Even Lightroom Needs a Power Nap Every Now and Then
If you are:
- Sean “I want a restart shortcut key” McCormack, or any other Web Gallery developer for that matter
- Scott Photoshop In”sight"er Kelby [via Amanda Kern’s “Lightroom 2 Tour” sketch notes):
When something doesn’t work – QUIT! … fixes 99% of problems on Mac
- someone who finds that Lightroom 2’s performance or behavior slowly deteriorates during a work session
then you already know that Lightroom needs a “power nap” every now and then to get back into perfect form. Restarting the application is a simple, effective, and potentially time saving way to get LR2 back on track so you can process your photos at optimum speed.
Back when Lightroom 2.2 was released the performance degradation issues became frequent enough I wrote a script to speed up the restart process. While Lightroom 2.3 has resolved the most significant of these issues, I’m still finding I need to restart regularly enough that others might find the script useful too. When Lightroom really starts to grind it can take minutes to shutdown, and the script allows you to wander off to grab a coffee rather than babysit the restart process. This should be especially useful for Web Gallery developers who by all reports need to restart way, way too often.
Installation
- Download the script: LRRelaunch-20090324_001.zip
- Open Lightroom 2.
- Select Edit > Preferences > Presets (Windows) or Lightroom > Preferences > Presets (Mac).
- Select Show Lightroom Presets Folder.
- Open the Lightroom folder. If it doesn’t already exist, create a new folder named Scripts inside the Lightroom folder.
- Unzip LRRelaunch-20090324_001.zip and drag or copy the LRRelaunch.lua file into the Scripts folder.
- Close the Windows Explorer, or Finder window, to return to Lightroom 2.
- Exit then reopen Lightroom 2.
Usage
When you open Lightroom 2 you should now see a new Scripts menu to the right of the existing Help menu.
You can now open the Scripts menu and select the LRRelaunch menu option to restart Lightroom 2.
I hope you find this script useful and feel free to share your experiences or suggestions in the comments section below.
7 Responses to “Even Lightroom Needs a Power Nap Every Now and Then”
Works wonderfully! Thanks!
I don’t see the script menu after reopening ? windows vista and lghtrm 2.3. An idea ?
@Barrelman, did you follow step 4) to open your preferences folder, then step 5) to create a folder called Scripts in your preferences folder? Once you do this and restart Lightroom the Scripts menu should appear to the right of the Help menu.
You will also need to follow the remaining steps to install the plugin, but steps 4) and 5) are the critical ones for enabling the Scripts menu.
Simple but effective, thank you.
I have not seen much of a problem with LR slowing down – but then I don’t use Web Galleries. Memory leaks!
@Ian, Extensive use of adjustment brush can also cause similar slowdown/memory leak issues. Be thankful they don’t impact you!
I am indeed thankful. I use the script a lot for manual database validation and backups.
I set the option to “next time LR starts” and then run the script, go away and have a coffee. When I come back LR is running again.
Actually it would be great to have a script that sets the catalog preference and restarts in one step. Where do I go to find out how to write scripts?
@Ian, I’m glad you find this useful.
Unfortunately there is no documentation about writing these scripts and any information about writing to the preferences file from within LR is locked deep within the product itself. The restart feature is much easier to access and (counter-intuitively) safer to use. I would be loathe to try to write a script to do what you propose because of the risks of corrupted preference files, LR crashes, etc. Strange that such an innocuous request could be so fraught with danger but that is the way it is.
The closest you could go is on Windows to write a script file that updates the line in the preferences file to set backup to the next run, then starts LR. Once again it would be dangerous to run this script from within LR because it writes to the preferences file while running and you could risk corruption. So there is no easy way to do what you ask unless you have two LR boot scripts, and call the correct one depending upon whether you want to backup now or backup at the next regular timed interval.
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