Photo software

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1. What type of drive is it, how is it formatted and connected to your MBA and how much free space does it have?
2. How much memory do you have?
3. How much free space on your boot drive?
4. Have you installed and run any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus or VPN apps on your Mac?

If managing your collection of images is what you want to do, here are some suggestions:

• CaptureOne Pro
• Adobe Lightroom Classic or CC
• Adobe Bridge
• ACDSee
• Mylio

I used to use Apple Aperture until it was discontinued. It did everything I needed it to do, and did it well. But it's gone. After that, I went with CaptureOne Pro and have not regretted it one bit. It takes some learning but it's a very well done, powerful collection manager and photo editor. Huge competition to Lightroom.

Perhaps you may consider what drive you are using with these photos. Is this a slow portable drive?

The most obvious alternative would be Adobe Lightroom, I suppose. I have no idea how it would handle your needs, and it too might be too slow if the drive is the limiting factor.

As noted, it likely has nothing to do with Photos itself, so you may not gain anything from different software.

Pixelmator and Affinity have apps to edit photos, but neither manage them.

I’ve used Photos on some pretty slow Macs and haven’t seen any adverse effects in Photos.

I may be misinformed on the Air line, but I don’t think it is a high-speed Mac, especially graphics.

Lightroom Classic is the Market leader. Excellent photo management and very good post processing

Lightroom CC is closer to Photos, and excellent for sharing across devices.

CaptureOne runs it a close second

On1 Photo Raw tries to be a bit of everything and I'm not sure it succeeds

Mylio is a very good app aimed more at the consumer end of things. Photos, only better.

DxO PhotoLab is excellent post processing but poor management

Photo Supreme is management only.

What's your budget? And do you have objections to subscription licences?

Maybe: https://www.gimp.org/