMD Turion ™ 64 X2 Dual-Core. I had Windows Vista installed months ago but I downgraded back to XP due to Vista issues. First I opened the windows task manager so I could monitor the performance of Windows while using LR2. I noticed when using the develop tasks the performance stayed around 50%. When I used the retouch brush tools the performance still stayed around 50% but the brush tools were still slow. The more I brushed on the image the slower the brush refresh became. This told me that there must be a video performance issue and not necessarily a processor problem.
Here’s how I fixed the problem.
1. I right clicked on the desktop and clicked NVidia Display/Laptop
Dispay.
2. Clicked on the Performance and Quality Settings
3. Under Active profile Click Global Driver Settings.
4. Under Global driver Setting click in the dropdown view advanced settings.
Changed the following settings:
Images setting = High Performance
Force mipmaps = None
Trilinear Optimization = Off
Anisotropic mip filter optimization = Off
Anisotropic sample optimization = Off
Triple Buffer = Off
Without even restarting LR2, the brush tools worked with no lag or delay no matter how much I brushed on the image! They were just as fast as using the sliders in the develop module!
I hope this works other Nvidia users having similar issues!!
Mark “
Mark also mentions seeing an increase in the speed of Large Preview rendering.
As with all settings, your mileage may vary. Remember to note your original settings if you feel the need to go back.
Hi Sean,
Is there any way that you could provide the equivalent settings for ATI Radeon Cards. I am finding the brush tool very slow and lagging on my XP machine as well.
Thanks,
Alessandro Rosa
I don’t have any such settings Alessandro. I do recommend not using Auto Mask unless you really need it. It really slows down brush processing. If you do a stroke with it on and then turn it off, the speed is still hampered by the original use of Auto Mask. Brushing is really intensive because you’re creating XMP data for the brush area, as well as actually applying settings on the fly.
This tip is truly amazing!
Not only did it improve the brush speed and rendering time immensely, it also sped up the dual monitor setup so much!
I gave up using the dual monitor setup with LR because it was so slow and eventually led to LR hanging. Now it works like a charm!
I have a Nvida MB and 8600 Graphics Board, I can’t find the setting that you are referring to?
You’ll need to refer to the originator on Flickr, I’m only posting his findings.
Sean,
Thanks SOOOOOOO MUCH for posting this here as well as to the OP- MarkWPhoto who posted it originally on Flickr…… My lag using the adjustment brush was so severe it kept me from using it at all…. Once I made the recommended changes, the results are now instantaneous….. Now I only hope it stays that way….. LR 2 is awesome!!!!! I still think that there are some bugs in LR 2.1 that I hope Adobe is trying to sort out…. Thanks again!