I had ordered a 16″ MacBook Pro at the beginning of the WFH phase of the pandemic. Three years later, the laptop is still chugging along on its legacy Intel processor. The biggest bottleneck is with the AI-powered Denoise in Lightroom, where it takes about a minute per photo. May not be as fast as the newer Apple M series MacBook Pros, but still usable to denoise selected photos.

Lately, I thought I was having problems with the GPU when using Lightroom Dehaze would turn the photo black. Additionally, Lightroom Denoise would slow down considerably beyond the one minute mark. Restarting the Macbook Pro would temporarily solve the problem, but it would recur soon enough. I even started looking at upgrading to a newer MacBook Pro for Cyber Monday.

However, I came across a fix that really worked. When I optimized the catalog at Lightroom Classic > Preferences > Optimize Catalog, the problems cleared up. Have not experienced the recurring bug for a few days now, when it would crop up multiple times each day. A bit counterintuitive that a problem with the catalog would trigger these issues.