Slow import from camera to Photos

After several more failed attempts to import photos from my camera, I decided to force quit Photos as it was stuck "Closing the Library" then turned off all networking (System Preferences > Network > Ethernet > Configure IPv4 > Off > Apply - I'm on wired connection, you can also just "Turn Wi-Fi Off" if you are only using wireless networking) for good measure I also turned off the Photos iCloud features (System Preferences > iCloud > Photos) - I'm not syncing my whole library to iCloud anyway.

Finally, restarted Photos, connected camera, and could straightaway see a big difference in performance - imported 80 photos from the camera in a couple of minutes with no apparent issues.

Now that I have all the photos imported I've turned networking/iCloud features back on again.

I have not seen the slowness you report, but try the User Tip below to update iPhoto to version 9.6.1 - you may need iPhoto occasionally for tasks that are not yet supported in Photos: Only iPhoto 9.6.1. is fully compatible with MacOS X 10.10.3.

You can no longer buy iPhoto from the App Store anywhere, and also not update it from the "Updates" tab of the App Store. You can however reinstall it, if it is showing among your Purchases at the App Store and associated with your AppleID.

Sign into the App Store and look at the Purchases tab. If you do not see iPhoto there, try to unhide your Purchases as described on this page: Hide and unhide purchases in the Mac App Store - Apple Support

If iPhoto shows on your Purchases tab, reinstall as described in this User Tip:

Get iPhoto 9.6.1 if you didn't update before OS... | Apple Support Communities

The main idea is to move the incompatible iPhoto app to the Trash, so Spotlight does not see it as installed, reload the App Store by pressing ⌘R, and then to try to download again from the App Store - from your Purchases tab, not from the main page, since you can neither buy iPhoto nor update it, but you can reinstall, if your AppleID is associated with it.

So move iPhoto to the Trash (don't empty the Trash), relaunch the App Store. The button to the right if iPhoto should change to Install on the "Purchases" tab.

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/565704040

-- Léonie

As to the slow import. Are you importing RAW files or videos? Are you importing from a card reader or directly from the camera? Can you import to to Image Capture instead of to Photos?

Have you tired with a different card?

We have to narrow down the problem.

You card, your camera, the cable, the RAW support, Photos, all are suspects.

• Try to import into Image Capture. Simply launch the Image Capture.app from the applications folder and try to download a few of your photos into a folder. If this works, we will know, that Photos is causing this and none of the other suspects.
• If even Image Capture cannot import your photos, try another card in the camera and take a few JPEGs. Then we will know, if the RAW photos are the problem or perhaps the camera is in a wrong mode, the battery low, the USB port not working.

I'm having a similar problem. I migrated to Photos last week and it seemed to work fine. I was able to import photos from my iPhone 5s a few times.

But today i tried to import photos from my compact camera Canon Ixus (about 90 new photos) and i got only empty thumbnails. No progress bar seems to be moving. The import is still running after 1h.

I'm using a MBP 15" i7 2.5 GHz 16 Gb memory

Hi,

on my side, I'm using a Canon Ixus 230 HS (compact camera) in JPEG mode doing a direct import from the USB cable connection.

I'm able to browse and import my photos using Image Capture. I'm also able to import them using the still installed iPhoto.

As i said in my previous message, the import works ok in Photos when i use my iPhone. Was my first time importing from the camera directly since i migrated from iPhoto.

Thanks.

Philippe

Hello,

I also have this issue, it seems. Originally after "upgrading" to Photo everything seemed OK and I was able to import from a Nikon AW1 via USB cable.

Now though this seems to fail, I'm not sure if this may be related to the Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 6.04 as this was installed between it working and now not working.

Dan

Mary,

Not really, it takes you to Last Import with nothing in it - if you click on the camera on the left hand side then at the top it says importing and gives you the option to stop the import, however nothing appears to be happening. It shouldn't take that long I'm only importing 28 photos from the camera. In the end I didn't have the luxury of leaving it all night as the camera turned itself off (probably ran out of battery).

Having looked at some of the other threads on here, I think this is very highly likely to be a bug in Photos or something to do with very poor performance in iCloud - I don't sync my whole photo library to that, but I do have My Photo Stream syncing enabled so this is certainly a possibility.

I may try disabling all cloud stuff for photos and try it again later once I've charged the camera battery.

Dan

Hi,

Quite a similar issue here, just the other way around. For me it is the export function that is not working (as slow as it could get) taking around 2 hours to export 40 pictures, sometimes exporting 10 at a time and then stopping totally for 30 minutes... Seems to me like Photos is the problem, not something else.

Same issue when importing 380 jpg files from my Canon 5D. I had to kill Photos application. Then I've tried to select and import only 4 pictures, that worked ok (about 15 seconds). I'm trying with 20 photos now - it's very slow but at least the progress bar shows it' doing something. I'm not a photography professional so I thought Photos could be good enough for me, but I realize I can't from Aperture to this disappointing Yosemite app, I will now review the non-Apple alternatives. Too bad.

PS: while I was writing this, the progress bar for the import of 20 pictures just stopped its progression. I guess I'll have to kill Photos again.

I thought it was just me. Glad I saw this post. THIS IS RIDICULOUS! I bought this extraordinarily high-powered super-duper outfitted macbook so I wouldn't have these issues. And your Geniuses keep telling me to stick with Apple apps instead of Photoshop. But, please! Get it together or you're going to lose a lot of us. Soon. You've had plenty of time to fix this. And nothing seems to work on my end as I try to import 200 photos.

using Macbook Pro 15 inch with retina display

running Yosemite 10.10.3

trying to import via USB from Nikon D7000

This operation usually took about 5 minutes or less on iPhotos.

I'm having same problem and so frustrated. I just got home from a 3 week long incredible vacation and cannot get my pictures off my camera or my iPhone. I've tried using my SD card from my camera in my macbook pro (early 2011)'s SD slot. I've also tried iPhone import via cable. This was working perfectly fine before my trip. And no, nothing. Says its importing but its not.

Seeing what could be a related issue too. We have a home Mac Mini server, 10.10.3. All our Photos are in Apple Photo app.

Today attached wife's iPhone 5s to import outstanding photos and so far it has taken over 40 minutes so far to draw the thumbnails, let alone let me import the actual photos. I can select all the new photos from the menu, but the "import new" button remains greyed out. I can only assume this will become available once it's stopped fetching thumbnails. Why on Earth the app was design to work this way I cannot imagine. I don't care to look at 600 thumbnails while importing, I can sort them once they're in the Photo app.

Few things I checked: Mac Mini has decided to start ignoring any devices connected via 3rd party iPhone cables, so I'm using an official iPhone cable. Her iPhone 5s is running iOS 8.2. The server is maxed-out spec with a couple of Tb of SSDs and appears to be idling while going through all of this.

Update: Once Photos had finished loading 1100 thumbnails (about 90min), the 'import all' option DID NOT become available, despite having all the images pre-selected. Held my breath and restarted Photos (again). Thankfully it must've cached the thumbs as it snappily presented them all this time. So, I hit import... and after ~50 images the app simply stopped importing photos. The progress bar was at a dead stop, and the app using zero CPU. Great. Just to add insult to injury, the App refused to close (despite actually being responsive), so had to kill via Activity Monitor. Once it was up and running again, finally it managed to import the remaining 1050 images (pretty fast at around 10min).

Clearly there are serious bugs around importing & general performance. Coupled with the horrendous photo app performance on the iPhone 5s itself (it's always stalling on both the family iPhones), I really hope Apple have sight of this and are working on fixes. Advice in the meantime? Don't be afraid to to restart the Photo app over and over until it behaves, and pray it's not corrupting files along the way, and finally keep fingers crossed that Apple have fixes in the pipeline. >.<