iPhoto slow to load

Slowness on launch can be caused by few things:

If you have a Windows Partition on your Mac make sure Spotlight is not indexing it

Is iPhoto linked to ny online albus or services - it may be checking for updates.

iPhoto is good for 250,000 images so you've a little headroom yet.

Regards

TD

Give this fix a try: go to the HD/Library/Preferences folder and delete the SystemConfiguration folder that's there and reboot. It fixes a slow startup problem associated with a slow open book issue. It might help in your case. The folder and its contents gets recreated when you reboot.

OT

That's why my computer name got lost. When I tried connecting over our LAN it has some weird name. Thanks for the feedback.

I've done this and YES it works perfect. However a few days later I will have the same problem. I can delete the folder again and solve the problem but it keeps recurring. Any idea why?

I am having the same problem with iphoto taking so long to load. It started when i accidently deleted iphoto completely and all my pictures were saved which i was really glad. and then i had to buy and download iphoto again. i have restarted my computer and i opened iphoto and it keeps showing that rotating icon trying to load it. is it trying to organize out all my photos again? what do i do to get it to load up again?

Did you try removing the folder I mentioned earlier? Try this: launch iPhoto with the Option key held down and try to create a new, test library. If you're able to then the problem lies with your original library.

If that's the case then make a temporary, backup copy (select the library and type Command+D) of your original library and apply the two fixes below in order as needed:

Fix #1

Launch iPhoto with the Command+Option keys held down and rebuild the library.

Select the options identified in the screenshot.

Fix #2

Using iPhoto Library Manager to Rebuild Your iPhoto Library

Note: This creates a new library based on the LIbraryData.xml file in the library and will recover Events, Albums, keywords, titles and comments but not books, calendars or slideshows. The original library will be left untouched for further attempts at fixing the problem or in case the rebuilt library is not satisfactory.

NOTE: If you accidently delete the iPhoto application again you don't need to repurchase it. Go to the App store and click on the Purchases link.

There you will be able to download iPhoto again.

Thanks for the tip. It also allowed some of my other apps to load and run faster as well.

I also, over time, have seen longer load times for iPhoto. I have a couple of thoughts on this. When I had my iPhoto library in my G5, it snapped open quickly, never an issue. Then I went to Snow Leopard on a newer Intel Mac Pro. I don't remember any load time problems, but there was a short load time on open. Then I upgraded to Mountain Lion. Now I'm seeing long load times. But I can't state that it was the upgrade to Mountain Lion, because as time went by, I also grew the library. It's annoying waiting for everything to load, it's gotten up to 15 seconds now. When you want to just jump in and work with something you just put in, you have to watch the spinning beach ball. Note, that when you click the window to close iPhoto, it actually quits the program. It doesn't just go sit in the background, so when you reopen, it has to load again. Although that may free up RAM, if you have a lot of RAM in the machine, which I have enough at 8GB, it wouldn't be a problem to have it ready and waiting. So, I would ask Apple, if you want to close the program with the window, then how about you give an option in preferences to load just the last 10% of the library rapidly, and slowly load the rest in the background, while allowing immediate use such as viewing or editing the most recent? Solution #2: I don't know if Apple loads the library photos in iPhoto trash as well. If they do, you might consider emptying your trash there. If that doesn't help, you can burn your older photos to a disc like a DVD which will hold a boatload, then trash the photos in iPhoto. Now your library is smaller, and should load faster. If you want those photos back in for any reason, you can simply drag them off the disc back into your iPhoto window again, and they will be back. I wouldn't do it in the iPhoto library folder directly, where iPhoto stores the photos, that will probably screw up your indexing or cause some other unforeseen problem down the road. As an alternate for photo editing, for those of you not familiar with Graphic Converter, it deserves a good look. It's a reasonably priced shareware program that gives very powerful editing features. It's fast, and sometimes I just use that to resize, improve, run filters, etc.. It's earned the nickname "The poor man's Photoshop". After using it for several years, I've come to really rely on its features. You can run it for free in demo and decide if you like it. It puts a progressive timer on the front end to open. It has full functionality once you get in. By the time the timer becomes annoying, you should have figured if you like it enough or not to go ahead and purchase it.

It's annoying waiting for everything to load, it's gotten up to 15 seconds now. When you want to just jump in and work with something you just put in, you have to watch the spinning beach ball.

Is this opening an individual file? Or opening the Library?

Note, that when you click the window to close iPhoto, it actually quits the program. It doesn't just go sit in the background, so when you reopen, it has to load again. Although that may free up RAM, if you have a lot of RAM in the machine, which I have enough at 8GB, it wouldn't be a problem to have it ready and waiting.

The rule of thumb on this is simple: can you do anything with the app without a window? If not, it quits, if yes then it doesn't. Apps like iMovie, iPhoto, Final Cut, SystemPreferences all quit when you close the window for that reason. Which begs the question, why are you closing the window? If you want it to remain running but with the window out of the way just minimise it to the dock or hide it.

If that doesn't help, you can burn your older photos to a disc like a DVD which will hold a boatload, then trash the photos in iPhoto.

DVD and other optical media are going the way of the Floppy Disk, there's no future there for back up - and it's very inconvenient.

As an alternate for photo editing, for those of you not familiar with Graphic Converter, it deserves a good look.

It's an excellent app, and a much more powerful editor than iPhoto, but it's not a replacement for iPhoto as it's not a photo manager.

I'm opening the app/library. It's over 15 seconds now, about 21 seconds. Clicking to close the window. You made your point. Of course I could minimize to the dock. But lots of programs don't quit, like my browser, it just closes to the dock, ready to go. Just a habit. My fault, I guess, for having over 200 applications in my machine. I'll have to try to remember better next time. Yes, DVD's are going the way of floppy disk. What better way to use of those useless stacks of discs you bought and are sitting in your closet than filling up your RAID drive with photos you may not access for who knows how long? So let me restate that one for you, because I didn't tell anyone to go buy an optical drive: Use whatever backup system you like. Thanks. Last one: I proposed Graphic Converter as an alternate for editing photos. I did say that. I did not propose it as a replacement for iPhoto. I never said use Graphic Converter in place of iPhoto.

How big is your Library? How many items? How much free space on your Disk? How much Ram? What Mac do you have?

You can go command-l or command - o without a window in your browser and open a location or a file. You can't do anything in the Apps I named without a window. See? I'm sure you have a reason for every single one of those 200 apps, and I'm sure each one had a learning curve.

And, of course, someone with that many apps would never confuse Graphic Converter with iPhoto, but less experienced users might, and that comment was for their benefit.

Hi Terance,

A couple of days ago I flushed out about 30GB out of the library. Now the library is down to about 350 items, of which maybe 15 or so are one minute average size movie clips from either my iPhone or Canon or Olympus camera. I figured if it was library size, this should certainly show up in faster load time. So after all was done, and I emptied iPhoto trash, I launched iPhoto again. In the background maybe three programs were running, Firefox, Mail, and FInder. I have a 2010 series Mac Pro quad 2.8, with 8 GB of RAM, Mountain Lion. My system showed over 4.5 GB of free RAM when I tried this. The window framework opens almost immediately on launch, (about 3 seconds), photos are present in the window immediately with everything else, then about two seconds go by, and then I get the spinning beach ball. While this is happening you can move the beach ball around on the window, but the program is non-responsive until 20.5 seconds goes by. The beach ball stops, then you can use the program, and everything works at normal speeds. Basically, I saw no change from shrinking my library. I contrast this with my old G5 late 2005, dual 2.3, which launches the iPhoto framework in about 3 seconds, with the window where the photos appear being plain vanilla with the message 'loading photos'. After about another 3 seconds photos appear, and everything is immediately responsive and usable. And that's the same amount of stuff in that library I just pulled out of my Mac Pro! All other programs in my Pro run quickly and responsively, even if I open six or seven other programs, everything is fast. As long as I have some 'green slice of pie' of RAM available, I've never seen this machine do slow anything. My hard drive is a Seagate Constellation Enterprise drive, 500GB, and I'm at about 1/2 capacity. This is a dual boot machine, my other drive is 1TB running Snow Leopard, but I run a script to eject that drive about 20 seconds after I boot into Mountain Lion, so it's gone and not part of all this. Normally, if I had this type of issue with other programs in the past, I'd purge all the related library and plist files, trash the app and re-install. In 15 years maybe I've done that about eight times with various programs, and it usually fixes the problem. I also ran permissions repair, just for the heck of it, and only four lines came up, mostly to do with Java. I haven't been able to find this stand alone iPhoto app as a separate download. Apple only makes one available that runs on Mavericks. My iPhoto version is '09 (v8.1.2). I'm open to suggestions.