Can lowering resolution to its lowest setting increase Aperture's processing?

I find myself having to close other programs in hopes of better processing.

What other applications are you running parallel to Aperture? And how large are your images? More like 10 MB or mor like 60 MB?

1. If you are processing very large scans or raw images, with many applications open, that are RAM hog (like Safari, iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes) more RAM would help. You can check, if you have a RAM problem, by launching the "Activitiy Monitor" from the "Applications > Utilities" folder. Set the display to show the prosesses sorted by memory, and you will see, how much RAM Aperture is using. Also have a look for the disk usuage. Your MBP may be slow, because you are running out of disk space on your system drive. Keep at least 20 GB free as working space.
2. Where is your Aperture ibrary stored? On the internal SSD or on an external drive? If yes, how is this drive connected? Aperture maybe very slow, if the Aperture library is not on a fast drive.
3. Other common reasons for slow processing are a corrupted Aperure library or incompatible video codecs. Did you experience any crashes lately? Then repairing your Aperture library might help.
   Repairing and Rebuilding Your Aperture Library: Aperture 3 User Manual
4. In some cases, an incompatible video codec causes this: Aperture 3: May be unresponsive or have slower performance with third-party video codec
5. Also you may turn on Aperture's own "Activity Viewer" in Aperture (Window > Show Activity). This will show you the current task, Aperture is performing. If you have imported a large amount of images lately, Aperture may still be busy with initial processes - generating previews, scanning for faces. Look at the name of the image Aperture is processing. If it is always the same and Aperture is hanging trying to process this, you may have imported a corrupted image or video. Then remove this from your library.

First, I want to know whether I can speed this processing up if I lower the resolution of the display.

The processing speed when doing adjustments will not depend much on the size of your display, for the final rendering is supported by your graphics card, and that is optimized for your display resolution. You will only lose the advantage of having a high resolution retina display.

I have the base retina model with 8gb of ram. Should I just exchange it for the 16GB of ram?

First check, if your problem is caused by lack of RAM, see my comments above.

Your other question - don't know. sorry.

ps. I have aperture 3

which version exactly?

Regards

Léonie

Up to 5-6 seconds is way too long for 2.3 mb images, with Aperture running from an SSD. I get that response time with large scans - 100MB or more.

Do you have very large projects with thousands of images? Try, if working from a smaller project helps.

I'd really suggest to repair your Aperture library, even if you did not have any crashes, look for incompatible video codecs (see 3. and 4. above) and check, if Aperture is faster, if you are using a different user account. Create a new account and a new Aperture Library, and edit a few images. Do you get the same response time?

I hope someone who has a retina mac will chime in.

Regards

Léonie

.a memory cleaner which also monitors ram usage.

What is the memory cleaner you are using? Is it compatible with Mt. Lion? I'd turn it off, while testing for lazyness. It might be interfering.

Also I'd try to reset the Graphic Card by booting once into Safe Mode, see Mac OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode?. Aperture cannot run in safe mode, so you will have to reboot again, but this will reset some setting.

I just had an email exchange with Kirby Krieger, who is using a rMBP like yours with Aperture 3. He confirmed, that on his rMBP there is no lagginess with Aperture, even for much larger images than yours.

So it is important to find out, if the slowness on your machine is caused by

• your Aperture Library (test by experimenting with a new, empty Aperture Library and repairing your current library)
• by settings in your user account (test it by working from a different account with standard setting - no custom preferences and startup items)
• by system wide problems. If you find, that it is neither your Aperture library nor settings in your account make a hardware check (Intel-based Macs: Using Apple Hardware Test) and post back.

Regards

Léonie