Why is the initialization of photos slow?

Why is the initialization of photos slow?

The "Initialize Photos" feature in Excire Search analyzes your photos so that they are available for AI functionality. The speed of this process depends on various factors. For example, the hardware of the computer, the connection of the drives on which the Lightroom Classic catalog and photos are located, and the size and format of the photos have a strong influence. On average hardware, approximately 10,000 photos are processed per hour.

There are several other reasons why this process may be significantly slower in rare cases.

Location of the Lightroom Classic catalog

The location of the Lightroom Classic catalog has a significant impact on the speed at which data is read from and written to the catalog. Since the Excire Search database is always located in the catalog folder, the speed at which the Excire Search database is read and written also depends on this. You should therefore avoid storing the Lightroom Classic catalog on an external drive with a slow connection to the computer or on a slow network drive with a weak network connection.

"Fast Initialization" setting

This Excire Search setting in the Plug-in Manager is enabled by default. Disabling this setting means that edits to photos will be taken into account during analysis. Since this requires exporting to a temporary JPG file in the background, it can slow down the initialization of photos. See also: How does the initialization of photos work in Excire Search?

Cloud synchronization of Lightroom Classic

If, during the initialization of your photos, the calculated keywords are transferred to your Lightroom Classic catalog (option "Transfer keywords after initialization"), these are written by Excire Search into the metadata of the photos in your Lightroom catalog. If cloud synchronization is enabled in Lightroom Classic, Lightroom Classic will synchronize the changed metadata with the cloud in the background. During this synchronization, access to the catalog data for plugins such as Excire Search is significantly slowed down, which, among other things, leads to slower initialization of additional photos. Lightroom Classic indicates whether cloud synchronization is in progress in the upper right corner. If your catalog is affected by this, leave Lightroom Classic open overnight to give the program time to complete the background tasks.

Automatically writing metadata to files

In the Lightroom Classic catalog settings, you can enable the "Automatically write changes to XMP" option in the "Metadata" tab. This option is disabled by default. When enabled, Lightroom Classic automatically writes all changes to your photos' metadata to the files in the background. As with cloud synchronization, this also affects the keywords that Excire Search transfers to the catalog for your photos when the Excire Search option "Transfer keywords after initialization" is enabled. Also, as with cloud synchronization, this process can significantly slow down the initialization of additional photos. If your catalog is affected by this, leave Lightroom Classic open overnight to give the program time to complete the background tasks.

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