Major Aperture 3 memory leak

I installed Aperture two days ago: 60 gb and 9000 images. It took about four hours for the program to finish creating previews, etc. Activity Monitor now shows %CPU with the program open but nothing being done hovering at around .1% for me. No memory issues whatsoever.

@pberk: No, Previews and Exports are totally seperate from each other but I do not know if they use the same internal process/routine to generate a JPEG. I am still unclear exactly what is causing the memory leak in the firt place. Is it the process that interprets "retouch" tool mod's for the image or is it some type of unexpected or malformed data being fed to the JPEG engine itself? Depending on where the bug is, I expect that exporting an image as a JPEG may trigger the memory leak just like generating a Preview does.

Now for me and my situation, the leak only seems to be triggered by a particular combination of adjustments made to a Version of a Master. If you are having the same issue, you may be able to export 99% of your images without encountering the combination of adjustments that triggers the memory leak.

@Eric: I believe I am having the same problem as you. My upgrade from AP2 to AP3 seemed to go fine. I left it to run for several hours while I watched the Olympic opening ceremonies, and didn't have any problems with system slow downs or freezes. All of my AP2 library was converted into AP3 as far as I could tell. Faces seems to work fine, previews generated, etc. I don't have any processes running in the Activity window in Aperture when I open it. However, I took a few photos since converting the library and imported them in AP3. On one particular RAW file, I applied a series of adjustments (I can send anyone the Adjustment Preset if they would like to try this series of adjustments on their system to see if it hangs for them as well) and I cannot for the life of me export the version as a JPG. If I create a new version from master, I can export that to JPG as long as I don't apply any adjustments. It is the strangest thing. Eric, here's another question for you: are you able to get the Flickr export of Facebook export tools to work? I have tried countless times and they will only load say 75% of the photos and sometimes even duplicate certain photos. It is very bizarre behaviour. I wonder if it is tied in with the system not being able to generate JPGs properly? Any luck with Facebook/Flickr?

@kakgungor: I have not tried the flickr export yet. I think Flickr only accepts JPEG's so if you are having issues that is probably why. I have seen others posting that they are having issues exporting to JPEG (similar to what you described but not exactly the same).

I have a question about your export experience and yes, I would like to see the preset if you dont mind sending it. You state that you cannot export as JPEG, so what file types can you export? And, to make sure I am clear on this, you imported an Olympus RAW file and applied new adjustments to it - you did not stamp the RAW file with adjustments that were configured in A2 or were lifted from an image that was converted from an A2 library?

I've just upgraded to a new 27" i7 with 8GB of RAM - I hoped that this would assist with my Aperture 3 problems - well the application is still frustrating and flakey. For instance I tried to create a slideshow and this took forever with spinning beach balls every step of the way.
I have installed the update and rebuilt the Aperture Library twice.
And the so called memory leak has spilled over into other applications as well.
I tried Magic DVD in iDVD and the Aperture Library began to load into the iDVD sidebar, 1 hours later it was still trying to load and the beach ball was again merrily spinning soon afterwards iDVD crashed.
Subsequent attempts were the same.
In my opinion Aperture 3 should not have been released, it looks like it wasn't even Beta tested.
How do I get my money back and go back to iPhoto?

@Eric: how should I go about sending you the adjustment preset file? I stated I could not export to JPG because that is the only file format I use, and the only export type I have really tried. I tried once or twice exporting to TIFF just out of curiosity but had the same problems. I'm not sure where you got Olympus RAW file from (perhaps my reference to watching the Olympics?), but I am actually using Canon EOS 7D RAW files. And yes, the adjustments are new, not imported in any way from Aperture 2 or an Aperture 2 file. I did upgrade my existing Aperture 2 library (which seemed to work fine), but the image I'm having trouble exporting was imported directly into Aperture 3 and the adjustments applied to it from scratch. In doing further testing, it looks like the adjustment that is causing it to hang is Skin Smoothing which has been brushed in. If I take that adjustment off, I am able to get the file to export to JPG, however it takes much much longer than I would expect (several minutes for one file). I've gotten so frustrated, that I've downgraded to Aperture 2 and will be asking Apple for a refund until they come out with an update and I get confirmation from these forums that they've fixed the glitches. I have the adjustment preset exported though, so I can still share it with you if you'd like.

Memory leaks don't "spill over". You have a system problem. I suggest you do some more research and figure out what's happening before more damage is done. Aperture is not the problem here.

I think in this case it did indeed "spill over" because iDVD, as the poster mentioned, was trying to load information from Aperture.

Per Jason at Apple support, Aperture 3 by default runs in 64 bit mode, in order for the program to run on my iMac, 4gb ram with 250gb HD, was to reset Aperture to 32 bit, which stopped the program from gobbling up all my resources. This actually works and Aperture 3 now runs smooth and much better then Aperture 2.1.

The fix is to: open a Finder window, go to applications, highlight the Aperture file, go to file and click on “Get Info” check the 32 bit box, and that should solve the memory issues for most.

If you do not see the 32 bit box you may need to restart the computer and hold the shift key to start your system in safe mode. After it in Safe mode shut down and restart, then follow the above. (call tech support if in doubt; setting to 32 bit will solve the memory issue with most systems running with less then 6gb of ram and less then a terabyte of hard drive space per Apple tech support)

Good luck.

However, that isn't how it works. If there's a memory "leak" (in this case, probably not actually), then it must be happening in the system somewhere. I'm beginning to think this problem is actually a System problem that just never showed itself until Aperture woke it up. Perhaps everyone with issues should try reinstalling their OS.

I agree, something is seriously wrong with this new version. Have been trying to update my V2 library (120GBs on a external drive) now for 4 days now. Tired turning faces off, zapping and reinstalling the software (two times). The last attempt the upgrading went for around 12 hours, was at 87%, running OK when I turned in last night. Morning brought the "no memory left " error (137G free BTW) and a frozen computer. I've been a Aperture users since V1 and one of it's biggest proponents through the years. I have 10 years of images in that library that I need for personal and business reasons in an application that is for all practical purposes unusable. I hope they (Apple) hears the frustration of the user community and offer a fix shortly.

Hi, I have been able et export photos to Flickr and I also created a few mobile.me albums. I must say A3 has been running very well since the (very long and frustrating) upgrade from A2. I have been playing with all the new features (e.g. curves, brushes, export to Flickr, etc.) and so far everything checks out. I have about 1000 pictures on the MB pro and 20000 on the iMAC. I also had no issues opening photos I edited using an external photo editor (Photoshop Element 6). One of the lessons I learned is that I will export each project individually as a backup in addition to backing up my photo library using vault. I use 500GB USB2 drives for backups. The loupe tool used to be very slow on A2 works very well on A3. I don't perceive a difference in performance between the MB Pro (4 GB Ram, dual 2.4 Proc) and the iMac (2GB Ram, dual 2.4 Proc).

Joe,

Running the program at 32-bit has not resolved the problem for me....

[By the way, Apple tech support told me it should run fine as is with 2GB RAM - and the Aperture site says 1GB RAM - neither indicates that you need a terabyte of free drive space...

Sorry, about my confusion on the RAW type. It is interesting that you had the same issue with TIFF's. That suggests that the issue is not with the process that generates the image file but with the A3 process that passes information to the image generator. I wish I had a better understanding of how A3 stepped through it's code...

I guess the place to email me would be erro0257 at gmail.

Did anyone notice that Apple has released an A3 patch? My software update check ran today and it popped up with an A3 Slideshow patch. According to the Apple website it was released on the 9th. Has anyone installed this? Has anyone noticed any issues with it?

Per Apple Downloads:
Aperture SlideShow Support Update 1.0
This update addresses an issue affecting the playback of video clips used in Aperture 3 slideshows on Snow Leopard. The update is recommended for all users of Aperture 3.
February 09, 2010 - 62.33 MB