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Level 1

74 points

How do I speed up Aperture?

Currently Aperture is my program of choice for editing. However it is extremely slow with my computer. I consider myself having a decent piece of hardware. I'm using the iMac i5 2.9Ghz, 24Gb ram, GTX 665M 512Mb, Fusions drive. The actual photo library itself is on an SSD thunderbolt external drive.

There are mainly two performance problems. The first one is that as I browse from one photo to another, after a while the program becomes a drag. I suspect this is some sort of memory leak issue. Because if I restart the program, everything is fine again (until another 30-40 photos browsed). I'm not sure there's a solution to this as it is most likely the program's fault. Increasing the ram (I used to only have 8Gb ram now increased to 24Gb) basically buys me more time before the performance hits but the problem is still there.

The second performance issue is that, during editing everything is extremely unresponsive. So if I zoom in and started applying brush, it's almost always a 1-2 second delay before the live view is updated. As a few layers are applied, it gets worse and worse. Eventually toggling a brick will take 5-10 seconds for it to be reflected in the photo. Will a hardware change improve this?

Posted on May 13, 2013 8:22 AM

Best reply

léonie

Level 10

194,969 points

Posted on May 13, 2013 9:45 AM

Your hardware looks perfect for Aperture.

What is your MacOS X version and Aperture version?

How full is your System drive? Aperture can get slow, when the system drive is nearly full.

Also, Aperture can become unresponsive, if your Aperture library needs repairing. Have you recently run the Aperture Library First Aid Tools? If not, I'd repair the library, see: Repairing and Rebuilding Your Aperture Library: Aperture 3 User Manual

And if you imported some corrupted media (videos, image files), this may slow Aperture down. DO you still have these problems, when you launch Aperture with the Shift-key held down, to defer the generation of previews?

Another known issue with Aperture 3.3 and later is some peculiar quirk, when you imported n iPhoto library to Aperture. Did you import an iPhoto library and and does this library contain smart albums created in iPhoto? Then I'd recommend to delete these albums and to redefine them in Aperture.

To narrow down the problem, I'd make a few test:

Try editing when launching Aperture on a new Aperture library created for testing. Is the performance better?
Try editing when launching Aperture from a different user account on a new library. Still the same slowness?

If it works well on a new library, you will need to troubleshoot your current library.

If it works well in a new user account, there are settings in your account that need fixing.

If you are having the same problem in all accounts, your system or Aperture need s fixing.

Please report back after testing.

Regards

Léonie

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24 replies

CorkyO2

Level 4

1,290 points

May 15, 2013 10:12 PM in response to aapl.crox

When you say skin smoothing giving you delay, approaching 3 seconds, when does it happen? When you drag the brush around? Or when you toggle it?

It happens when brushing many strokes. Off-hand I would say once I reach about 20 stores it starts to delay.

Note - I usually use the 'Retouch' brush first, then 'Skin-Smoothing'. By the time I get a high stroke count in 'Skin-Smoothing' (whether via the Quick Brush menu or Adjustment menu) I start to see a delay.

You actually have the i7 and 1GB VRAM, I wonder if that makes a difference.

The ability of the i7 to hyper-thread and create virtual cores definitely makes a difference to programs which take advantage of multiple cores and the larger VRAM amount allows for more operations to be cached. I don't know how much Aperture uses those abilities though (due to Apple's tendency to keep things to themselves). 😉

CorkyO2

Level 4

1,290 points

May 15, 2013 10:19 PM in response to léonie

Léonie,

I suspect the difference is in my use of the Apple Thunderbolt Display.

I see better performance in all applications and the OS with the built-in MBP display only, but the cooler color compared to the ATD doesn't entice me to use it unless I am mobile with the MBP (which isn't that often when I own an iPad as well).

After running hardware color management on the ADP, I find the Apple default is almost spot on and works well for my use so I forgoe it's use (I use Illustrator much more than anything else on this machine and simply select the CMYK values I know will print correctly). 😉

léonie

Level 10

194,969 points

May 16, 2013 4:24 AM in response to aapl.crox

Since you now have the clean install of Mt. Lion and Aperture on your external drive - have you tried to boot your Retina MBP from that drive and and done the same tests? That would prove definitely that it is not a hardware problem.

Now that I am back in my office I tried to recreate your issue on my iMac - it has a fast i5 processor, but a different Graphics Card.

Indeed, with this mac the toggling between bricks is a bit slower than on my MBP 17". Brushing is still fast and very responsive, but toggling bricks off and on after adding 6 layers of brushes causes a noticable delay, perhaps one or two seconds.

But frankly, I am not surprised about this delay, considering the amount of processing that needs to be done, when toggling a brick: the preview has to be recreated from a 24 Megapixel raw file, and 6 layers of adjustments have to be processed again, including the very time consuming skin smoothing.

AMD Radeon HD 6770M 512 MB

aapl.crox Author

Level 1

74 points

May 16, 2013 9:54 PM in response to léonie

I tried it on my macbook pro, 2.3 i7 and 16Gb ram. NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1024 MB.

It's around the same speed. Maybe just very slightly faster. But that could be my imagination. At this point I can quite safely say this is the limit of aperture when working under these specific conditiions. I guess what's left to explore is, how could I improve this?

Based on your testing, it seems your MBP performed better than iMac. Is that a result of the cpu or graphic card? I can't even upgrade my graphic card for my iMac so I would have to get a new iMac? Or maybe mac pro?

léonie

Level 10

194,969 points

May 16, 2013 10:58 PM in response to aapl.crox

Based on your testing, it seems your MBP performed better than iMac. Is that a result of the cpu or graphic card?

My iMac has a faster CPU than the MBP, similar to yours, but no SSD System drive. I assume is the larger amount of virtual memory on the MBP's Graphics card in combination with the SSD.

Also, the iMac has a gigantic 27" screen, the MBP only 17". So the better graphics card has to support only a smaller screen.

I can't even upgrade my graphic card for my iMac so I would have to get a new iMac? Or maybe mac pro?

For heavy duty processing an iMac is preferable. Only you can carry it around. But both my 17" MBPs are giving me lots of trouble with overheating when I need a lot of rendering to be done. I use a second internal drive.

ButI am not yet convinced that you would need to invest into a new mac now,to get done what you want to do. Maybe slight modifications to your workflow might suffice. If I understand you correctly, your main concern is that you cannot compare the effect of brushes because the toggling of the effects takes to long.

How about using version stacks and creating new versions for each new brick and rendering previews for all versions? You can compare your versions zoomed in by selecting more than one version in the Browser.

aapl.crox Author

Level 1

74 points

May 18, 2013 8:44 PM in response to léonie

Thanks for the suggesiton, but it's not that practical. If I'm toggling 5-6 bricks on and off and compare the effects, I would end up with 5-6 copies in the stack. It works yes, but it's doesn't really do the job. Not to mention the purmutations needed. For example, I might want to try different combinations of dodge, exposure and level. In that case I would have many permutations in the stack.

Also, the other area where performance really suffer is brushing. Yes it works, but it's just extremely choppy. And randomly too, which is where it gets really annoying.

Overall, I would just say that aperture is not really capable of handing large RAW files while zoomed in. I hope this is a problem I can solve by throwing money at it.

CorkyO2

Level 4

1,290 points

May 19, 2013 9:37 AM in response to aapl.crox

Overall, I would just say that aperture is not really capable of handing large RAW files while zoomed in. I hope this is a problem I can solve by throwing money at it.

The only other suggestion I have is to try making a test library and setting the preview size to something smaller than your screen resolution to see if that helps with the performance in full screen and zoomed in.

If it does, then (IMO) it points to a hardware limitation when updating the preview on screen. If it doesn't, then it may simply be that Aperture isn't currently capable of working at the level you would like.

I have always liked full-screen mode in both AP2 and AP3, but it has also always put a strain on either the hardware or software programming when doing a lot of detailed up-close work. Whether it is a delay in brush work at high count or any command that requires a refresh of the image on screen.

Note - as I mentioned earlier, ACR does the same thing and it is also a parametric tool. It may simply be that all current programs that work this way will have issues until someone creates a faster, better way to record and apply non-destructive changes.

I say all this because throwing money at the problem is typically a temporary fix at best. 😉

aapl.crox Author

Level 1

74 points

Jun 11, 2013 11:25 PM in response to CorkyO2

Ok so I finally gave up after endless frustration and just wanted to see just how much greener is the other side. I exported an image into lightroom and it's night and day difference!! All the brushes were instant! The toggling of effect is instant. I can't even blink my eye otherwise I would miss it! Same hardware, same system. Also zoomed in 100% during the adjustments.

Ok so this is real sad. I really want to use aperture but basically I have to spend 4x more money on a machine just because they can't code properly. I will try your suggestion Corky, what preview size should I test with for my 27'' iMac? 1280x1280 is the lowest selectable I think, should I use that? And what about quality? Lower that too?

Jun 25, 2013 7:42 PM in response to aapl.crox

I am having the same problem.. just baught a bran new iMac 27" with 3TB fusion drive and it cant hadel aperture.. ??? why? Its a 3.4 GHz core i7 8GB 1600 MHz DDR3 and having problems.. 😟 I will start using the skin brush using it under color overlay it it freezez up. If I am watching a tv show on Itunes as it freezes it freezes that as well. about 10 sec later it will un freeze and act like nothing happened. Very stupid. My old mac book pro core 2 duo was faster then this.. Might have to switch to light room...

How do I speed up Aperture?