OpenGL Support for Lightroom Classic CC on Mac

Okay, so I’ve been ‘banging on’ about the problem that quite a few people have been suffering from with the new Lightroom Classic CC and GPU acceleration since Adobe launched the new application.

I must stress that this problem does NOT seem to effect anyone using MBP or iMac, or indeed any Mac Pro that runs a factory-fitted GPU.  But if you can remember, I fitted my Mac Pro with an nVidia GTX 970 4Gb GPU a while back – mainly to help Photoshop CC with the heavy lifting in ‘Refine Edge’ and other masking/channel masking procedures.

But I’m now pleased to report that the problem is FIXED – and, as I suspected, the fix is simple, and the ‘fix’ is a tiny 28 byte file.  Yes, that’s right, 28 BYTES!

It’s an API Thing

Now I’m totally rubbish with computer jargon, but API is the acronym for Application Programming Interface, and with regard to GPU/Graphics Cards there a 4 main APIs:

• OpenGL
• Direct Ex – in other words Microsoft
• Metal – in other words Apple
• Vulcan – don’t ask/no idea

For some reason, on certain Mac systems, Lightroom Classic CC is not finding OpenGL, and is instead being forced into trying to use the OSX API ‘metal’.

The forums have been rife with Lightroom Classic CC problems for the last few days – this one included.  On one of these forums, Adobes Simon Chen, had been attempting to field questions over this problem.

I asked Simon if there was any way to ‘force’ Lightroom Classic CC to ignore the OSX API and default to OpenGL – which was obviously there on the system, because the previous iteration of Lightroom had been using it quite happily.

Simon suggested the installation of this tiny 28 byte ‘config.lua’ file into Lightrooms’ Application Support root folder – and would you believe it, it works!

You can download the config.lua file from here.

Below is a short video I’ve made this morning on how to download and install this tiny file which will re-instate Lightroom Classic CCs ability to use the OpenGL API.

So now I’m a happy bunny; and if you have the problem then just follow the video instructions and you’ll be a happy bunny too!

Big thanks to Simon Chen, Principle Scientist at Adobe for helping sort this irritating niggle out.

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