Auto-enhance group of photos always hangs half-way through

Question

Auto-enhance group of photos always hangs half-way through

Every single time that I try to enhance a group of photos, the process hangs about half-way.

The progress bar stops progressing completely (see screenshot at https://imgur.com/a/2sI2nA5)

The CPU is pegged at 100% CPU for the photolibraryd process. A "sample" of the photolibraryd process is included below.

It is still possible to open menus in the photos application, but almost every option in every meny is grayed out.

Clicking on the "x in a circle" in the "enhancing photos..." dialog has no effect -- it is not possible to cancel the enhance action.

In the "force quit" window, the photos application is *not* listed as "not responding". But still, the only way to get out of this, is to "force quit" fotos.

Photos 5.0 (151.19.150)

macOS Catalina 10.15.5 (19F101)

MacBook Air (Retina, 13-inch, 2020)

I have 121,319 photos in my library, and plenty of free disk space

Sample is attached as additional text

Sample of process

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Aug 3, 2020 11:46 PM

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Answer 1

Aug 6, 2020 1:05 AM in response to léonie

@Leonie Yes, it is very possible that some of my or even many photos were previously edited with an older version of Photos, or iPhoto, or Aperture (I have used all of these in the past).

However, the issue being discussed in this thread (auto-enhance being stuck) also affects albums that were created very recently, and only ever edited in the current version of Photos (Version 5.0 (151.19.150)) running on a brand new MacBook Air 2020 with Catalina version 10.15.5

Still, your hypothesis may be a relevant clue for the other thread that you are also participating in (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251602029) which discusses being unable to export photos. That issue in the other thread seems to affect my older photos from 2016 / 2017. Also, in the other thread I mention that the problem persists after I "Revert to original".

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Answer 2

Aug 7, 2020 12:52 AM in response to léonie

@Leonie That is a fair point. I am very hesitant to start mucking around with creating new libraries or using different user accounts etc. for fear of making things worse rather than better. I will work with Joseph_S and ryane77 (who both appear to be Apple employees) to resolve the "Unknown Error (4)" issue first (see Thread https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251602029). Once that issue is resolved, I will see if the stuck enhancement issue still happens.

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

197,237 points

Aug 6, 2020 7:09 AM in response to threeleggeddog

Photos on your new mac seems to be having many issues.

I would try to isolate issues systematically.

Test, if the problems are isolated to your current Photos Library by creating a new Photos Library and importing new photos for testing. DO you have the same issues with brand new photos in a brand-new library in your Pictures folder?
If even a new Photos Library is problematic, test in a different user account (a new admin account, created for testing, with the standard system preferences). Is photos working for you in a new account or is the problem system wide?

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Answer 4

léonie

Level 10

197,237 points

Aug 5, 2020 2:30 AM in response to threeleggeddog

I would try to enhance each photo separately, so you can isolate problematic items and tell which of the selected items is causing the hang. My guess is, that you migrated a photo library to Photos 5 on Catalina, that is still including items in a format, that Photos 5 does no longer support.

Are you having photos or videos in the library, that are not in a standard image or video format? For example PDF files, BMP files, PICT files? Or QuickTime and AVI videos, that might contain resources in an unsupported codec? I try to use only the codecs listed in this document in the section "Formats compatible with macOS Catalina", and convert all items listed under "Media formats affected by the transition to 64-bit technology".

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Answer 5

Aug 5, 2020 3:18 AM in response to léonie

Hi Leonie,

Thank you for the hypothesis.

Per your suggestion, I have been trying to reproduce the issue and look for an unsupported format photo once I succeed reproducing it.

But as Murphy's law would have it, despite enhancing hundreds of photos, I have been unable to reproduce the issue today. I will keep trying, and update this thread accordingly.

Meanwhile, at first sight it seems unlikely that your hypothesis is the cause of the issue for the following reasons:

1. All the photos that I tried to enhance were JPEG photos. I also have a few raw photos (arw format) and some videos (mp4 format) in my library, but these were never included in the set of photos that I tried to enhance.

2. When I restart my computer and try enhancing the exact same set of photos again, it normally works. This makes the "unsupported image format" hypothesis unlikely.

3. Surely, Photos should report an error message instead of just hanging when it encounters an image format that is no longer supported?

But who knows, maybe I do have some odd format in there that I did not know about, so the next time I run into the issue, I will look for that.

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Answer 6

léonie

Level 10

197,237 points

Aug 5, 2020 5:29 AM in response to threeleggeddog

3. Surely, Photos should report an error message instead of just hanging when it encounters an image format that is no longer supported?

I would hope so, but I am only occasionally seeing problematic photos in a smart album with the "Photo is unable to upload to iCloud". I have to track problematic items down manually. And once removed, the faces scan will no longer hang, images will upload to iCloud, etc. Occasionally, the problem seems not to be the format but very long filenames or special characters in the filename.

Another hunch - have some of your photos been edited in Aperture or iPhoto and migrated to Photos from an older library?

Photos edited in iPhoto or Aperture have to be reverted to the original, before you can add further edits.

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Auto-enhance group of photos always hangs half-way through

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