Photo's after install Catalina

Problem persists on migration to Catalina. My library is approx 11000 items, 70 Gb. I have tried a number of things:

• Creating a brand new (empty) library, then deleting or migrating stuff over using right click - show package contents, but no avail, always hangs, and in different places
• I am now doing very few items (14 images) using import and it still takes forever. This clearly does not work.

Don't tell me it's corrupted images or non-standard format images. Nearly all my images are from my iPhone 6s. While I might have some in the library that came in through WhatsApp or from the web, I can reproduce the behaviour using iPhone images only. I am using an i7 MacBook Pro and an external drive (Mac OX Extended Journaled) to do this.

Can someone please help.

It is normal that Photos will spend a long time curating the library. It is making an inventory of your photos, so it can It is just showing that background processes are running. That is described here: https://www.apple.com/macos/catalina/features/

Photos has a new immersive, dynamic look that showcases your photos and memories. See only the best shots in your library, without the duplicates and clutter. Browse your favorite photos by days, months, and years and get larger previews of all your photos. And Photos is even smarter, so it can highlight important moments like birthdays, anniversaries, and trips.

and

https://www.apple.com/macos/catalina/features/

Photo previews are larger to help you distinguish between shots. Photos uses intelligence to find the best part of your photo in previews, so you see the full, unedited version when you open the photo

All this may take many days, if the library is large. But you should be able to use Photos while it is scanning the library in the background.

If you really cannot use Photos and it is completely stuck, restart the Mac and let Photos run in the background over night.

Has been this way since Catalina was installed a week ago. Photos library is 178gb - what constitutes large? Restarting and leaving it run in the background overnight didn't appear to make any difference.

Spoke with an Apple application support rep yesterday. Possible cause is older pictures linked to in folders outside of the photos library file. Would be nice if Apple would give us an option to turn off the default organizing. I guess I’ll live with the message at the bottom since it doesn’t appear to impact edit and functionality.

I am not sure the apple rep knows the issue. I have no folders linked outside the photos app yet my 2017 MacBook Pro is still sorting favorites 2 weeks after I upgraded to Catalina. I also turned photos in iCloud off/restart and turn on/restart and it started all over again. Now I am on a full week of it trying to 'detecting duplicates' etc. I have approx. 4,000 photos and videos. I am so disappointed with Apple on all fronts this update cycle. Everything I own that is apple is having problems of some sort. Not sure what is going on my get it fixed apple.

Marceltw wrote:

Since installing Cataline, now one week ago, it is still during the following action:

- Select the best photos for you

- Compile a layout

- collect favorites

- Analyze scenes

- search for duplicate photos

It's not normal, Photos library is 153 Gb

Why do you think it is not normal? It has to be done and to tart over again, whenever you edit a single photo or import a new photo. This may make it necessary to start the curating of the whole library and layout creation again. It is just silly, that Photos is showing us continually, when it is curating the library, since it is a task that has to be done continually. We do not need to know it, when it is happening.

Done it, solved it.

It took about 40 hrs for 11000 images and videos on an i7 iMac..

Workaround:

I did create a new library, and imported images again by opening folders with all the originals, and then it worked.

(NB I located the originals by right clicking the original library, then selecting show package contents, and copying images out into a safe location).

Remarks:

1

I found a note somewhere on the apple pages that keeping a library on the time-machine back disk would not work; this may have compromised my original library

2

What is confusing is the progress bar on finding duplicates, curating library etc. If this runs for days you suspect no good, and indeed it never finished on my original library.

> Apple: this needs to be more verbose, or at least one needs to know what's happening.

NB In my old, presumably corrupted library this step indeed hung, and when I did create new libary derivatives, it wold hang on a different images, so I suspected no bad on the site of corrupted files.

3

The most helpful comment was that maybe Apple should not tell us this is all running in the background. as I said, it takes very long. Only in my case it never finished.

Good luck everyone! I conclude this feature is not fully developed.

Same issue for me. 400 GB photo library.