Aperture and computer unresponsive with photostream

We run Aperture on Lion on an i7 iMac, (though with 16GB RAM, SSD + 2TB HDD and 2GB graphics card) and don't suffer anything like you are describing (TBH we dont see it on our old 2.8GHz Core 2 duo either). We have photostream set so that it doesn't add all images added to the library. Occasionally Aperture will "hang" (usually during a big Time Machine backup) but it never runs slow. I'm not an expert but I don't think our upgrades over yours are preventing us from seeing problems.

Our 1TB+ library is mostly referenced images, only the most recent jobs are managed and all photo's are RAW.

We run a little app from the app store called MemoryFreer that monitors memory usage in the menu bar and can free up available memory when available memory gets low. Even with 16Gb we can sometimes get theu usage quite high when using Aperture and Photoshop together.

I know none of this helps solve your problems, but it may indicate it's not hardware related.

Gary,

I don't see any of these problems either, not on my MBPs (Lion (8 GB RAM) and SL (4GB RAM)), nor on my iMac.

the only time I had trouble with Aperture was, when the free disk space was getting low - after I freed enough diskspace (20% of the disk empty) all was running smoothly again. So how much free disk space do you have? With less than 20% free the performance will decrease notacibly.

The second problem with the Photo Stream: I also have disabled autoimport, and that helps a lot, if my network connection is shaky.

Also it helps to keep the size of projects small - Aperture is slower when working with projects with several hundred images then with smaller projects. I try to keep the size of projects well below 200 images.

If none of this applies to your case, you may consider to keep the Activity window visible while working with Aperture, to see what the application is actually doing when things slow down. Maybe there are still maintainance jobs to be done -building previews, raw conversion, faces scan. And check the console window if you see diagnostic messages related to Aperture.

Regards

Léonie

have determined what Aperture is doing, when you start it?

Go to menu>Window>Show Activity

That should show what Aperture is doing.

I am running Aperture 3.2.2 on older iMac 24" 3.06GHz core 2 duo with 6GB of RAM. Also running Lion. I have about 12,000 raw picture files, using referneced files. No prroblems running Aperture.

Would referenceing be a mistake or might this eleviate some of the issues.

That depends; referencing will help, if you do not have enough free space on your system drive and you can free your disk this way. But you should connect your external drive to a fast port - fire wire, thunderbolt ...

If you on the other hand allready have all the disk space you need, this might may things worse, if your external disk is slow.

You really need to find out, what Aperture is doing; that is why I suggested to show the Activity window and watch the Console Window (Utilities -> Console). The performance you see is very untypical for a moderate sized Library.

I suspect your Aperture LIbrary may be corrupted in some way or your Preferences are faulty.

How to solve such problems is described in this support article.

Try to repair the permissions in your Library, and if that dos not help, repair the library as described in the article.

Post back, if that does not solve the problem.

Regards

Léonie

P.S. I would not change the type of the library to referenced, while there may be a problem with the library that need repairing.

To relocate masters to a different drive you select them all at once in the browser, then select from the Aperture menu

File -> Relocate Masters

In the Library Inspector you can select more than one project at once by holding down the shift key, while you select the projects.

You can even select all your images at once by going to the "Photos" View, but frankly, I would not relocate all at once. First check with one project, if all goes well, then you can go for larger transfers.

You can even select all your images at once by going to the "Photos" View, but frankly, I would not relocate all at once. First check with one project, if all goes well, then you can go for larger transfers.

If you are importing photo's regularly it might be better, to start a brand new library for all new images and import them as referenced. If it's an old library you are using then fragmentation may be an issue, it certainly wouldn't hurt to try a fresh library that won't be fragmented.

I'd also make a note of your preference settings and delete Aperture Preferences as described in the troubleshooting document before creating the new library, and try it with photostream left off for the new library.

That behaviour is not normal at all.

What I do not understand: Are you using the same, identical Aperture Library on your imac and your MB? Or do you get the same sluggish behaviour with different libraries?

If you are using the same library on both machines - how are you sharing it? A Shared folder, anetwork volume, or do you mount the drive with the library alternatele on both machines?

Gary i wrote:

No I am not sharing a library both are seperate, apart from what ever happens with photostream.

From the description in the manual:

Photo uploaded from Aperture on one Mac and pushed to Aperture on another Mac: If the Aperture library the photo is pushed to contains a duplicate of the project or album in which the photo originated, the photo is placed in that project or album—even if the project and any subordinate folders and albums have been renamed or restructured. If the project or its albums don’t exist in the Aperture library the photo is pushed to, the project hierarchy is replicated and the photo is placed in its original position.

Have you tried turning off photostream since referencng your library?

Gary,

The only way to get it back was a full rebuild of the database, of course followed by ALL the images reprossesing. Honestly there is only like 15gig of photos on the macbook. And I am at the end of my tether. As a forty quid app this thing will

That looks to me, like you may have a corrupted image or a corrupted xml-file in your Aperture Library, that cannot be repaired by "rebuild library"; in that case Aperture will try to fix it each time, when it launches.

You might try to manually repair your Aperture Library - I did not suggest this previously, for it seems to be extremely unlikely, that you have the same corruption in your both your library on both your machines, unless you copied a corrupted library.

To manually fix the Aperture Library try this:

Manually repairing the Aperture Library: Re: Aperture 3 rebuild library - SQLITE MISUSE

Regards

Léonie

I agree. Aperture is a failed application for me as well. While I like its features, it is way to slow and unresponsive to use in any kind of reasonable workflow situation. What will you use instead? What else have you tried that works better? Thanks.