Not for me, I find the time is really very long!…
Yes, I’m running Win 11 25H2 32 Go and AMD 7500 , Intel Ultra pro 7….
No.
On my M4 Mac mini/32gb just timed it and 9.5 took 5 seconds to load.
Launching Nik Color Efex Pro 8 from within PL took 8 seconds load a Z8 40mb RAW image.
My definition of “load” means the application is ready to use. It’s the total time from clicking the icon in the Dock or the button in the interface to when the application is useable.
It takes 37 seconds to launch on my laptop Core i9 9880H with a GTX1650 and Win11 which seems more or less like a potato, now. PL8 takes almost 32 seconds to launch.
Well, you’re in luck, it only takes me about a minute to get started! Intense network activity is observed during application loading.
I think we’ll have to make do, judging by the responses…
Alain
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May your photos on some NAS, etc.
PL itself (if no NAS, etc.) does near zero network activity during startup: its connect to the activation.dx.com site, and to some amazonAWS. all traffic like 10kb.
I measure between 27-40 second loading times.
For this thread at general (not just your measurements), i trace (under Win) the File read/write/query operations, and the followings happen (hh:mm:ss in local clock time during trace). Only the main points from more than 300 000 trace line. Please note: lot of operations running in different threads, this ones only the file operations.
21:34:14 - load (read) .NET framework , PL config and DLL files
21:34:15 - PL .dll (it has a lot, like rename.dll, processingcore.dll, import.dll, etc.)
21:34:16 - PL .dll (similar than previous, colorpipeline.dll, distortion.dll etc.)
21:34:17 - PL ..dll (similar than previous, metadata.dll, sqlite.dll etc.)
21:34:18 - PL ..dll (similar than previous), check licences (PL, FP, VP)
21:34:19 - Start to do something with .parc files, in may case in here:
C:\Users[username]\AppData\Local\AMD\DxcCache - DirectX shader files for AMD GPU.
21:34:20 - Still this .parc
21:34:21 - Still this .parc for 0.4 sec. After: Database stuffs starts (SQLite, etc.)
21:34:22 - Database stuffs
21:34:23 - In this second no new read/write happen. Note: paralel threads running.
21:34:24 - CAFlist database, CafList, PL dll’s, etc.
21:34:25 - Thumbnails (cache) database
21:34:26 - Database - CAFlist , PhotoLab
21:34:27 - Various, .dll (lua), configs, presets (like: tonecurves - strong contrast),
21:34:28 - PL .dll, presets (like FP TimeMachine).
21:34:29 - FP presets
21:34:30 - FP presets, PL presets
21:34:31 - FP .png, (like textures)
21:34:32 - ttf fonts (0.5 sec), PL .dll
21:34:33 - small things, not so mouch new things happen in this second
21:34:34 - PL config
21:34:35 - PL config, ttf fonts
21:34:36 - PL activation.dll, monitor .icm profile, lot of small things, .parc files again
21:34:37 - .parc files again,
21:34:38 - some .parc, lot of PhotoLab.db
21:34:39 - PhotoLab.db
21:34:40 - PhotoLab.db (0.3sec). Tumbnails (cache) .jpg, query RAW file, check Preview (cache) db, preview (cache) .jpg, load CAF module,
21:34:41 - Cache .jpg, RAW file.
And its done. PL fully started, the one (1) RAW loaded.
Note: I have FP also. Its running on slow old SSD. Win11.
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For me, 9.4 took 20 seconds to load; 9.5 took 19 seconds (after installation and a re-boot to avoid anything cached) - so effectively the same.
(i5-14600K 32gig Ram, RTX 4060 8gig RAM, Win 11. System and images on separate M.2 NVME SSDs)
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Hello, today I ran some load tests to get access to PL 9.5. I measured the time, which was between 50 seconds and 1 minute for the handling.
My system specs are: Intel Core Ultra 7 265, 32 GB RAM, AMD PRO W7500, two 512 GB M.2 drives, and a 4 TB hard drive.
Older versions of PL are much faster than this new version.
Best regards, Alain
Some lines of DXO.PhootoLab.txt 1Fst and last:
2026-02-24 22:05:27.133 | DxO.PhotoLab - 13096 - 1 | PhotoLab - Info | Profiling DxO.PhotoLab.DpiAwareSplashScreen..ctor(…): 368 ms
2026-02-24 22:06:14.343 | DxO.PhotoLab - 13096 - 1 | DxONET.Extensibility.ServiceLocator - Info | Closing service ‘ServiceLocator’ (init order = 0).
Win 11 i9 11th gen 32gb ram and 16gb 3080 card… About 21 secs to load 9.4.
Installed 9.5 - first time it ran - 37 secs. 2nd time - 15 secs, which seems consistent now. Happy with that - I have VP and FP installed too.
On PL9.5 start time:
Setup: Win11, i7-14700K, Z690, 32GB RAM, RTX 4070, Kingston SKC3000, defaults.
My PL9 databse (DB) is 1.6GB, about 150,000 items. DB was never deleted nor reindexed (!) since my initial PL7.1 (automatically migrated by major upgrades, with lot of “orphans” because of my out-of-PL file manegement, few LA in settings, so about 10KB/Item).
My startup time (up to when actual image numbers are displayed above the filmstrip) varies greatly, probably due to some caching strategies in DxO/Microsoft/NVIDIA components, spanning from 12 to 25 seconds.
Example #1, about 16h after last PL use, filtered just relevant PL log entries up to creating GUI, start time about 21:47:00:
2026-02-23 21:47:02.173 | DxO.PhotoLab - 6940 - 1 | PhotoLab - Info | Profiling DxO.PhotoLab.DpiAwareSplashScreen..ctor(...): 49 ms
2026-02-23 21:47:07.327 | DxO.PhotoLab - 6940 - 1 | ServiceLocator - Info | Profiling DxO.PhotoLab.App.RegisterAssemblies(...): 5 131 ms
2026-02-23 21:47:07.327 | DxO.PhotoLab - 6940 - 1 | ServiceLocator - Info | Initializing service Locator
2026-02-23 21:47:18.375 | DxO.PhotoLab - 6940 - 1 | ServiceLocator - Info | Service Locator Initialized
2026-02-23 21:47:18.417 | DxO.PhotoLab - 6940 - 23 | PhotoLab - Info | Contacting update server at url 'https://activation.dxo.com/CheckForUpdates/WSCheckForUpdates.asmx'
2026-02-23 21:47:18.828 | DxO.PhotoLab - 6940 - 23 | PhotoLab - Info | Update server result: error='NoUpdateFound', newVersion='9.5.0.610', downloadUrl=''
2026-02-23 21:47:21.438 | DxO.PhotoLab - 6940 - 1 | PhotoLab - Info | Profiling DxO.PhotoLab.UI.Customize.ViewModels.WorkspaceViewModel.CreateStandardPalettes(...): 834 ms
2026-02-23 21:47:21.676 | DxO.PhotoLab - 6940 - 1 | PhotoLab - Info | Profiling DxO.PhotoLab.UI.Customize.ViewModels.WorkspaceViewModel.CreateRightSite(...): 233 ms
PL was closed and started two minutes later at 21:49:00:
2026-02-23 21:49:02.793 | DxO.PhotoLab - 23220 - 1 | PhotoLab - Info | Profiling DxO.PhotoLab.DpiAwareSplashScreen..ctor(...): 1 847 ms
2026-02-23 21:49:02.995 | DxO.PhotoLab - 23220 - 1 | ServiceLocator - Info | Profiling DxO.PhotoLab.App.RegisterAssemblies(...): 177 ms
2026-02-23 21:49:02.995 | DxO.PhotoLab - 23220 - 1 | ServiceLocator - Info | Initializing service Locator
2026-02-23 21:49:10.040 | DxO.PhotoLab - 23220 - 1 | ServiceLocator - Info | Service Locator Initialized
2026-02-23 21:49:10.072 | DxO.PhotoLab - 23220 - 8 | PhotoLab - Info | Contacting update server at url 'https://activation.dxo.com/CheckForUpdates/WSCheckForUpdates.asmx'
2026-02-23 21:49:10.388 | DxO.PhotoLab - 23220 - 8 | PhotoLab - Info | Update server result: error='NoUpdateFound', newVersion='9.5.0.610', downloadUrl=''
2026-02-23 21:49:11.804 | DxO.PhotoLab - 23220 - 1 | PhotoLab - Info | Profiling DxO.PhotoLab.UI.Customize.ViewModels.WorkspaceViewModel.CreateStandardPalettes(...): 764 ms
2026-02-23 21:49:12.033 | DxO.PhotoLab - 23220 - 1 | PhotoLab - Info | Profiling DxO.PhotoLab.UI.Customize.ViewModels.WorkspaceViewModel.CreateRightSite(...): 231 ms
You can see above for example big difference in RegisterAssemblies() and initializing “service Locator” execution times (5.131 vs 0.177sec). In both cases there was some additional time (not so short) while “Loading …” was displayed, before actual number of images was displayed – this is mainly due to very intensive DB querries. For a new directory that could take longer (typically I have 300-3,000 raws in a directory).
My main point is to be patient and stay easy – there are hours of work ahead.
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