Digital Photo Professional s/w extremely slow

[KenMcD]

I have DPP version 4.8.30.0, and use two cameras, an 80D and a 5DSr, both currently set to shoot in RAW.  I use DPP to rate and edit the raw files, before finishing editing them in Photoshop.  However DPP is running extremely slow - usually it works OK for a few minutes and then I get the blue circle, going on and off at 2 second intervals and it is driving me nuts. 

My PC is an Intel i7-7700 with 16 Gb RAM, and an SSD hard drive, with a separate HDD 4Tb drive that I use for storing photos on.  64bit Windows 10 Nvidia GE Force GTX 950 display adaptor.   However I've had the same problem on two different laptops with different specs.

I've seen comments on other forums that it is something to do with the software routinely searching other directories, and I do have two years worth of photos in date directories in the HDD - but as I said, the same thing happens with the laptops and I don't have thousands of photos on them.

I've just come back from a trip to NZ and am trying to rate photos out of the 4,000 I took, just pick out the best ones, not trying to do any processing or work on any individual file.  I've previously used the software with a 70D, a 6D and the 5DSr with no problem, and it seems to have no problem transferring files from the 80D and the 5D into the same directory.  

Does anybody have any idea why this is happening?   There are very few options I can edit in the software and under the Tools/Preferences tab I have selected 32Gb, the maximum available on disk for temporary files, and also selected the option to use the graphics processor for image editing, and I can't see what else there is to mess about with.

Any help much appreciated!

[RobertTheFat]

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@KenMcD wrote:

I have DPP version 4.8.30.0, and use two cameras, an 80D and a 5DSr, both currently set to shoot in RAW.  I use DPP to rate and edit the raw files, before finishing editing them in Photoshop.  However DPP is running extremely slow - usually it works OK for a few minutes and then I get the blue circle, going on and off at 2 second intervals and it is driving me nuts. 

My PC is an Intel i7-7700 with 16 Gb RAM, and an SSD hard drive, with a separate HDD 4Tb drive that I use for storing photos on.  64bit Windows 10 Nvidia GE Force GTX 950 display adaptor.   However I've had the same problem on two different laptops with different specs.

I've seen comments on other forums that it is something to do with the software routinely searching other directories, and I do have two years worth of photos in date directories in the HDD - but as I said, the same thing happens with the laptops and I don't have thousands of photos on them.

I've just come back from a trip to NZ and am trying to rate photos out of the 4,000 I took, just pick out the best ones, not trying to do any processing or work on any individual file.  I've previously used the software with a 70D, a 6D and the 5DSr with no problem, and it seems to have no problem transferring files from the 80D and the 5D into the same directory.  

Does anybody have any idea why this is happening?   There are very few options I can edit in the software and under the Tools/Preferences tab I have selected 32Gb, the maximum available on disk for temporary files, and also selected the option to use the graphics processor for image editing, and I can't see what else there is to mess about with.

Any help much appreciated!

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If you manage to get any insight, please be sure to let the rest of us know. We've been wrestling with this issue since DPP V4 first came out. If anything, it seems worse now than it did then. But I suspect that's mostly because the early releases were so buggy that the loops and crashes tended to mask the inefficiency.

[KenMcD]

Thanks for that Bob - useful to know it's not just me.  It's probably helpful that I've ended up using three different PC and laptop combinations because of photography expeditions, and they're quite high spec so it's unlikely to be the individual PC that's the issue. 

Common factors that I've identified are
- they all have the latest version of Windows 10 on,

- they've all had the Fall Creators Update to Windows 10 which I've read elsewhere can be buggy

- two out of three had a completely clean install, the PC was an update

- they happen to be all ASUS machines (but fairly different specs, and I built the PC myself)

Differences are

- although the PC (base computer) has thousands of photos on it, saved in date files, the same issue started happening as soon as I used one of the travel laptops which didn't have extensive photo directories

- the PC has a separate internal HDD I use to store data/pictures on, plenty of capacity left on it, one of the laptops has an external HDD, the other I just used the built in HDD, all have demonstrated the same issue (so no network drives/cloud storage/ethernet)

The occurrence of the problem seems to be worse when I'm working in a directory that has more photos (for example 150 photos rather than 10)

It seems to get worse if I have 'rated' any of the photos in the directory, but this is not consistent

It definitely gets worse if I have worked on any of the photos in the directory

The only way I can resolve it is to keep using Task Manager to shut the programme down and restarting (not the best recommendation I can make for any software!)

Also, I downloaded the latest graphics driver for the graphics card and the issue is no better

Not sure if this is helpful to anyone else but all part of the puzzle - thanks for the feedback in any event!

[Waddizzle]

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@KenMcD wrote:

Thanks for that Bob - useful to know it's not just me.  It's probably helpful that I've ended up using three different PC and laptop combinations because of photography expeditions, and they're quite high spec so it's unlikely to be the individual PC that's the issue. 

Common factors that I've identified are
- they all have the latest version of Windows 10 on,

- they've all had the Fall Creators Update to Windows 10 which I've read elsewhere can be buggy

- two out of three had a completely clean install, the PC was an update

- they happen to be all ASUS machines (but fairly different specs, and I built the PC myself)

Differences are

- although the PC (base computer) has thousands of photos on it, saved in date files, the same issue started happening as soon as I used one of the travel laptops which didn't have extensive photo directories

- the PC has a separate internal HDD I use to store data/pictures on, plenty of capacity left on it, one of the laptops has an external HDD, the other I just used the built in HDD, all have demonstrated the same issue (so no network drives/cloud storage/ethernet)

The occurrence of the problem seems to be worse when I'm working in a directory that has more photos (for example 150 photos rather than 10)

It seems to get worse if I have 'rated' any of the photos in the directory, but this is not consistent

It definitely gets worse if I have worked on any of the photos in the directory

The only way I can resolve it is to keep using Task Manager to shut the programme down and restarting (not the best recommendation I can make for any software!)

Also, I downloaded the latest graphics driver for the graphics card and the issue is no better

Not sure if this is helpful to anyone else but all part of the puzzle - thanks for the feedback in any event!

---

If your two laptops are running Windows 10 as an upgrade, then that would suggest that they are about 10 years old.  There have been a number of complaints about ASUS machines in these forums, too.  They seem to have BIOS issues.  I would attribute their poor performance to their age.  DPP really needs the latest hardware.  Your complaints are unwarranted for these machines.

As for your PC, the fact that you are running Windows 10 is good but it is not the gold standard.  I use a gaming laptop, and desktop workstation, both of which have 4K displays, 3860 x 2160, or something like that.  They use NVidia graphics cards, Intel i7 CPUs.  I see the spinning ball come and go in a two seconds when I being to edit a file.

The latest two releases of DPP do seem to be a bit slower, but it also depends upon the file sizes that you are working with, too.  DPP is very fast with files under 20 MP.  Performance begins to take a hit at 20 MP, and is noticeable at 24 MP and up.

[KenMcD]

OK, a little further forward Waddizzle, but a misunderstanding to correct - the machines aren't old and weren't upgraded to Windows 10, both laptops came with Windows 10 installed and were both bought in the last year (different sizes as I realised having bought the first one that I wasn't allowed to put it in hold airline luggage). 

When I was referring to the system, I was referring to the regular updates you get online from Microsoft, and I know the last update they had was the 'Fall Creators' update which had caused some problems with other software, I gather. The PC (spec mentioned in my first email, is pretty high spec was rebuilt recently and runs on an i7 processor, operating system is on an SDD card).  The larger laptop also is an i7 processor, but has a HDD.  The PC is pretty quick and runs all other software without problems (including some pretty resource-heavy astrophotography software - that was the reason I rebuilt it).  DPP is small beer compared to stacking 300 photos of the moon...

There may be some issue with Asus as you say - however, maybe there's something in the comment you about file sizes - I shoot in RAW, and with two cameras - a Canon 80D, 24MP crop sensor, and a 5DSr, 50MP full frame sensor.  That said I had the 5DSr for over a year and had no problems with it - sometimes the software was a little slow, but nothing like this.

I've had the 80D for about 3 months.  They both download from the camera into the same directories, and there was no problem doing that when I set them up - I don't think the problem started when I was downloading from both cameras, I think it started when I installed DPP4.

I'm kind of persisting with this because I'm thinking it may give someone else insight if they've had similar problems, might not solve my problem but it might solve theirs.  And for me, the fact that Canon has it's own Digital Photo Processing software that's free is a big deal - Nikon does not offer that, and although we can all use photoshop the software is pretty overwhelming to start with, even if you don't use the subscription packages.  

IMaybe it's just a bad version of DPP - that seems to be a common theme - maybe its the fact that I'm using two different cameras, perhaps its an issue with the software searching for directories as other people have commented (in other posts), perhaps it's something to do with both cameras being on the high side with their pixl counts.  But the computer hardware I'm using is pretty close to the top industry standard - so at the very least maybe that will stop someone else thinking it's just because their computer is out of date and shelling out on new graphics cards, mother boards, memory etc.  

At the moment, it is the absolute worst piece of software on my PC - literally cannot use it for more than 2 minutes without getting the blue circle spinning every alternative second - and it goes on doing that so you can't even scroll through your pictures.

For me I think the answer is going to be learn how to do it all in Lightroom, time is precious, not all of us have a lot of it to spend learning new programmes - and very frustrating when this one used to be good, free, and worked.  Canon - I hope you're listening! 

[ebiggs1]

"There are very few options I can edit in ..."

And two of those options are Lightroom and Photoshop.

[KenMcD]

Hi Ebiggs, not sure you understood the context of my comment - when I said 'there are very few options I can edit in the software', I meant the settings within DPP.  There is only a preferences tab and it has very little by the way of operating options you can specify.  

I have both lightroom and photoshop and I use PS, but it's worth recognising that both of those come at a monthly subscription cost, and having had software from Canon that previously worked and was quite straightforward it seemed sensible if something went wrong with it to try to resolve it.  Not sure my 'go to' position would be just use something else.  

[ebiggs1]

"...but it's worth recognising that both of those come at a monthly subscription cost"

I hear ya don't think I don't.  I among others hate the subscription model Adobe adopted.  DPP is a nice program. I don't doubt that point.  It is just not ready for prime time.  I try it every so often just to confirm that.  Adding to the fact I always seem to end up in PS anyway, why not just start there?

[mangurian]

What the poster said was: There are very few option he can edit in the software.  He didn't ask for other software options.

 I have a very capable PC and suffer the same delays described by the poster.
I have plenty of RAM, so I even tried that for working storage in PSP instead of a disk drive.  It doen't help.

The real question for me is: Does Canon intend to improve the responsiveness of an otherwise very capable piece of software? 

Users have paid for DPP as part of their camera purchase.

[mangurian]

BTW  If you have few dollars to spend ($33 upgrade or $44 full version), I liked Corel's AfterShot Pro as a starting point.  However, they do not yet support RAW from the EOS M100 so I can't use it anymore.

They do support most Canons including some of the other mirrorless M's.

When/if the support my camera I will go back to it unless DPP is more responsive in newer versions.