Disappointed with aperture's performance, how to improve?

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74 points

Disappointed with aperture's performance, how to improve?

I just bought a new iMac and thought I have an pretty good machine but aperture's performance is just patheric, why? I have a

2.9 GHz Intel Core i5

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M 512 MB

8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

3TB fusion drive

My aperture library resides in a thunderbolt drive SSD. If I go through a project of 300 files eventually half way through it'll get very slow. Pressing left and right arrow results in a 1 second delay which is extremely annoying. I shoot in RAWs theres are all RAW files. I find that restarting aperture boosting the performance for a while, until I browse through a lot of photos and then it'll slow down again. What do I need to do to get a smooth experience throughout hours of use without restarting?

Posted on Mar 2, 2013 10:40 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 2, 2013 8:19 PM in response to aapl.crox

Not sure. Replying to give this a bump. The hardware mavens here may yet jump in.

Things to look at:

- does Aperture's Activity Window indicate anything?

- do Page outs in the OS X utility "Activity Monitor" increase over the course of your Aperture work sessions? How much?

- are you seeing performance issues anywhere else?

- how much free space do you have on your system drive?

Imho (and my "ho" on hardware matters is not worth much), your graphics card -- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M 512 MB -- is a little underpowered. Can you upgrade to a faster/bigger cache version?

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Answer 2

Mar 3, 2013 8:04 AM in response to aapl.crox

What camera is producing the RAW files?

Ernie

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Answer 3

aapl.crox Author

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Mar 3, 2013 2:43 PM in response to Kirby Krieger

How do I check page outs for aperture? I can only find page ins.

There's never any performance issues with anything else except for aperture. And I have 50% of the disk space available but it's a fusion drive so I'm not sure how it's splitted. But the aperture library itself is on an external SSD drive.

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Answer 4

aapl.crox Author

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Mar 3, 2013 2:44 PM in response to Ernie Stamper

The camera is a Sony NEX 6, does it affect anything?

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Answer 5

Mar 3, 2013 5:57 PM in response to aapl.crox

The camera per se, would probably not matter. I was asking to get an idea of whether you might be dealing with the impact of some of super-large files produced by newest high-mega-pixel cameras. At 16.1, your Sony Nex is sort of in between. I do see some behavior, from time to time, with the files produced by my Nikon D800, vs essentially never with files from my older Nikons.

What size Preview do you have Aperture set to generate, btw?

Ernie

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Answer 6

aapl.crox Author

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Mar 3, 2013 5:59 PM in response to Ernie Stamper

10 - High. Is that normal?

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Answer 7

Mar 3, 2013 6:03 PM in response to aapl.crox

Previews need not be 10, but also important is the pixel size of the preview. With larger sensor cameras, a setting to use half-size previews would impact differently than with smaller sensor cameras. A pixel size of just slightly more than the size of your display will be adequate for nearly all purposes. Generation and handling of the Preview takes a lot of processing.

Ernie

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Answer 8

aapl.crox Author

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74 points

Mar 3, 2013 6:06 PM in response to Ernie Stamper

Do you know what level would equate to my iMac 27'' screen?

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Answer 9

Mar 3, 2013 6:12 PM in response to aapl.crox

Click on the Apple icon, top right, and choose About this Mac. Then in the resulting screen choose More Info, then System Report, followed by Graphics/Displays and look beside Resolution.

Ernie

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Answer 10

aapl.crox Author

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Mar 3, 2013 6:13 PM in response to Ernie Stamper

27-inch (2560 x 1440) but what level would give me that?

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Answer 11

Mar 3, 2013 6:16 PM in response to aapl.crox

Not the level per se, but then choose the size offered in Aperture of Fit within 2560 x 2560. Then choose a Quality no greater than 8, and test.

Ernie

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Answer 12

aapl.crox Author

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Mar 3, 2013 6:17 PM in response to Ernie Stamper

Ok I will try those two settings and report back. But how do you know it's preview related?

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Answer 13

Mar 3, 2013 6:29 PM in response to aapl.crox

I don't for sure, but that is something to eliminate. With the newer cameras it has been a frequent subject here to revisit Preview settings, lest both your processing power, and disc space be unnecessarily taxed.

While testing this I would watch the Activity Monitor/System Memory display for Page Ins and Page Outs, as well as Free memory vs Inactive Memory. It the latter that I watch the most, but not everyone shares my view of its importance.

Ernie

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Answer 14

aapl.crox Author

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Mar 3, 2013 6:30 PM in response to Ernie Stamper

Where should I go for a reading of those 4 things?

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Answer 15

Mar 3, 2013 6:32 PM in response to aapl.crox

Launch Activity Monitor -- Applications/Utilities/ Activity Monitor and choose the tab for System Memory.

Ernie

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