GPU usage question
Answered
Hi,
I'm using Radeon rx 570 (open gl 4.6 compatible, fresh drivers 19.4.1) and I'm seeing that GPU only gets few % of usage, even during the exporting phase. CPU is often stressed at 70-100% and generally speaking I'm not happy with the performance. Exporting is the slowest I've seen considering other editing software, and editing also takes a lot of time (xx seconds to load each photo in edit mode).
My CPU is i5-4570 (4x 3.2-3.6 GHz). Is there anything I could do to allow for higher GPU usage? Having few % of usage of GPU seems weird for photo editing software. I'd be glad to hear about other people experience in that terms.
Thanks, regards,
Bartek
-
Hi Bartosz! Please make sure that you are using Luminar with your high-performance Radeon rx 570 GPU. Right-click on the Luminar icon > use with Radeon rx 570 GPU or refer to the manufacturer of the graphics card for the instructions.
As for increasing the performance, you can try creating a smaller catalog. In the top bar menu choose File > Catalog > New > add smaller folders one by one.
Also, we are constantly working on the software so we will improve the performance in the next updates. -
TL;DR - They don't have an option for GPU acceleration...for Windows
Right clicking on an icon in Windows doesn't work the same way as it might in MacOS. There are not any contextual menu options for GPU acceleration. What you can get in Windows RC context menus (in regards to graphics) is compatibility such as reduced color and resolution modes, but surely not the ability to enable GPU acceleration.
For Windows, Luminar is going to need an edit options and then performance sub-menu to enable GPU hardware acceleration. (This is what I see on just about every photo editing software I have used on Windows up to now
DxO PL2
Edit, Preferences, Performance, "Display and Process", Enable OpenCL
Olympus Workshop
Tools, Options, Graphics Processing Unit
Lightroom Options Menu
https://photographylife.com/gpu-acceleration-in-lightroom
GIMP
Edit, Preferences, System Resources, Enable OpenCL
The stickied post outside of this post states that they do use OpenGL, but OpenCL seems to perform better
(PS6 as an example here - https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/photoshop-cs6-gimp-aftershot-pro,3208-13.html)
My point of all this is to emphasize you need an options/preferences menu when it comes to Windows. It's not like Mac. -
Performance would be better if you went away from GL to CL. You'd still get the same "parity" as Alina and Angela have been talking about as Mac and Windows use them.
https://community.skylum.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360012567772-OpenGL-3-3-and-Later-is-Required
But yes, I do understand the latter. My wife and I are trying Luminar out on Windows because of watching some videos from Dustin Abbott and we both really like what it does for our photos (and also really like what I saw from Aurora too). However after 3 days of using Luminar, I can't consider it because:
- It crashes quite often
- Has a huge memory leak the more you use it (We have seen more than 8GB being used by it on both our machines)
- Trial version time frames are in conflict (We get mail message that it is 30 days, but we only get 7 by the application itself and the secondary option of downloading another executable does sound rather sketchy for one of the options to get 30 days)
- No GPU acceleration (and our systems would benefit greatly from it (980Ti for the wife, Vega 64 for me)) -
I give up.... I purchased a new higher spec computer for Luminar and now, I also see continued performance and stability issues (crashes, high CPU usage, slow loading) I am not a computer expert but even I can see the GPU gets no usage (expect when it crashes and its spikes for a brief moment)
Skylum has done me over for the last time... you produced the same sub-par software in the early 2000 and over 15 years later... you are still at it.
-
I'm glad I found this thread. I was wondering why Luminar's performance was so bad compared to Affinity and Photoshop. I will wait to see if they update with support for Metal. Regardless, photo editing software needs to use the GPU. Skylum, please bring your software into the modern era. 25 megapixel RAW images are unusable in Luminar 3 on Mac.
-
In fact I purchased Luminar 3 , including Luminar Flex, and everything worked really well in my old tower Core I5, 16GB RAM. When I installed it in my laptop Dell Inspiron 15 , Core I7, 16 GB RAM, U.2 solid state disk, and NVIDIA GeForce 4 GB GPU , the software is crashing all the time running and/or not running thru the GPU. I wonder if you are going to fix this behavior in the same version Luminar 3, because I like the product very much but I am not going to purchase any update, if the current release is failing. Regards.
-
Hi Vita.....it is not a matter of performance, that by the way is not better in new powered laptop but not worse.....it is a matter of stability, it is crashing 50% of the time in this new environment. In my old core I5 2nd generation from 2011 , I reach 5 instances of Luminar Flex running at the same time without issues......in the new laptop it is impossible to have a second instance......and again 50% of time it is crashing forcing me to save the work every 2 minutes...... (it is a must to implement auto save for .lmnr files)
-
Hi, I was impressed with many of the videos I have seen about the new AI features and the price hooked me for what appears to be very powerful.
However, I too am considering a refund. I edit a single RAW image which is only a few megabytes and Luminar is using 2.4 Gb before I even start editing! Then I do a couple of erases and the app shuts down without saving any edits. I am disheartened and thinking of going to Affinity instead. The workflow may be less automated but I can hardly see any complaints about crashes or memory use.
Also, agree about the strangeness of not having a simple way to change settings such as GPU usage.
I will give it 28 days and then ask for a refund if things have not improved.
-
Probably not (at least not for GPU hardware acceleration selection as they are still maintaining the use of OpenGL over CL despite the majority of photo editing software making that transition - unless they changed that in Luminar 4. Looking at the requirements, looks like they are still using OpenGL).
My wife and I gave up over a year ago and went to ON1 and have been satisfied so far. She actually preferred Luminar as it took less steps to get what she wanted to achieve, but stability issues and pretty much everything else that I had posted before prevent us from going back.
"We want to like you, but you just don't give us any reason to try again...."
and given there are still complaints, looks like we are going to maintain that position. Better the devil you know can only take you so far. -
For all who follow this, it's somewhat a shame this post (like many similar ones) are marked "answered". I would consider a post answered when the OP consented the issue was solved, not Skylum support simply gave a reply.
This is still an ongoing issue, have a look here:https://community.skylum.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360008048579-Luminar-4-doesn-t-use-the-GPU
Given these circumstances, I can only advise you to NOT purchase their upcoming LuminarAI product as they have not even been able to fix V3 and V4 (although promising so for ages now)
-
I'm very sorry to hear about your negative impression. Left the answer for your comment in the thread you included the link to. Thank you.
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
16 comments