Aperture is a memory eater?

6 GB seems a lot -- I don't see use go much above 4 GB on an 8 GB dual-core machine -- but Aperture tries to use all the hardware it can (remember: you are moving and processing enormous amounts of data).

I don't use Lion. Preliminary reports were that Aperture under Lion used even more resources than it did under Snow Leopard.

Have you already imported? It's unclear from your post. If so, then what you are seeing is normal. It can take many hours and even days for Aperture to complete it's initial processing of thousands of newly-created Images. I suggest turning off "Faces" and "Share with iLife" in prefs until Aperture is completely set-up and working well. The first time you turn those on, Aperture reprocesses all of your Images. Do it before you retire for the evening, and Aperture should be done by breakfast (make sure your machine stays on).

Once Aperture has settled down -- fully processed everything, and done its behind-the-scenes optimizing and whatnot -- it will use fewer system resources.

Use of RAM is not a bad thing, it represents efficient processing and RAM is inexpensive. What is undesirable is if you exceed available RAM. After Aperture is done with its initial batch of images processing you should evaluate RAM usage by manually measuring Page Outs over the course of a typical work session.

RAM may or may not be an issue.

You can evaluate whether or not you have adequate RAM by looking at the Page Outs number under System Memory on the Activity Monitor app before starting a typical Aperture work session; recheck after working and if the page outs change (manual calculation of ending page outs number minus starting page outs number) is not zero your workflow is RAM-starved. Ignore the pie charts and other info in Activity Monitor.

If your test showed that page outs increased significantly during operation you can

• add RAM

• and/or simply try to run Aperture by itself

• and/or switch from 64-bit operation to 32-bit operation (which will make some additional RAM space available).

HTH

-Allen Wicks

gabriel chan wrote:

Thank you, I will check it out. But this actually lead me to think about moving to SSD. ^.^

SSDs rock, everyone should boot from SSD and have the Aperture Library on an SSD. I do.

However SSD does not obviate the need to have adequate (cheap!) RAM in place first, even though SSDs do ameliorate the effects of inadequate RAM.

FWIW my 2011 MBP with SSD, 10.6.8 and 8 GB RAM has zero page outs.

-Allen

I have a Mac Pro (dual 2.8 quad core or something) and was struggling with Aperture under 4 GB of RAM. Last week I added 4 more GBs for a total of 8 GB of RAM. I can import quickly, but I still get a spinning beach ball when touching up photos and moving between them. And, my touching up might be just adding +1 or 2 to contrast and fixing temperature. I think it's much faster with 8 GB, though. I might have to wait on the beach ball for 4 or 5 seconds now instead of 25 like before. But I might jump to 12 GB. I have even tried quitting Chrome, but that doesn't seem to help.

I've had good results freeing up memory with an app from the Mac App store called "Memory Freer". It is a menu bar app that gives you a good indication of your memory usage as you work. However, I only have 4GB installed so I expect memory related problems. With 8GB you do need to find out if there is something else wrong as well.