Most of my images aren't worth a 15-minute loading time

SchorschGaggo · October 12, 2025, 3:19pm

Let’s get this straight: My computer, LAN, and NAS are fast enough. Once all the thumbnails are created and the camera/lens plugins are loaded, working is a pleasure, and the results are impressive.

But I sometimes wait up to 15 minutes before I can edit a photo. This is especially true when I want to open a photo from a folder with 3,000 images. It’s no problem at all if creating the 3,000 thumbnails takes half an hour, as long as I can work on the image I’ve selected. But this is where PhotoLab fails. If I open an image from Explorer using ‘Open with PhotoLab,’ editing is only possible after several minutes. Then, while I’m editing, a window pops up saying that lens/lens plugins need to be loaded. The window then stays open for 3 minutes and appears to be applied to all images. Such jobs must run in the background. This must not interrupt the editing of the current image.

platypus · October 12, 2025, 6:29pm

Welcome to the forum, @SchorschGaggo

You have indeed found one of the weak spots of PhotoLab: As soon as it sees an image in a folder, it adds all other images it finds in that folder to its database/catalog and - and this is the uglier part - starts to create previews of all those files.

This has been going on for years and most of us work around that behaviour by creating folders with less images - or lots of coffee while waiting for all those previews to be rendered.

Other apps manage processors in more user-friendly ways, but not PhotoLab.

The ones who could fix the mess don’t seem to be inclined to do so, leaving us with a selection of feelings like or bipolar reactions like love it or leave it.

The lesser extremes can be found in smaller folders.

zkarj · October 13, 2025, 5:34am

There are people who decry the concept of an import process, but this is exactly the sort of problem it solves.

I’d vote for an import step in a heartbeat because of this problem. I don’t end up waiting 15 minutes to edit an image, but I do find it incredibly annoying revisiting a folder I know I’ve visited before only for it to spend time showing me what’s there.

Meanwhile, over in Lightroom… the import step takes seconds and then it’s done. Thereafter, I have a fast library.

SchorschGaggo · October 13, 2025, 5:52am

@zkarj By ‘import process,’ do you mean a manually initiated step? That would make sense. But there also needs to be an option to call up an image that hasn’t been imported yet. That might take a second longer—but not minutes.

@platypus Creating folders with fewer images isn’t an option for me. For 800,000 images, that would mean well over 2,000 folders? I’ve also noticed that PL9 takes several seconds to select a folder with 1,000 subfolders, even if there isn’t a single image in that folder. Explorer does it in a fraction of a second.
In addition, I expect more from AI than having the computer do the creative work while my work consists of idiotic tasks like moving files back and forth for processing.

It doesn’t bother me if not every program offers a browser. I already have fast image browsers and a database that gives me a perfect overview. What shouldn’t happen, however, is that a half-baked image browser implementation hinders workflow to such an extent.
TopazAI, for example, doesn’t have a browser. I open the files in Topaz directly from my database or from FastStone Image Viewer.

@DXO If PL9 doesn’t support parallel processing image caching in the background and user operations in the foreground, then at least it should offer the option to disable this blocking background behavior.
Give us a command-line switch that only opens the passed file and disables the PhotoLibrary.

vainol · October 13, 2025, 6:28am

I have about 50 - 60 000 images in about 100 folders, but PL9 does not “see” those folders at all. Imatch sees those folders and it manages the image files. When I want to edit an image I open it in Imatch and Imatch then points the image to PL9. When editing is done PL9 exports the image to a special folder called “vestibule”. This folder contains only the images I am working on at a time and it is the only folder PL9 “sees”. So it is also a very small folder with only about 500 - 600 images. So Imatch does the DAM and PL9 (and often Affinity Photo 2) only does the actual editing.

Fineus · October 13, 2025, 6:53am

I’d absolutely second this.

It’s baffling to me that when I switch between two images in a folder that has already generated thumbnails and sat idle for some time, there’s still a delay in generating previews for those two images.

Even if I do nothing at all between clicking on one image, the next, and back again.

Nothing in the images change. No other tool is touched.

Why, then, does the preview need to be generated from scratch each time?

(And going back to thumbnail loading… I agree with that too. It should be stored between sessions and there should be options to purge the cache, change the cache size, or perhaps have it automatically purge anything older than (insert time preference here)).

Hell, between these two things, I find myself wondering what the large cache I’ve given PhotoLab to play with is actually for.

(And again, other programmes like Capture One and Lightroom seem to handle these functions far more smoothly).

@SchorschGaggo honestly if you’re working with 3,000 images, PhotoLab might not be the right tool. It’s not good at large scale project work, but is a good toolkit to lovingly finesse one image.

SchorschGaggo · October 13, 2025, 7:22am

Fineus, that’s correct. But I don’t want to edit 3,000 images with PL9, but rather a few of them. And it’s particularly annoying that I then have to wait what feels like forever for the previews of the other 2,999 images to be calculated.

Fineus · October 13, 2025, 7:37am

It’s not ideal that it must be this way, but if I were you I’d shortlist however many images you need to work on at any given time and move them to a different folder all together.

I feel like even selecting, copying, and pasting, would be faster than the painful process of trying to work on a folder of even hundreds of shots, nevermind thousands!

be51 · October 13, 2025, 8:39am

I use Photolab in project mode because not interested by DAM.
When I open photos in a project, it is very fast even if I open several hundredths*.
I notice that there is a small delay to build vignettes on photos never opened before by PL, so I deduct PL is indexing; but not annoying because you are not obliged to wait before beginning to process a picture.
It is confirmed by the fact that the first time PL opens a photo with a top file, it rebuilds the vignette with changes in colour, format… but it is fast.

The only complaint in this process is that the flag telling PL that the photo has already been developed is not updated if you move the photo in finder or WE.
I try to organise my photos before beginning the process.

*3s for 400 photos for instance

Joanna · October 13, 2025, 8:55am

Please excuse my incredulity but, are you really saying that you need to be able to instantaneously browse approaching a million images without dividing them up into some kind of classification? And that you need to be able to see a fully rendered preview of each and every one?

I wrote my own image browser that allows me to view all files in all sub-folders by flattening my hierarchy of Event/Year/Month/day into a single view. Of course, it doesn’t render the fully edited images but it is good enough to see the system thumbnail of every image and the resulting thumbnails are paged in and out.

Just out of interest, I targeted my top level folder in macOS Finder and did a search of the 13,500 images to just show only NEF files. That took around 10 seconds. So, even with a system provided browser, viewing images can take time.

Have you tried unchecking the high quality previews? …

This is essentially why I wrote my own browser, which allows addition of keywords, Finder tags and star ratings.

Of course, if, as you say @SchorschGaggo, most of your 800,000 images aren’t worth editing, why on earth are you keeping them all? If you were using 35mm film, that would mean over 22,000, 36 exposure rolls, of film, possibly with the accompanying paper folders of enprints if they were negatives.

Finally, do you realise that browsing 800,000 images at the rate of one per second would take over 9 days?

My simple answer would be - divide and conquer - and use a dedicated browser.

platypus · October 13, 2025, 11:27am

PhotoLab’s implementation of rendering every image it comes across - and this has been a topic that has been discussed for years - is basically disqualifying PhotoLab for any use that goes beyond weekend (limited number of captures) photography.

We’re not discussing whether umpty thousands of images are reasonable or not and no matter how they are split into subfolders or not. But PhotoLab should be able to tackle whatever comes along. So far. DxO has ignored all related requests.

PhotoLab being far from ideal for culling, other apps need to step in. Many products have been mentioned, some for Mac, Others for Win and some that exist for both (and more) platforms

Handling loads of images can be quite easy for some apps, but throwing thousands of images into the pot might bring even well-seasoned apps to overflow.

Q: What does all of it mean for @SchorschGaggo ?
A: Find an app that can handle the load and let it import (if needed) until done

My photos are on a separate volume on the internal drive and Finder finds my 16k RAW files within 5 seconds. Rendering previews (be it in PL or Lr) is a different story though. Apps like Adobe’s and FastRawViewer can be set to show the built in previews. Browsing images is easy-peasy in this case.

Fineus · October 13, 2025, 11:42am

I’ve been trialling Photo Mechanic and am blown away by how quickly it lets me skip between [it doesn’t matter how many] images. Hundreds. Thousands. It just copes, and is fantastic for rapid culling, flagging, and colour coding.

It’s just a shame the full product is quite expensive!

But as to what you said previously:

is basically disqualifying PhotoLab for any use that goes beyond weekend (limited number of captures) photography.

It really does. I don’t see editing for projects as something fun or rapid, it’s a slog.

…and the slog isn’t because I’m not already sure of what kind of changes I want to make, or even because I find the controls especially cumbersome. It’s a slog because working with PhotoLab can be so damn slow.

Lucabeer · October 13, 2025, 12:15pm

There must be something really wrong here…

My last sports shoot was 3000 photos taken in an afternoon, all in the same folder on a local SSD.

It really took only a few seconds after startup of PL to start editing them, the delay was minor and completely acceptable.

You mention NAS and LAN: are you saying that your photos are not on a local SSD? That might be the reason of such a difference in performance!

vainol · October 13, 2025, 1:02pm

You may wish to trial Imatch. It is much more versatile than Photo Mechanic and costs less than half.

Stenis · October 13, 2025, 2:22pm

That is exactly what I use to suggest people complaining about wait-states in Photolab to do when opening folders with 1000+ images. Use a DAM or external file viewer and configure it to open any selection of pictures you do in the external software in Photolab.

No need either to create separate intermediate ad hoc folders for this processing. Photolab will allways automatically create an entry under External Searches that can be found in the left panel when PictureLibrary is selected. Any time you want you can call any of these historical imports/searches. That is a killer feature that I think is pretty unique for Photolab.

I hate the importsystem in Capture One since it really is inefficient compared to this solution in Photolab that I think is a far better and a much more efficient integration solution for an external DAM or external File Viewer whether it may be iMatch, PhotoMechanic or a File Viewer like XnView. I use all three of historical reasons and all of them works seamlessly with Photolab. I don 't hesitate to say that just this feature is one of the main reasons I prefer Photolab before even Capture One and not to mention Lightroom. The very reason for that is that Photolab lacks these inefficient import-functions the others have when it works right on the filesystem instead.

Even PhotoMechanic has an import-function they call “Ingest”. I refuse even to use that because I prefer to just open the folder with another function called “Scan to Catalog” which just attach that folder, index the files and generates the previews optimized for speed and not editing like in the RAW-converters databases. It is normalky just the high res previews that makes the converters slow. That is how their compromises work. An external DAM does not need to do those compromises.

Ingest is very good for the ones wanting to process the files with variables e.t.c. but I rather do that with different batch forms instead to keep the attachment process almost as clean as the one in Photolab.

unchdxoly · October 13, 2025, 2:26pm

Where is this feature? It sounds very useful to me but I can’t find anything like it in the menus nor with a google search.

Fineus · October 13, 2025, 2:36pm

I think @Stenis meant (and may have edited to clarify) they meant PhotoMechanic, not PhotoLab - different products entirely!

“Ingest” looks like this:

unchdxoly · October 13, 2025, 2:40pm

Ah, okay. Thanks for the clarification.

I was excited to hear of an ingest feature I didn’t know about in PL. Oh well.

Fineus · October 13, 2025, 2:48pm

Sorry I missed this earlier, but thanks for the recommendation! It does look like it could do similar things for a lot less money (hard to say no to that) so I’ll definitely check it out

BHAYT · October 13, 2025, 3:14pm

@SchorschGaggo I believe that the only way around the issue is to use another product and pass selected images to PhotoLab, providing there is no way of speeding up access to the images in the first place.

@Fineus For what it is PM is ridiculously expensive as far as I am concerned.

Products that might help on Windows are

IMatch as used by @vainol, a product that I have a license for but use rarely
FastStone Viewer but it can only pass one image at a time, its actually passes them all but only the last one makes it to DxPL,
XnViewMP, practical maximum is 350 (OS buffer limitation I believe) but by using tagging it can include images from a number of directories in one pass
FastRawViewer, same limitation as XnViewMP, hence my comment about the OS buffer being the limiting factor.

I did some tests with FastRawViewer and exceeded the figures I gave above

so I managed to get 508 images passed between FastRawViewer and PL9.1. Passing the images from FRV to PL9 which are held on an USB3 attached SSD was almost instantaneous.

IMatch is cheaper than Photo Mechanic and arguably better but FastRawViewer is very cheap but cannot handle Keywords. XNViewMP is free or via a donation and can handle keywords and pass images from multiple directories and FastStone Image Viewer is Free or donation ware but doesn’t handle certain metadata in a way that the others do.

My personal choice for everyday use is FastStone because it has always been my go to viewer but the limitation of only 1 image arriving at PhotoLab is limiting.

I use FRV if I don’t need to keyword externally and XNViewMP if I want to use and set more IPTC data.

Finally IMatch can do all the things that the other packages can do but even though I have a licence for the product I simply haven’t invested the time to get the best out of it.

Problems using external selection:-

‘External selection’ is handled internally exactly the same way as ‘Projects’ but unlike ‘Projects’ which are now available in ‘Customize’ mode, ‘External Selections’ are not!?
Turning ‘External Selections’ into ‘Projects’ can only be done by selecting all or some of the items and adding them to a ‘Project’. Which is actually very simple!
Both are only ever stored in the database so lose the database and you lose all of those groupings, i.e. no references to either exist in the DOP.

Update:- With FastStone PL9.1. doesn’t just see the last image of a batch it sees every one but as a separate selection so you get this and it hasn’t finished yet