Aperture sooo slow: Is my system just over-taxed?

[Argelius]

 I switched from iPhoto to Aperture about 3 months ago, so I'm still in the learning curve.  I am finding the app almost unusable in that it is so slow performing almost every task.

For instance, when viewing pictures (fullscreen) within a project, the "loading..." notice persists for several seconds and there's about a 5 second delay between pushing the right arrow and the next photo loading (and the spinning beach ball appears with some regularity as well).  Same thing if I bring up the HUD...beach ball for several seconds. If I try deleting a photograph (using either "delete" from the tool bar or doing CMD-delete) I routinely get the beach ball for at least 5 seconds. 

My system:
MacBookPro
Intel Core 2 Duo
2.53 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Snow Leopard 10.6.5
Free Hard drive space: 80 GB

I have tried resetting PRAM, permissions, done a scan disk, etc. Also, I have confirmed  (in Power settings) that the computer is set for "better performance" rather than "better battery life".

My first explanation is that my computer doesn't have enough processor speed and RAM, but it's not that old, so doesn't seem to make sense.

Can anyone offer any other suggestions to fix or troubleshoot this?   

[Chairman Bill]

Your machine is faster than mine (2.16 core2duo), with more RAM than mine (a mere 2GB), yet I'm not getting the problems you're describing. I doubt it is your machine specs that are to blame.

I did have problems with APerture 3 when I first upgraded from 2. The various updates since then have significantly improved it. SO the only thing I might suggest is that you check that you're running the latest updates, but then you've already done that I expect.

[Argelius]

Thanks. Yep - Aperture is up to date. I was wondering if there'd be any benefit to reinstalling the app. I doubt that will fix it...but couldn't hurt I guess (other than risking messing with the photo database...

[KirbyKrieger]

A few things ...

Did you install the Pro-Kit update?  This is a separate update from the OS update and from the Aperture update.  It is necessary for a healthy installation of Aperture.

Have you tried the regular Aperture trouble-shooting steps?  They are described in the manual.  The on-line version is here:
http://documentation.apple.com/en/aperture/usermanual/index.html#chapter=26%26section=10%26tasks=true

Have you let Aperture run for several hours?  It does a lot of work behind the scenes, and until that work is done you will experience degraded performance.  Load it up one evening, plug your laptop in and make sure it doesn't go to sleep, and let Aperture run all night.  Then close Aperture in the morning and reboot.

I have never heard of any benefit to anyone with the symptoms you describe from re-installing Aperture.

How big is you Library?  How many images?  Is it a Managed-Masters Library or a Referenced-Masters Library?  What size are your previews?  Are your Masters JPG or RAW?  What kind of RAW?  How big?

All of those will have some bearing on performance, but you should be able to get usable performance from the hardware you list.

[Argelius]

Hey Kirby --

Thanks so much for your detailed response. 

Just to fill in a few holes in my story (and answer some of your questions):

The Pro-Kit update is installed.

I have done the repair permissions, but haven't repaired or rebuilt the database (I will try that shortly).

I'm pretty sure I've given Aperture ample time to do its behind the scenes activities, but couldn't hurt to do as you suggest and give it overnight to run.

As far as my photos, I have 20,000.  When I switched from iPhoto to Aperture, I elected to reference the iPhoto library (leaving the files where they are).  All new photos are being put in Aperture's library.  (The problems I am describing above take place when I'm dealing with new (Aperture library) photos; I haven't done much with the iPhoto pictures).  My photos are 99% jpg -- haven't experimented with RAW yet.  Previews are set to half-size and medium quality ( in Aperture's preferences).

One more thing I just found. In Finder uner User>Photos there are two aperture libraries listed -- Aperture Library and Aperture Trial library.  Might that be a problem?

Thanks again for your help. Really want to get this problem fixed....

[Steven Draper]

There are lots of Aperture Performance factors - but one of the biggest that I Have experienced is with the fragmentation of the library file.

If the 80gb of hardrive memory that you have is free is in lots of little chunks all over the place then the library data could be spit up into these gaps which could slow down Aperture.

I'm not sure you can partition a macbooks hard drive in the way you can Macpro but if you can check the fragmentation state you may have part of the diagnosis.


STeven

[Tinstafl]

Turn off faces.  It will speed up your aperture.  Also let it run and look in the activity window and see what is going on.

[RobSaecker]

I'm not sure you can partition a macbooks hard drive in the way you can Macpro but if you can check the fragmentation state you may have part of the diagnosis.

I'm not sure what partitioning has to do with file fragmentation, but yes, you can partition a Macbook drive just like any other drive. You can't do it with Apple's tools however without erasing the drive and reinstalling everything.

There is a simple, free tool that can check disk fragmentation state, hfsdebug. It's command line only, available here: http://www.osxbook.com/software/hfsdebug/ . The author has a newer tool with more options that I'm not yet familiar with.

[RickBuddy]

Your system has faster specs than mine and I'm not seeing your problem.

Try reducing the quality of your previews, also the size of your previews. You may have a 12-14-16 meg sensor, but there is no use having a preview that shows all those pixels if your monitor is only 1600 X 900 (for example) Shoot, my 30" Cinema monitor can only show half the pixels my D90 records.

Give it a try if you haven't already.

Rick

[TREEBRIDGE]

I changed over to Mac late 2009 on the advice of my doctor, due to windows operating systems causing a dangerous level of blood pressure. All my PC's ended life early with me jumping up and down on them. I bought A3 at the same time.
I succumbed to an imac 27" i5 with 4GB Ram.
Within half an hour of eagerly firing up A3 i had the beach ball  . I thought macs didnt have this problem? I had faces etc turned off but always had the beach ball enter every session when using A3 and CS5, I had to put my head under a cold tap and walk away for a while.
After calming down I monitored the processor usage etc and found the Ram was working at its limits and if i told A3 to do a couple of thing in quick sucesssion the whole thing beachballed.
After upgrading to 12GB of Ram there is a remarkable improvement. I get beachballed on the occassional visit but life is less angry and i am now on a reduced dose 
I look forward to A4 as im sure the upgrades will be more to do with fully utilising the 64 bit system and all the cores available..

[Heinrichr]

Dont know if its still slow, but got this tip from apertureexpert, try deleting your presets, go to the 'gear'(not near my mac now , but when you're in the view where you can adjust your images , not library, and not metadata, cant remember the name now)  and first select all presets thats not original aperture presets, then delete it , close aperture , open and it should be faster, then you can install your presets again.

[normhead]

There seems to be a general consensus that Aperture needs at least 6 GB to run.. I've got 8. Not applicable to you with a MacBook Pro, but for those of us with macBooks, the video card used is also a factor. My 2006 low end MacBook won't accept more than 3 GB of memory, uses shared memory for it's graphics card, and has a crappy graphics card. There is absolutely nothing you can do to speed up aperture with such a machine... but it runs... anything newer (and with a dedicated graphics card memory) and you should be OK.