Slow import from camera to Photos

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?

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

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.

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 am having the same problem with a Canon T2i. I tried to import 276 pictures into Photos and it isn't doing anything. The program is also a lot slower to load than iPhoto ever was.

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.