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Everyone knows that loading RAF files into lightroom takes a long time, and while it sucks, that's not my problem. Once everything is loaded up, and I'm trying to browse/edit my photos, it's like moving through molasses. Even moving to the next photo in the library module can take two or three seconds. Transitioning from Library to Develop module takes around 10-15 seconds before it's usable. After adjusting the exposure slider, there is around a two second delay before the adjustment appears on the screen. More intensive sliders take longer. I make an adjustment, and I have to wait and see if it looks good, and then go back and re-adjust, because it won't happen live. Moving to the next photo in the develop module take five or more seconds. I'm using a Windows 10 laptop with an i7 processor, 32 gigs of ram, and a fast SSD with tons of free space on it. I haven't made any major changes to the performance settings in Preferences. I guess my main question is, what are the chances that I'm doing something wrong with my settings, or my library? It seems impossible to me that it's just this bad for everyone. Trying to intensively edit 30 or more photos leaves me with a sense of dread.

Here are two full sized JPEGs exported at 100% quality. One is Iridient X-Transformer for Windows The other is Photo Ninja https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gecl004c2g9eyp3/AADBmBqmADVW6xokIe-CV9eka?dl=0 ISO 800 on an XPro2 | 50-140mm at f/2.8 At 100% viewing, I prefer Photo Ninja. It looks smoother, while maintaining detail. The file from Iridient has lots of artifacting, I believe. I could be using Iridient wrong, as I've only had it for about half an hour, but nothing I do can match the detail and natural look of Photo Ninja.

First, a comparison between X-Transformer's rendering, and straight Lightroom. Settings are exactly the same between the two images. I've always struggled with the weird rendering of detail that I get with my RAF files in Lightroom. I've tried a few different processors to get my fine detail, but they either don't do much to solve the problem (Capture1) or are incredibly cumbersome to use (Photo Ninja) or are not available to me on Windows (Iridient) I recently found X-Transformer (By Iridient) and found that it works more or less perfectly, and lets me keep my Lightroom workflow, so I thought I would share my process for anyone else interested or struggling with the same issues I was. THE METHOD I'm on Windows 10, using Lightroom CC I went and got X-Transformer by Iridient I then set it up to work as a plugin for Lightroom CC Then, in Lightroom, once you find the files you want to work with and get your detail out of, you just choose to edit them in X-Transformer And then put in these settings which strip out the horrible noise reduction and sharpening, and demosaic the data much better than Lightroom. Then, once it's done running through X-Transformer, your image is back in Lightroom as a TIFF that you can treat exactly like your RAF files, except it's got fine detail in it. It's the least cumbersome method I've found so far that gets really really good detail out of your shots, without forcing you to learn a crazy new half-broken editing software. The other program I found that gets this level of detail is Photo Ninja, but it is really difficult to work with, and feels almost like an Alpha for the first version of Lightroom. I don't advise it. Many photographers won't care about the improvement, and that's fine. Fine detail doesn't make or break a photo if the rest of the content/light/processing is good. But for those that want their full 24 megapixels worth of data, this is a great solution without having to give up Lightroom. Disclaimer: I haven't used the brand new CaptureOne which supposedly does very well with RAF files. Links to two full res comparison photos

My powerful workstation laptop (Lenovo Thinkpad W540) with an i7 processor and 32 gigs of RAM on W10 struggles HARD with my RAF files from my X-T2. Every adjustment lags, and even scrolling down my photos in the Library module is choppy. Hard quick adjustments like spot healing skin or masking adjustments takes multiple seconds per click to see my adjustment show up on the preview, no matter what I do. I've got a 40GB cache, I've turned GPU processing on, and back off, to see if it makes a difference (it doesn't) and nothing I've done seems to make any difference. My drive has 40% free space, I only have about 6000 photos in my catalog, and I back-up and Optimize regularly. In hunting for solutions, I found someone suggesting that I could import all of my photos to a fast external drive, render Smart Previews, then disconnect the drive, and work exclusively with the smart previews, which are supposedly smaller, lighter, and faster to work with, and then when I'm done, re-connect the drive, apply the changes, and export/work in Photoshop from there. Wondering if anyone has any better tips for speeding up Lightroom when working with RAF files, or if anyone has tried the Smart Preview method described above to tell me whether it provides any advantages?

Attached are two screen shots of the same X-T1 RAF file at 100% magnification. One is the file open in the most up-to-date version of the Fuji raw processor "Powered by SILKYPIX" (downloaded from the Fuji support site), the other is the file in Photo Ninja. With my RAF files, I have now tried Lightroom 5, Lightroom 6.1, Iridient, Capture One, Photo Ninja, and SilkyPix. Lightroom 5 is by far the worst, in terms of fine detail. Lightroom 6.1, Capture One, Iridient, and SilkyPix seem to be right on the same level to me, and the dramatic stand-out for me is Photo Ninja (in terms of fine detail, and film-like highlight recovery) With P.N. the colors are harder to work with, and don't look as pleasing as easily as they do with something more robust like Lightroom or Capture One. For colors and skin tones, I still find Lightroom and Capture One to be the best. This COULD be because I'm very used to using Lightroom, and have only used PN sporadically because I only use it when I really want super fine detail from my images.