Why is Apeture such a RAM hog?

Jake,

Your question is so subjective you are not going to get a worthwhile answer. I feel Aperture runs fine on my MacBook.

One thing to keep in mind is that Aperture is probably the most complicated, advanced program on your computer. To keep track of photos takes memory, and lots of it. There is no other way around it. It also requires reading from your hard drive a lot. If you have a slow hard drive, then it will slow Aperture while reading the gigabytes of information it needs to do its job.

nathan

Aperture can run well on any machine that holds 16 GB of RAM. If you provide some hardware specs and some details about what is happening and how that differs from what you expect, it is likely people here can help you get more from the program.

It does take quite a while (hours and days) to finish the processing of a large import and of any large changes to your organization. For starters, you might try turning off Faces and the sharing of Previews until your database is organized the way you want, and is otherwise working well. Many find it useful to set Previews to the size of their largest monitor -- you find asterisks indicating your currently attached monitor sizes on the Previews pane of the Aperture prefs.

Does "Window→Show Activity" show anything going on?

(And is your HD 1 TB?)

You shouldn;t be so focused on the amount or memory being used unless this leads to the system paging. After all you bought 16gb of memory it does you no good if it just sits there empty.

On a Macbook (not Pro) with 4gb I have safari, mail and aperture all open and still have 1gb of free memory and no page outs. And all three apps are responding well.

So it works, if it is running slow on your setup you need to locate the bottleneck. Are there page outs? What do you have running besides Aperture? How big and how full your internal disk? Is the internal disk partitioned? Is the library on the internal disk? What else is hooked up to the machine?

All there questions (and more) need to be addressed as they can all impact system performance.

regards

It is interesting that those with MacBooks say that Aperture runs well, while those of us who have MacBook Pros have the same issue that that Jake 15 is having.

I bought a top of the line 17" MacBook Pro over 3 years ago (Dual 2.93 GHz processors), and have subsequently maxed out the RAM (8 GB is max), and added a 500 GB 7200 rpm disk). I had noticed that Aperture would slow down, and become quite a turtle after about 15 minutes, but it was not till I bought and installed Free Memory Pro that I could watch it gooble the RAM When the free RAM got below 500 MB, Aperture crawl!! (and yes, the paging was extensive) However, Free Memory Pro would then free my RAM, and Aperture would be speedy again (for at least another 10 minutes).

I have a top of the line Retina on order with 16 GB of RAM and a 768 SSD. I am crossing my fingers that Aperture willl be speedier on it.

Swan60 wrote:

It is interesting that those with MacBooks say that Aperture runs well, while those of us who have MacBook Pros have the same issue that that Jake 15 is having.

I have a top of the line Retina on order with 16 GB of RAM and a 768 SSD. I am crossing my fingers that Aperture willl be speedier on it.

I haven't seen any data that supports your assertion. It runs counter to my own experience. I ran Aperture 3 for a couple of years on a MacBook Pro, part of that time with 4 GB and part w. 8 GB RAM. While it did take a while to get it set up (I was new to Aperture) and while also acknowledging problems that were slowly fixed with the many updates, Aperture ran well (certainly since 3.1.3, if memory serves). I administer several Libraries, some of them quite large and complex (I put together a Library of a quarter million Images in order to test it's robustness). In my experience not only works well, but is a brilliant bit of software engineering. I use Aperture for at least 25 hr. every week (I am an Apple Aperture Certified Pro).

I have had a few minor problems running Aperture on my rMBP w. 16 GB RAM and a 500 GB SSD. My suggestion for you is to uncross your fingers and start trouble-shooting: Aperture can work well. If it does not, there is a reason. There are several highly skilled users here willing to help guide your search for the reason Aperture "turtles" on your current machine.

I note, too, that this seems to have been Jake15's only thread in the forum. One can only guess as to whether he finished trouble-shooting or not.

Message was edited by: Kirby Krieger -- corrected final paragraph.

I am anxiously awaiting getting a real world library set up on my new rMBP with Mountain Lion, and 16 GB of RAM. My experience is that certainly thru 3.2.4 in Snow Leoard, Aperture can make a mess of memory management depending upon the size of image files being processing in long strings of editing, and many other repetitive functions. My Mac Pro 8 Core has 10 GB of RAM, and over and over I have watched the Inactive Memory build up, and Aperture and/or OSX refusing to surrender it, even when things slow to a crawl. I have seen no other app do that, and that includes Final Cut Pro and some other power apps.

It seems to be only slightly better in Lion with 3.3.x versions.

My D800 is in Nikon's hands for tweaking, and I am again using my D300 as the first line camera. Its files do not create nearly the same impact as the 45 MB plus RAW files from the D800.

Without the steady allocation of memory to Inactive status, Aperture is quiite fast for me, but when I process 75 to 100 images in steady succession, it gets bad!

Ernie

Swan60 wrote:

It is interesting that those with MacBooks say that Aperture runs well, while those of us who have MacBook Pros have the same issue that that Jake 15 is having.

That is not IMO some kind of truism. A very few individuals reporting is not statistically significant compared to the thousands not reporting the issue.

Swan60 wrote:

I have a top of the line Retina on order with 16 GB of RAM and a 768 SSD. I am crossing my fingers that Aperture willl be speedier on it.

My early 2011 17" MBP with 8 GB RAM and 128 GB SSD absolutely rocks Aperture, no page outs. I do get page outs however with an aggressive Photoshop/Aperture workflow so I will be adding RAM. Note that under OS X just Photoshop alone has been able to take advantage of up to 32 GB RAM for many years.

Heavy use of RAM is a good thing now that RAM is cheap. Folks acting like RAM-hogging is a bad thing don't get it. With 16 GB RAM on board slowdowns should primarily be due to the GPU and driving the retina display.

-Allen

more...

Also note that if you do use Photoshop and Aperture concurrently you will probably do best not allocating a huge amount of RAM to PS under PS/Preferences/Performance/Memory. Instead try allocating 4 GB of your 16 GB to PS, but using the SSD for a significantly sized Scratch disk and see how that works.

Note that a nice benefit of the SSD is that apps open or close in under 3 seconds, so there is no reason to keep apps not in active use open, improving RAM allocation and overall operation. OS X actively reallocates RAM very well, but best is to close uneeded apps (especially browsers). Application memory leaks of one kind or another are not uncommon.

It takes a while, but SSD uage facilitates evolving to better workflows. IMO all Macs should use SSD for boot, and with SSD prices falling now everyone can.

-Allen

Got my D800 back from tweaking by Nikon, and shot nearly 800 images at the dress rehearsal of a play. Downloaded the first Act to my rMBP while beginning the 2nd Act with a different memory card. The rMBP worked marvelously to show cast members at the end. No time to edit, but nearly all looked great without editing.

With regard to memory management, and the very large files from such as the D800, there really is no change in 10.8.1 and Aperture 3.3.2 from Snow Leopard or Lion. Most of the 16 GB of RAM was chewed up, and half assigned to Inactive. The screenshot here shows the allocation. I cannot catch the moment that Free goes nearly to zero, but it does and loading slows. Yet no Swaping or significant pageouts occur.

I still maintain that Aperture itself is not really a RAM Hog, but it and OSX together pay too much attention to being ready to display images that you recently edited, but have already moved on past! I do not see this tendency with any other app.

Ernie

You know I just purchased 8gb more for my 3.06, 2010 iMac. This means I have 12 total. When I had 4gb I would get many Unexpected Quits while using brushes. Probably had something to do with always being down to couple hundred meg's of Free. Ha! Although now that I think about it, I remember this machine quiting Aperture if I used the Loupe even when it was new. Apple really couldn't help at the time and I learned to live with it.

So now that I have the 12 gigs do you think this will help me or should I move up to Mountain Lion (from Snow Leopard). Or won't that make a difference?