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Level 1

39 points

iPhoto '09 8.0.3 Update - iPhoto painfully slow now

After installing the iPhoto 8.0.3 yesterday, iPhoto has become painfully slow on my machine. Switching between Views (eg. from Events to Faces) makes the CPU usage spike up and I get the spinning beachball for about a minute or two before I can continue working - the worst offenders are Faces and Places, but it's basically become a pain to work with.

This was not a problem until I installed the update yesterday and I tried rebuilding my library to no avail.

Anyone have any tips?

Does anyone else encounter this problem?

iMac G5, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Jun 5, 2009 6:35 AM

78 replies

anselmg

Level 1

0 points

Jun 5, 2009 4:25 PM in response to TeeTw0

I am importing a cd into iphoto and it is taking forever. Any ideas what's going on?

TeeTw0 Author

Level 1

39 points

Jun 5, 2009 4:26 PM in response to jimkstl

Glad to see that I'm not alone with this problem. Let's make sure to report this to Apple and hope that they see this thread and look into the issue.

Appears to me that something with the Metadata is screwed up, looking in Activity Monitor the CPU usage spikes up crazy when starting iPhoto and also when switching to Faces and Places. Once it's calmed down it's usable, but the next view switch shows the same behavior.

Might be coincidence, but I've also seen the mds and mdsworker processes spike up whenever Faces or Places is activated.

LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Jun 5, 2009 4:28 PM in response to anselmg

anselmg

Welcome to the Apple user to user assistance forums

One hint is that it usually is a lot faster to drag the photos off the CD to a desktop folder and then import for tha tfolder into iPhoto

LN

TeeTw0 Author

Level 1

39 points

Jun 5, 2009 4:38 PM in response to LarryHN

I'm on iMac G5 with 2GB and everything worked fine before the update.

I wonder if it's the actual iPhoto 8.0.3 or the iLife Support update.

Larry - did you notice any of the other iLife apps being slower than before?

LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Jun 5, 2009 4:42 PM in response to TeeTw0

I have not tried any of the other iLife Aps - pretty much just use iPhoto

I have reported feedback to Apple and have posted on the new notable technical issues in the level 4 lounge (which I'm not sure gets any more note than posts here - but thought was worth a try)

Providing feedback certainly will help resolve the issue

LN

anselmg

Level 1

0 points

Jun 5, 2009 4:43 PM in response to LarryHN

Thanks LarryHN. I'm totally new to Macs so I am completely shocked by how long this process is taking. There are 500 pics on the cd and I imported them write from the cd into iphoto. I'm going on an hour now. Yikes!

jimkstl

Level 1

0 points

Jun 5, 2009 4:54 PM in response to anselmg

That is one benefit I think we enjoyed with the new improvements to iLife '09. The importing was lightning fast compared to the older versions. I have not tried to import since the 8.0.3 upgrade, but I suspect similar results.
I have not noticed any performance hit to iTunes with the 8.2 upgrade, and I have not used any other iLife apps after upgrading.

TeeTw0 Author

Level 1

39 points

Jun 5, 2009 5:00 PM in response to LarryHN

Thanks for posting in the lounge and reporting the issue!

zakyak

Level 1

4 points

Jun 5, 2009 6:23 PM in response to TeeTw0

The solution, at least it worked for me, is to remove all of the faces from the Faces Corkboard. Click on each face and "Move to Trash". Speed is back to normal for IPhoto. I was having an almost impossible to use "Crop Tool". The other solution I found is to use Adobe Elements, no problems there.

TeeTw0 Author

Level 1

39 points

Jun 6, 2009 10:09 AM in response to zakyak

Zakyak, can you elaborate on that finding?

When I actually click on a Face and drag that to the iPhoto Trash, nothing happens. When I drag a Face to the OS X Trash, it actually moves all source photos where that person's face appears to the Trash.

Unless I'm doing something wrong, that hardly seems to be a viable solution.

LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Jun 6, 2009 10:41 AM in response to zakyak

Are you saying that you just removed all Face identifications and have stopped using faces all together

LN

Arpamac

Level 1

4 points

Jun 6, 2009 1:15 PM in response to TeeTw0

I thought iPhoto was embarrassingly slow before, but this is unbelievably slow! It's now at least an order of magnitude more sluggish. Several operations take several minutes to complete. It's not usable! I'd love to show it off, but can't.

I noticed iPhoto used to use up to 2 cores, but it seems to only use 1 max now. Makes me wonder if they could make it use all 8 cores that are available, would it improve?

iPhoto library 80k pictures.

LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Jun 7, 2009 9:15 AM in response to TeeTw0

Is anyone else running Font agent Pro 4? I notice that font agent activator is taking a lot of CPU cycles while response is slow - need to do some testing to see if there is some issue with fonts or with Font Agent Pro and iPhoto

LN

wworth

Level 1

0 points

Jun 7, 2009 9:38 AM in response to TeeTw0

I did the "re-build" of my library but that is taking several hours for my 12,000 photos. I have another iMac that only had 128 pictures on it and the update totally wiped out iPhoto (and yes the software previously was up to date). Apple needs to send out a fix or patch.

Old Toad

Level 10

207,463 points

Jun 7, 2009 12:31 PM in response to wworth

What happened to your small library? Was it deleted from the HD? How did you apply the update, i.e. thru Software Update or manually? Did you repair disk permissions either before or after?

OT

iPhoto '09 8.0.3 Update - iPhoto painfully slow now